She looks tired, scared, but determined.
Like someone who’s finally ready to take control of her own fate.
Noon tomorrow.
Hours before Mikhail plans to move me to the safe house.
Enough time to slip away while he’s making preparations. Enough time to end this before he even realizes I’m gone.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to my reflection, to Mikhail, to the tiny life growing inside me. “But this is the only way.”
I slide the pregnancy test back into the drawer, hiding the evidence of the secret that makes this mission both more dangerous and more necessary than ever.
Tomorrow, I’ll end this war.
One way or another.
28
MIKHAIL
The house is too quiet when I return from my meeting with Ricardo.
I pause in the foyer, my hand still on the door handle, and listen. No footsteps.
No voices.
No sound of Sophia moving through the rooms like she usually does, bringing life to these cold spaces.
The silence presses against my eardrums like a physical weight.
“Sophia?” My voice echoes off the marble floors.
Nothing.
I take the stairs two at a time, my heart already beginning to race.
She’s probably just sleeping.
Or with Tony.
Or in the bath.
There are a hundred reasonable explanations for why she’s not answering.
But the moment I push open our bedroom door, I know.
The bed is made with military precision, the pillows arranged exactly as Elena leaves them.
Sophia never makes the bed like that.
She always leaves it rumpled, the sheets twisted from her restless sleep, my pillow still bearing the indent of her head when she curls against it.
I move to the closet.
Her clothes are still there, hanging in neat rows.
Her shoes lined up on the rack.
