I’m alive.
Why now? Why send this now, when I was finally finding a sense of peace? When I was carrying a child?
Was he coming for me? Or was he warning me? My father had been a man of shadows, a man who lived by the code of the rifle. He didn’t do anything without a reason.
“The wind is too sharp for you to be out here.”
I didn’t turn around. I didn’t need to. I knew the weight of his presence, the way the air seemed to still when he entered a space.
Alexei walked up behind me, the heavy thud of his boots muffled by the light dusting of snow on the balcony floor. He didn’t touch me at first. He just stood there, a dark shadow against the purple sky.
“I needed to breathe,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.
He stepped closer, his body a wall of heat against my back. He wrapped his arms around me, his hands resting over mine on the railing. His touch was possessive, a silent reminder of who I belonged to.
“You’re shivering,” he murmured, his breath warm against my ear.
“I’m fine, Alexei.”
Then he came to stand beside me. He tilted my chin up with one hand, forcing me to look at him. His hazel eyes were piercing, scanning my face with a surgical precision that mademe feel naked. He saw the tension in my jaw, the way my eyes wouldn’t quite settle on his.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
It wasn’t a soft inquiry. It was a command. It was the voice of a man who was used to the world yielding its secrets to him.
I felt the note in my pocket. It felt like it was humming, like it was vibrating with the force of the lie I was about to tell. My heart was a frantic bird, bruising its wings against my ribs.
“Nothing,” I said, my voice steadying through sheer terror. “I’m just tired. The pregnancy… it makes everything feel heavier.”
Alexei didn’t blink. He continued to search my face, his thumb grazing my lower lip. He was looking for the crack, the tell, the tiny slip of the tongue that would reveal the truth. He had spent his life reading men who were trying to kill him; a twenty-three-year-old student shouldn’t have been able to keep a secret from him.
But I wasn’t just a student anymore. I was his wife. A Lobanov. And I was a mother. I had discovered a new kind of strength—the strength of the desperate.
“Nothing,” I repeated, forcing myself to hold his gaze. “I just want to go inside.”
He didn’t push. Not yet. He let out a slow breath, his expression smoothing into a mask of calm. He leaned down and kissed my forehead—a soft, lingering touch that felt like a brand.
“Very well,” he said.
He stepped back, gesturing for me to enter the room first. But as I walked past him, I saw it. I saw the way his shoulders set, the way his eyes flickered to the pocket of my cardigan for a split second before returning to the horizon.
Alexei Lobanov didn’t believe in coincidences. And he certainly didn’t believe my lie.
As I stepped back into the warmth of the room, I knew the clock was ticking. The fortress I had called home was about to become a battlefield. And this time, I wasn’t sure whose side I was on.
I walked toward the bathroom, my hand clutching the letter through the fabric of my clothes. I had to destroy it. I had to erase the evidence. But as I stood over the sink, looking at the scrap of paper, I realized I couldn’t.
It was the only piece of my father I had left.
I tucked it back into my pocket and turned on the water, the sound of the tap drowning out the sound of my own ragged breathing.
The storm wasn’t outside. It was inside. And it was just beginning.
Chapter Twelve
Alexei’s POV
The underground war room of the Lobanov estate always felt like a tomb—reinforced concrete, humming servers, and the scent of stale coffee. It was a space designed for clarity and carnage, a place where the world was stripped down to heat maps, shipping manifests, and casualty projections.
