Carefully, I shift away from her. The mattress dips ever so slightly, and Alina makes a small sound in her sleep, a soft, almost questioning noise. My entire body freezes. I wait, breath held, until her brow smooths again and she settles back into stillness.
I pull the blanket higher around her shoulders, tucking it in the way my mother once did for me when I was a boy and nightmares clawed me awake night after night.
I brush my fingers lightly over her face.
Leaving her bedside feels wrong, like abandonment, but I force myself to part from her side, anyway. She needs rest more than she needs me hovering. Tonight, sleep is the only thing that will knit her back together, even imperfectly.
I slip out quietly, closing the door behind me without a sound.
The hallway greets me with cool silence. Sconces cast low pools of light along the walls, stretching shadows across the floor like watchful sentinels. The estate feels different now. Quieter, yes, but not peaceful. There’s an undercurrent moving through the bones of this place, the echo of business that hasn’t quite settled yet.
I move through it like a ghost.
Down the staircase. Across the marble foyer. Past doors that hold meeting rooms and weapons caches, memories better left to dwell on for another time.
I reach the main floor and stop near the tall windows overlooking the grounds.
Outside, the sky is completely dark. Snowmelt glistens faintly on the paths, reflecting the light from the floodlights stationed on every corner of this house. Somewhere beyond the walls, the city is sleeping, unaware that a powerful man died on a polished floor and that a young woman crossed a line she can never step back from.
I straighten slowly, jaw setting.
Whatever comes next—Nikolai’s expectations, the Pact’s scrutiny, the lies I’ll have to spin to the public to cover all of this up—I’ll handle it. I always do. That’s my burden to carry.
“There you are.”
I barely have time to register my sister’s voice before she’s on me.
She slams into my chest with enough force to nearly knock the breath from my lungs, her arms locking around me like a vise. For a split second, instinct flares as muscle memory from years of violence and being touched only to be hurt flares. But it dies just as quickly.
Her grip is tight, bordering on painful like she’s trying to make sure I’m real. Like if she lets go, I’ll vanish or collapse or bleed out onto the floor the way so many of our family already have. I grunt softly at the pressure, my arms hesitating before finally coming up to wrap around her in return.
We stand like that for a moment.
Then she pulls back.
And immediately drives her fist into my stomach.
The impact knocks the air clean out of me. I fold forward with a startled groan, one hand flying instinctively to my abdomen as I suck in a ragged breath.
“Fuck…Lena.”
“That,” she snaps, eyes blazing, “is for not talking to me before going over to Malyshko’s.”
I cough, trying to straighten, my ribs protesting as I force myself upright. She hasn’t even lost her balance. Of course she hasn’t. Lena learned how to fight before I learned how to walk.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she continues, jabbing a finger into my chest now. “You walk into his house with noleverage, no backup plan, no exit strategy? You’re lucky he didn’t blow your head off just to prove a point!”
I grimace, rubbing at the spot she hit, my stomach still throbbing. “You would’ve stopped me if I told you,” I mutter.
Her jaw tightens. She swings again, more reflex than rage, and I barely manage to shift away enough that her fist glances off my side instead of landing fully.
“Of course I would have,bratik. That’s myjob,” she snarls.
She steps back then, finally giving us both space, but the anger hasn’t left her. It’s layered now. Fear lies beneath it, raw and unfiltered, something she only ever lets herself feel with me.
“You scared the hell out of me. I got the call after you’d already left… Do you have any idea what went through my head?”
I meet her gaze. There’s a faint tremor in her hands she hasn’t noticed yet. Her eyes are slightly glassy, her breathing just slightly off. Lena Sokolov doesn’t panic, not in the traditional sense, but she came damn close to completely losing it. I can tell.
