"She raised you. But she stole your life, Elle. She lied to you every single day. If I could bring her back so I could kill her slowly for all the hell she put you through, I would do it in a heartbeat.
Something cracks inside me. Not clean, not quick. Slow and splitting, like ice breaking apart over deep water.
"She told me he died in a car crash." My voice breaks. "My father. She sat me down when I was fourteen and told mehe died in a crash. I cried for a week. For a man I never met. Because I thought she was giving me the truth." I look at him. "That was a lie too."
He nods. Just once.
I press both hands over my face. Hold my breath until the pressure builds and my chest feels like it might cave in.
Twenty-six years. Twenty-six years of loving a woman who murdered my parents. I called her Mother. I craved her approval. I curled into a ball every time she was cruel and told myselfthat's just how she shows love.
She wasn't showing love. She wasn't my mother. None of it was real.
"Why didn't anyone tell me?"
"She kept you locked up for exactly this reason. No one knew who you really were. Not even Viktor, until he started digging."
I sit there, feeling the shape of my entire life rearrange itself around a truth too big to hold. Every rule. Every locked door. Every time she said the world was dangerous and I believed her. She wasn't protecting me from the world. She was protecting her lie from me.
"She wasn't my mother," I say again. Smaller this time.
Nikolai reaches for my hand. He doesn't say it will be okay. Doesn't try to fix it. Just holds on. And somehow that's the only thing keeping me from falling through.
After a long silence: "You're not the girl you thought you were. You're something more."
"What does that even mean?"
A tired smile. "It means you're a very rich woman, Raphaella. Technically, you now control the Donskoy Bratva's U.S. operations."
I stare. Then laugh.
Loud. Sharp. Disbelieving.
"I'll be damned."
"Seriously. You're the legal heir. Your father's money. His title. His power."
"Absolutely not." I spin toward him. "I'm not about that life. I don't want to be anyone's heir. Tell Viktor to dismantle it, sell it, donate it to a dog shelter. I want nothing that came from her hands."
His smile is warm and tired and proud. "Didn't think you would."
"I want a bakery. Another cat. And a husband who doesn't get shot at."
"Two out of three isn't bad."
I laugh, thinking of how he hates yet tolerates Sir Isaac Mewton. I brush his silver hair off his forehead. "We're getting that cat."
"Over my dead body."
"What if it makes me really, really happy?" I bat my lashes.
His face softens. He reaches up to cup my cheek, tattooed fingers warm against my skin.
"I love you, Elle. You know that, right? If I could, I'd get you the stars. Get that cat. Get ten. I don't care."
I swallow hard.
"You mean that?"
