Yulia sniffs, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She pulls away just far enough to meet Ivy’s gaze, eyes wide and wet. “You write me. Promise?”
“I promise. And one day, I’ll come back.” It’s a promise meant for comfort, rather than being truthful, though I can see the way it tears her apart even to say it.
She nods hard Her chin wobbles despite her effort. She doesn’t understand—can’t understand—why the person she loves is being taken from her. Why adults decide these things behind closed doors with no regard for the little hearts they shatter.
Her little voice breaks. “I’ll miss you, Miss Ivy.”
Ivy presses her lips together, blinking quickly, as if she can will the tears not to fall. She leans forward, wrapping Yulia up in her arms again and squeezing her tight. “I’ll miss you too. Be good, okay?”
Ivy lingers there for a moment, memorizing her face, brushing her hair behind her ear as though she can fix every detail in her memory and never let it fade. When she finally lets go, her arms drop slowly. I can see in her posture that everything in her fights to stay.
I hate to see her suffer—for either of them to, actually. Watching Ivy’s grief twist her features while Yulia tries to be brave in the face of abandonment is a punishment I never asked for.
But one I’ll carry regardless.
Because a single fact remains, unfortunate and true. With Anton’s death, his followers have scattered into the wind. Men like that don’t dissolve. They fester, regroup, sharpen their anger and hone their strategies. Hunting them down will take time. Weeks, maybe months.
In that time, they will search for weaknesses—any soft spot in my defenses, in my alliances, in the people closest to me.
Ivy is the weakest point of all.
Time is a luxury I do not have while she remains here. Every hour she spends in Moscow is another chance for someone to use her against me. And that is something I will not allow.
Not again.
So I make the only choice I can, putting her on a plane back to the States. Away from Anton’s men, and away from the long reach of this city that corrupts and poisons everything it touches.
She may hate me for forcing her hand, for cutting her ties and thrusting her onto a plane she doesn’t want to board. Or, though I doubt it, she may actually thank me for severing the chain she’s already been desperate to cut.
Either way, the outcome is the same. She will remain alive and unharmed, safe, and far, far away from the chaos that still walks these streets like a plague in waiting.
And if she never forgives me for it, so be it. I can live with her hatred. What I cannot live with is the thought of her buried in this soil.
24
IVY
It’s been weeks since I arrived back in the States.
Everything is… muted. Dimmed, like someone turned the volume down on my life and forgot to switch it back up. I keep waiting for the old rhythm to return, for the familiar comfort of routine to slip over me like a second skin, but no matter how many days pass, it never does.
I walk the same streets I’ve always walked. Pass the same coffee shop on the corner with its burnt espresso and the chalkboard sign that never changes. I sit at my desk and shuffle through job applications, trying to go through the motions like some marionette whose strings have been cut.
Nothing feels real.
It’s like the second I stepped onto that jet out of Russia, someone plucked me from my own life and dropped me into a hollow replica. Everything looks the same, but beneath the surface, it’s wrong. Off-kilter. Like I’ve somehow slipped into an alternate universe where I’m still Ivy, but not really.
Not the Ivy I once was less than three months ago.
Is that what trauma does to you?
The memories don’t help. They won’t stop replaying in my head, uninvited and merciless.
Maksim’s voice, low and steady, cutting through chaos of my dreams. The way Yulia’s little arms wrapped around my neck in that last hug before I left, fierce enough to almost knock me back, desperate enough to make my heart splinter for leaving her behind. The echo of gunfire in my ears, sharp and endless, as bullets rain down over me like droplets of water falling from the sky.
And worse—so much fucking worse—is the way my body betrays me still. The way it aches for Maksim.
The memory of his touch lingers under my skin, warm in the quiet hours of the night when I’m alone and most vulnerable. My brain desperately tries to scream sense into me that he’s dangerous and ruthless, but my body doesn’t care.
