“Why come here?” I ask, because it’s the easiest question I have right now.
Her gaze doesn’t drop. "Because anyone who has ever stood too close to your world is dying," she says. The truth of it settles with the clarity of inevitability.
“It still doesn’t answer my question. Why are you here?” I ask again. I step closer, my shadow folding into hers. “Say it before I decide you don’t walk past my threshold again.” In my world,it means she doesn’t walk back into my house and ask for protection.
Raina hesitates. Five years of silence sit between us, thinning under the truth.
“Because you’re the only one who can stop him.” Her eyes close for a heartbeat. When she opens them, they shine.
The words drag heat and fury in equal measure through my ribs. She’s right. She always knew the truth of my reach, the truth of my power. She wouldn’t be here otherwise. But there’s something else behind her eyes. Something she isn’t saying. But it isn’t only fear sitting in her eyes.
It’s her. The same woman who tore through my systems and my discipline in the same breath. The same mouth I used to pin open against my pillow. The same body I fucked against my desk until neither of us remembered who started the fight.
Five years later, she still knocks the air out of me, looking like a sin I haven’t finished committing. She stands in my foyer soaked in snow and dread, and all I can think about—just for a raw, unguarded second—is how fast I could take her upstairs and ruin every reason she came here except to remember what it was like to be with me, bemine.
Before I speak again, she reaches into her coat and slowly pulls out a second black box. The ribbon is wet and the corners are softened by cold. She places it in my hands.
My crest is stamped on the top—the Baranov wolf, etched in silver.
3
RAINA
I’m in. Sergei has promised protection, though I don’t know if he’d agree so readily if he knew what—who—I’ve hidden from him, safe at the house of my best friend.
In this house, I’ve been given a maid who moves more like a bodyguard. Her heels make no sound on the polished floor as she leads me out of the den where Sergei questioned me for over an hour.
The room behind us still smells of him—tobacco, cigar smoke, cologne, and the leather of his dark, polished boots. My clothes are damp from the snow, my bones feel hollow, and every step away from that den feels like walking deeper into a mouth that’s already closing. “I will show you your room,” she says without looking at me.
Her Russian is crisp, school-perfect, and her tone is full of ice. I follow herbecause I’ve nothing left in me to pretend there’s a choice. The steps take effort since my legs are leaden and my brain feels raw around the edges, stripped thin by the last few hours. I’ve been running for years, chased by something aspatient and vicious as a wolverine. The first time I ran, it was shortly after the Courier tried to kidnap me to make an example out of me. I was lucky then, but I’m not so sure this time.
We move down a long corridor lined with dark paneling and framed photographs. Men at tables. Men in suits on riverfront docks. Sergei’s empire in black and white. The lights are low, pools of gold along the walls, leaving strips of shadow between them. Somewhere deeper in the mansion, a door closes, heavy and final.
The maid’s name,Anastasia, is pinned to her starched apron in neat black letters.
She has her hair twisted in a tight knot, not a strand loose, and a small vertical frown line sits between her brows like it has lived there for years. She’s no taller than me, and her posture tells me exactly what I need to know. Shoulders loose, head level, weight centered over the balls of her feet. If I had to bet, there’s a compact pistol at the small of her back and a knife in the pocket that looks like it holds a clean handkerchief.
Sergei never liked soft staff.
“You will remain in the east wing,” Anastasia says. Her words are short, cut close. She doesn’t show teeth when she talks. Even her mouth feels guarded. “The floor is secure. Guards will be posted at both ends of the corridor and outside your door.”
“Do the guards have names too?” I ask, “or just calibers and orders to shoot me if I sneeze too loudly?”
She glances at me then, quick, eyes cool and full of evaluation. I notice her irises are hazel, like mine. But without the gold flecks. Her gaze looks like flat glass. Mine still catch light, whether I want them to or not.
“I’m instructed to ensure your comfort, Miss Mirova,” she says. “And your compliance.”
I almost laugh, but the sound sticks in my throat.
We turn a corner where the heat from the radiator sits heavier, the carpet softer under my boots. A tall window at the end of the hall shows Moscow in winter, lights blurred behind a curtain of snow. The city still looks the same. I’m the one who’s changed.
I spent five years carving myself out of this place, changing names, burning traces, teaching my daughter to be quiet when strangers knocked. Now I walk under Sergei’s roof again, alone, and his men move around us like we’re part of a drill.
No one questions why I'm here. No one looks surprised. They glance once, register me, then look to Anastasia, to the hallway, to the corners where threats would hide. They obey his orders without so much as a wrinkle in their expressions.
Keep her alive.
Even now, the city bends around his silence. That hasn’t changed.
