“She’ll be returned home after the ceremony. She’ll be given what she needs to understand that she saw nothing that requires discussion.” He paused. “Or she stays. If you want her here, she stays.”
“She is not part of this world,” I said. “She has nothing to do with any of this.”
“No,” he agreed. “Which is why the fastest way to return her to her ordinary life is to ensure this is resolved today.”
I turned away from him. Walked to the window and stood with my back to him.
“You’re a monster,” I said. It came out tired rather than furious, which was a change.
“You’ve said that before.”
“It keeps being true.”
Behind me, I heard him stand. I heard him cross the room—not toward me—and then he stopped.
“Sofia.” His voice was lower. “I need you to hear me. Not the strategy, not the arguments. Hear what I am telling you plainly.”
I turned slightly. Enough to see him in my peripheral vision.
“Last night,” he started, “you were sitting on your bed with a borrowed blanket and your shoes still on, and you told me you were scared. That is the only time you have told me the truth without a fight. I am trying to ensure you are never in that position again. The method I have available is this one. I am using it.”
“Because it also gives you what you want,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The silence was its own answer, and Viktor and I had long since stopped pretending his silences were something other than confirmation.
“Get ready,” he said, finally. “Guests arrive at six.”
I looked at him. He looked back.
“Isla stays,” I said. “She doesn’t go home alone tonight.”
Something moved in his face. “She stays.”
“And she is told enough to understand she’s safe. No details, I’m not dumb. Just enough.”
“Agreed.”
I held his gaze for one more moment. He was not unaffected by this. He was simply not going to show me how much.
I turned and walked back through the transformed penthouse, through the hallway, and back to the room where Isla was sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands in her lap.
She looked up when I came in.
The dress still hung on the wardrobe door. Ivory and simple, the most expensive trap I had ever seen, the most elegant removal of choice I had ever been offered.
I stood and looked at it.
“Sofia,” Isla said quietly. “Tell me what to do.”
I thought about Cruz’s men in my apartment. About the chair on its side, the lamp in pieces, and the calm of two masked men telling me what I would become if certain things did not happen.
I thought about Elena, who had chosen a world with a BratvaPakhanin it and was building something real inside that choice, who deserved for the structure around her to remain intact.
I thought about Isla, here now because men had been sent to collect her, brought into proximity with something she did not understand and could not navigate.
I thought about Viktor standing on the balcony in black, telling me the protection went with the marriage.
I thought about not having a choice and how it felt different from mere anger.
