“It’s just me.” I close the door softly behind me, pull out the chair across from her, and take my seat. I don’t soften my expression. I let the silence do its work first.
She looks so small, diminished, so entirely unlike the woman who moved through Nikolai’s penthouse with quiet competence. But that doesn’t matter. She needs to understand the weight of what she did to my daughter before she gets anything from me.
She’s braced for something. I can see it in the set of her shoulders, the way her whole body has gone rigid, waiting.
I fold my hands on the table and look at her.
"Why?"
One word. It moves through her visibly—a shudder she can’t contain, starting at her shoulders and moving down. Her mouth opens twice, closes twice, like she’s reached for an answer and found it inadequate each time.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Her voice is barely there.
“I didn’t ask for an apology. I asked why.”
She flinches.
It’s harder than I expected, holding this line. Claire has always been slight—the kind of woman who seems to take up less space than she actually does—and whatever composure she had when she arrived here has been replaced by something so stripped and frightened that looking at her directly costs me something. I feel the pull of it and push it down.
She betrayed us.
She betrayed Hannah.
I wait.
“I didn’t have a choice.” The words come out barely above a whisper.
I keep my face still and say nothing.
“Ronan Aslanov.” She swallows with difficulty. “He… his men took my sister. And her daughter.” She looks up at me for the first time, her eyes red-rimmed and certain in a way the rest of her isn’t. “They said if I didn’t do what they asked, they would kill them both.”
The room shifts.
I sit back slowly.
Of course. It’s exactly what he does—reach into the space between a person and the people they love and make a weapon out of it. He did it with Hannah. He did it with Nikolai. Why would Claire have been any different?
I look at her—really look at her—and see it now for what it is. Not a woman who chose to betray us. A woman who was givenno choice at all, and has been living inside that impossible fact ever since.
“I’m so sorry, Lauren.” Her voice breaks on my name. Tears slip down her face and she doesn’t move to wipe them, hands still bound. “I’m so sorry.”
I say nothing. But the shape of what I came in here believing is already quietly rearranging itself.
The box of tissues on the side table catches my eye. I’m out of my seat before I’ve decided to move, pulling a few free and passing them across the table.
She takes them without a word. Her hands are trembling.
“I never wanted to hurt Hannah.” She presses the tissue to her face. “I want you to know that. Whatever else you think of me—I never wanted that.”
I believe her. I’m not sure I should, and I believe her anyway.
There was a time when I held firmly to the idea that there is always a choice—that people who say otherwise are reaching for an excuse. I’m less certain of that now. Aslanov had Hannah. He had Nikolai’s mother. He had four years of Nikolai’s life, and mine, and our daughter’s. The architecture of what he built was designed specifically to leave people with no good options. Blaming Claire for the corner he put her in feels less like justice and more like misdirection.
The door opens.
I don’t need to turn around. The room changes in a particular way when Nikolai enters it—a shift in the air, a subtle recalibration of everyone in it. Claire’s eyes go to the doorway and the colour drains from her face.
“He’s not here to hurt you,” I say.
