His answer comes immediately. “I always am,moya.”
Lila watches me carefully from across the room, her fingers tightening slightly around the mug in her hands.
“Ivan?” she asks.
I shake my head.
She stares at me, as if the meaning takes a moment to reach her fully. Then the breath leaves her in a slow rush. Her shoulders drop, and she leans back against the chair, one hand pressing briefly over her face before sliding down again.
“Good,” she whispers, the word soft but full of emotion. “Good.”
Relief moves through her expression in waves, mixed with anger that clearly hasn’t faded yet. “He can’t come after Jonathan again,” she adds quietly. “Or you.”
Her gaze lifts back to me. “Or anyone else.”
“Yes,” I say softly.
Her eyes narrow. “But?”
I glance toward the window. “Kiren believes Ivan wasn’t working alone.”
The relief in her expression fades slowly. “Of course he wasn’t,” she murmurs under her breath. “Arkady may be dead, but someone else was still behind Ivan. Someone using him.”
Outside, security vehicles move along the driveway while armed guards patrol the perimeter. The house is protected. The gates remain closed.
Yet as I watch the slow sweep of patrol lights across the snow, one truth forms quietly in my mind. Tonight didn’t end the war. It only changed who’s left standing.
18
KIREN
Night has returned to the estate, though quiet no longer holds the comfort it once did. The grounds remain alive with motion. Engines idle near the gate while security teams move along the perimeter road, their headlights cutting pale paths through the falling snow before disappearing behind the line of trees. Every few minutes, a radio crackles somewhere down the hallway outside my office door. The attack earlier ensured that.
Ivan’s surviving men made their final attempt tonight. They failed. Now the estate breathes again, but the tension that followed the gunfire hasn’t entirely left the walls.
I stand beside the tall window in my office, looking out over the grounds. Ivan is dead. Arkady is dead. But the war doesn’t feel finished. That truth sits at the back of my mind with firm persistence.
Ivan never possessed the patience required for what unfolded. He was ambitious, violent, and reckless whenever pride took hold of him. The structure behind his rise demanded patience, planning, and restraint, none of which Ivan possessed.
My gaze moves across the frozen grounds while the pieces replay through my thoughts. Arkady’s involvement had been too precise. He had been a Sovarin captain. He knew the structure, the contacts, and the money routes that moved quietly beneath the surface of the organization.
When Ivan began rising through the outer circles, Arkady didn’t stumble into his orbit. He brought Ivan into his own.
At the time, Ivan believed he had found an opportunity. The truth was the opposite. Arkady chose him. He recognized ambition where others saw recklessness and began shaping it, guiding Ivan into a position where that ambition could be useful. For a time, the arrangement worked exactly as intended.
Until Ivan decided he no longer needed the man who had opened those doors. Arkady’s death followed soon after. The elimination happened quickly, which never suited Ivan. He favored spectacle, fear, and noise.
Whoever had been guiding him preferred silence. I rest my hand against the cool glass while my thoughts move farther back through time, reaching past the past few months and into years I haven’t revisited in a long while.
Years before the first cracks appeared within the organization. Years before the whispers about Ivan began circulating through the outer circles of the Bratva. Years before my father died, and an attempt was made on my life the same night.
The answer has existed longer than I realized. I failed to look far enough.
A faint memory pushes forward. It comes from Moscow, long before Charlotte ever became home. Snow had been falling that night as well. My father poured himself a drink after a meetingran later than expected, then remained at the table long after the others left.
I was young enough then to ask questions without considering whether the answers were for a child. There had been one name I mentioned that night. A man I had not seen in years.
My father remained silent for a long moment before responding. He didn’t appear angry. Only thoughtful. Then he leaned back in his chair and explained that some men view power differently than others. Most men chase it. Others wait for it. The second group often wins.
