Four months ago, this was what I wanted. Anna. The twins. Control of Kestrel Maritime, and everything falling into place exactly as planned.
Now I have none of it.
And I have no idea how to get it back.
28
ANNA
The twins take foreverto settle.
Mila keeps asking for her rabbit, the stuffed one sitting on her bed at the estate, and there’s nothing I can do about that tonight except tell her I’ll get it soon. She cries for a while, quiet and exhausted, the way she cries when she’s too tired to put real energy into it. Alexei doesn’t cry. He lies beside his sister with his arm around her and stares at the ceiling with those green eyes that see too much for a four-year-old.
“Is Papa coming?” he asks.
“Not tonight.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I don’t know yet, baby.”
He doesn’t ask again. Just pulls Mila closer and closes his eyes, and eventually they both go under, tucked into a bed that’s too small for the two of them in a room that hasn’t changed since I was a child.
I leave the door open a crack and stand in the hallway for a moment, listening to them breathe. Then I go to my old room and sit on the edge of my old bed.
The wallpaper is the same as it was when I was twelve. Pink flowers on a cream background, faded at the corners, peeling near the window. I picked it out myself because I thought it was pretty. I spent years in this room dreaming about leaving, building something, becoming someone who wasn’t just Viktor Kestrel’s daughter living under Viktor Kestrel’s roof.
And here I am.
Back in the same room. Same wallpaper. Same narrow bed. Except now I have two children asleep across the hall, a marriage falling apart, and a leather portfolio from my husband’s office sitting on the nightstand beside me.
I don’t open it.
I already know what’s in there. More documents. More explanations. More of Luca laying out his reasoning in clear, organized terms, because that’s what he does. He turns everything into a presentation. A strategy. A case he’s built and wants me to accept.
The problem is, I’ve already seen the case he built three years ago, and it was airtight too.
Downstairs, my father pours whiskey. I can hear the clink of the glass from up here. My mother’s footsteps move between the kitchen and the living room. They’re not talking. My parents go quiet when things get bad, the two of them retreating into separate silences that exist in the same space without touching.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling.
I’m not going to sleep. I know that already. My mind won’t stop running the same loop it’s been running since I found those files. The three-year plan. The annotated margins. The clinical language describing my family’s destruction is a series of phases to be executed. My name is in a column. Status: compliant.
I was so careful. I thought I was protecting myself by not asking questions, by keeping walls up, by refusing to let him in. But I let him in anyway, slowly and without noticing, and the whole time he was sitting on documents that proved none of it was real.
The front door opens. I hear my father’s voice. A pause. Then another voice, and I’m on my feet before I’ve decided to move.
I recognize his voice through floors and walls and the whole length of this house. That’s what four months does to you.
I go to the top of the stairs and listen.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” my father says.
“I’m not leaving until she does.” Luca’s voice is steady. Not loud. The kind of steady that means he’s already decided, and the conversation is just a formality. “Viktor. Please.”
A longer pause.
Then the sound of the door opening wider, and footsteps on the old hardwood floor.
