Haven’t we suffered enough?
After one final, futile scan of the area, I force myself to turn back toward the office building. Last night’s conversation with Ethan has clearly triggered my hypervigilance, transforming every shadow into a potential threat. But if a professional investigator can’t trace those license plates, I have to accept that this isn’t random. Someone with serious resources is watching us.
The question that terrifies me most: if this is connected to Aslanov, who can I turn to for help?
Ethan has made his limitations crystal clear—organized crime is "above his pay grade." The police would need evidence I don’t have, and even if I could convince them to take me seriously, what could they realistically do against someone like Ronan Aslanov? With Nikolai gone, that monster has probably consolidated power beyond anything law enforcement could touch.
The elevator arrives with a soft chime, and I step inside, catching my reflection in the polished steel doors. Despite the concealer I’d carefully applied this morning, dark circles shadow my eyes like bruises. The face staring back at me looks haunted, aged beyond my years by guilt and sleepless nights.
This is what grief looks like.
This is what living with blood on your hands does to a person.
Sometimes I can barely stand to meet my own gaze. The weight of responsibility—for Nikolai’s death, for Hannah’s fatherless childhood, for the danger that seems to follow us like a curse—threatens to crush what’s left of my sanity.
I tear my thoughts away as the elevator reaches my floor. The best I can do now is return to my desk and pretend normalcy while my colleagues whisper about my erratic behavior. Let them think I’m having a breakdown. It’s still preferable to them discovering the truth—that I’m being hunted by the Russian mafia, and there’s nowhere left to run.
***
I force another piece of roasted carrot into my mouth, the sweetness turning to ash as I studiously avoid eye contact with Timur and Sophia.
Soph practically radiates happiness, her hand finding its way to the gentle curve of her belly with unconscious frequency, even while she eats. When she thinks no one’s watching, I catch glimpses of the tender looks she exchanges with Timur—two souls completely absorbed in each other’s existence, their love blooming brighter with each passing day.
I’m genuinely thrilled for them, but visiting here sometimes feels like pressing on a bruise. Watching their effortless intimacy, the way they orbit each other like binary stars, reminds me of everything I had and lost. Everything Hannah will never have.
I abandon the carrot and reach over to help Hannah with her dinner, spearing vegetables onto her fork since she’s developed an impressive talent for avoiding anything green.
My appetite has completely vanished.
The hooded figure from this afternoon haunts every thought, his shadowy presence replaying on an endless loop in my mind. All I can focus on is Hannah—how small she is, how vulnerable, how utterly dependent on me for protection if our carefully constructed world comes crashing down.
"You’re unusually quiet tonight," Timur observes, his sharp eyes studying my face with uncomfortable intensity.
I manage a weak smile. "Just tired, that’s all."
Tired, my ass.I can practically see the thought scrolling across his features. Timur’s gaze lingers, dissecting my expression while he chews with deliberate slowness, like he’s cataloging every one of my micro-expressions for future analysis.
The years haven’t been kind to Timur either. After Nikolai’s death, he spiraled into the same desperate denial that consumed me. Sophia became his anchor during those dark months, offering her shoulder when the grief threatened to drown him, but I don’t think he’ll ever fully recover. He didn’t just lose his best friend and most trusted ally—he lost his entire purpose, his identity stripped away in a hail of bullets.
Sophia told me once that the Rogov Bratva essentially crumbled after Nikolai’s death, absorbed into Ronan Aslanov’s growing empire like a smaller fish swallowed by a shark. Timur was left adrift, a soldier without a war, wandering through each day with the hollow-eyed confusion of someone who’d lost their reason for existing. For months, he sought solace in the bottom of a whiskey bottle, spending his evenings slumped in front of the television while Jack Daniels numbed the edges of his pain.
That wasn’t even the worst of it.
His grief transformed into paranoia—triple-checking locks, forbidding Sophia from leaving the house alone, treating every stranger as a potential threat. She could only venture outside when he accompanied her, his protective instincts morphing into something suffocating and desperate.
But lately, there’s been a shift. Sophia says the pregnancy has awakened glimpses of the old Timur, like sunlight breaking through storm clouds. The healing is slow, tentative, but shecatches flashes of the man he used to be—the one who could make Nikolai laugh until his sides ached.
"Anyway," Sophia interjects, clearly attempting to resurrect our dying conversation and dispel the tension hanging over the table like smoke. “I’m leaning toward Tess for a girl, or maybe Abbey. Frida has a lovely ring to it too, though I think that would only suit a baby with dark hair.” She turns to me with genuine curiosity. “You never told me how you chose Hannah’s name.”
A bittersweet smile tugs at my lips. “That was all Niko. He heard it somewhere and just... knew. He wasn’t one for overthinking things like that.”
A phone buzzes against the table, and I watch Timur’s entire posture change. It’s subtle—just a slight tightening around his eyes, a barely perceptible straightening of his spine—but I catch it because I’ve been watching him.
Sophia notices too, her pregnancy-sharpened intuition picking up on the shift in her husband’s energy. "Who is it, honey? Everything okay?"
Timur glances up, and for a split second, I see something flicker across his face—alertness, anticipation, the ghost of his old intensity. “Just... work stuff.” He abandons his silverware with a sharp clatter, pushing back from the table without bothering to tuck in his chair. “I have to go.”
He moves with sudden purpose, circling the table to press a perfunctory kiss to Sophia’s temple. His hand lingers briefly on her hair before he’s striding toward the door, all traces of the relaxed dinner companion gone.
