The room is enormous. Deliberately so.
Everything here is designed to signal power without ever needing to announce it. A hand-carved table dominates the center of the space, large enough to seat a war council. Vaulted shelves line the walls, filled with leather-bound tomes and neatly cataloged files, history and strategy sharing space without distinction. Lamps cast a low, controlled glow, throwing long shadows across a Persian rug that looks older than most governments.
And at the center of it all sits Nikolai Malyshko.
He is younger than I expected.
Strikingly so.
Not in the boyish sense. There is no softness in his features, though he looks closer to my age than Sasha’s, which is not something I expected at all. His posture is relaxed, one arm draped over the back of the couch he’s seated on, but there’snothing casual about him. He sits with an ease of someone who has never once doubted his own authority.
He doesn’t stand when I enter, nor when the man behind me dips out of the room and shuts the door. He simply looks at me, and the room seems to still under the weight of his attention.
“So,” he says at last. His gaze flicks over me, slow and thorough, not missing a single detail. “the infamous politician’s daughter arrives at my door. How convenient.”
I force myself to stand straighter, even though my legs tremble beneath me. My spine feels like it’s made of glass, but I lock my knees anyway, lift my chin, and meet his gaze head-on.
“I came to ask for mercy.”
The word tastes wrong on my tongue—too soft for this room, too fragile to survive here—but I say it anyway.
Nikolai’s eyebrow lifts slowly.
“Mercy,” he repeats. “That is a luxury very few of us can afford,devushka.”
He says it gently. Almost kindly. And that somehow makes it worse.
My fingers curl tightly at my sides, nails biting into my palms hard enough to hurt. I use the pain to steady myself, to force my tongue to work and my lips to move even though I want nothing more than to turn around and run out of this room with my tail tucked between my legs.
“Please…” I say, the word slipping out before I can stop it. I swallow and press on before fear can steal my resolve further.“I’m here to turn myself over to you so you’ll leave the Sokolovs alone.”
Nikolai doesn’t react the way I expect. There is no laughter or immediate dismissal with how ridiculous of a request that is. Instead, he leans back slightly, studying me with renewed interest, his head tilting just a fraction as though adjusting the angle to see something hidden beneath the surface.
His eyes roam over my face now with intent, cataloging every tremor, every breath, every crack in my composure. I feel flayed open beneath that gaze, stripped down to my very last nerve.
“Is that so,” he murmurs.
“Yes.” The answer comes without hesitation. There’s no bargaining left in me, no clever framing or last-second attempt to soften what I’m asking of someone who owes me absolutely nothing. I know exactly what I’m offering. I know what I’m handing over to him and what I’m asking for in return.
For a moment, Nikolai says nothing. The silence stretches long enough that my heart begins to pound louder in my ears, each beat echoing like a countdown. Then, unexpectedly, something flickers across his face.
Amusement.
It’s brief, gone almost as quickly as it appears.
“How interesting,” he says at last. “Sasha did not mention that you were so self-sacrificing.”
“He wouldn’t. He would have tried to stop me if he knew I was coming here,” I reply quietly.
Nikolai shifts forward, resting his elbows on his knees, fingers lacing together. “Tell me something. Why would someone like you offer herself up like this when you have nothing to gain from it?”
I draw in a slow breath, the raw, honest truth spilling out of me. “Because he won’t choose himself. So, I’m doing it for him.”
Nikolai’s lips curve, not quite into a smile, but it’s a thoughtful expression that has me studying him in return.
He’s… not at all what I expected.
I’d built him into something monstrous long before I ever stepped foot inside this estate. A brute king, sharp-edged and brutal, a man cut from the same cloth as Sasha or my father. Ruthless, cunning, incapable of mercy because mercy is weakness in their world.
