“That’s the one, sweetheart,” Claire says. “One more. Can you do one more?”
Hannah is already reading the next question.
The worry loosens, just slightly. I finish coming down the stairs.
“I didn’t know you tutored,” I say.
Claire glances up. “I was a nanny for years. Tutored my niece too—she’s nearly ten now.” She looks back at Hannah with something warm in her expression. “Sharp as a tack, this one. I can already tell.”
I smile as I watch them. Hannah never had a grandmother. No extended family, no one who looked at her the way Claire is looking at her right now—with patience, with investment, with the particular tenderness of someone older who has chosen to show up for her. It squeezes something in my chest I wasn’t prepared for.
I become aware of Nikolai behind me.
He’s watching Hannah too. I’ve learned to read the way his face changes around her—the way that perpetual guardedness softens into something unguarded and almost pained. A fierce, helpless love that he doesn’t know what to do with yet.
I nod my head toward the kitchen. He follows.
He leans against the counter, arms folded, sleeves pushed to his elbows. I make a point of keeping my eyes on his face.
“How much longer?” I ask.
“Until Aslanov is dealt with.”
“Dealt with? Meaning dead?”
He holds my gaze and doesn’t answer, which is its own answer.
“Right. And then what?” I press. “What does your life look like, Niko? What does…?” The words catch in my throat, but he understands the answers I’m looking for.
Something shifts in his expression. He’s quiet for a moment—the kind of quiet that means he’s choosing words carefully, not avoiding the question.
“I want Hannah to know her father,” he says. “If you let me. If… I make it out.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I keep my voice low. “The Bratva. Your empire. What happens to all of it?”
He looks at me steadily. “There is no Bratva, Lauren.”
I wait.
“The Rogov syndicate died four years ago when I signed it over to Aslanov. When he’s gone, it goes with him. There’s nothing left for me to step back into.” A pause. “I’m not sure I’d want to, even if there were.”
I search his face. “What does that mean?”
His gaze moves briefly to the doorway—toward Hannah, still at the table, pencil in hand. When he looks back at me, his jaw is tight.
“I spent twenty years building something I thought mattered.” He says it carefully, like each word is weighted. “And when I lost it, the only thing I actually grieved was you and Hannah.” A beat. “I want to be in her life. I want her to know who I am.”
The words land somewhere I wasn’t defending.
I’ve watched him watching her all week. The careful distance he keeps. The way he registered every small moment—the morning cereal, the bedtime, the tutoring just now—like a man cataloguing things he was afraid would be taken away. I’d told myself it was complicated, that wanting something didn’t make it safe, that a man like Nikolai Rogov couldn’t simply step out of the world he came from and into a normal life.
But standing here, looking at him, I’m not sure what I actually believe anymore.
“Do you mean that?” It comes out as a whisper.
He doesn’t say anything. Just continues looking at me, like he’s staring into my soul.
“What if… what if you don’t make it, Niko?” The question comes out quietly. “What if… he wins?”
