Her breath catches on that, just slightly.
“But you were wrong about one thing.”
She waits.
“You don’t get to decide what I carry,” I say. “Not ever again.”
She nods once. Her eyes are bright, but they don’t waver.
“Mila’s mine,” I say. “That changes everything. There isn’t a version of this where I step back, and I’m not letting them get close to her.”
She swallows.
“The ledger,” I say. “It’s worse than you think. It’s not just about you anymore. It ties councilmen straight to Markov’s laundering. It lists collateral for his deals.”
I watch her face as I keep going. “There’s language in it that can be twisted into a claim on a child. That makes it the end, not a leftover.”
Something shifts in her expression. She sees the line I’ve drawn and where it stops.
“The marriage bought us time,” I say. “Time isn’t an ending.”
“What is?” she asks, her voice hushed.
“The ledger,” I say. “That’s how this finishes.”
I check the door again, listening, making sure Mila can’t hear us.
“Where is it?” she asks. “I’ve never seen it.”
“We’ll find it,” I say, already running through what that means and who it points to. There’s only one clean way through what’s coming.
“We leave for Saint Petersburg in forty-eight hours,” I say.
She studies my face, looking for hesitation. She doesn’t find any.
“That’s not a discussion,” she says.
“No,” I say. “I don’t have room for debate anymore.”
23
ANA
Mila is asleep in her room, her head turned into the pillow, hair across her face, her mouth open a little so I can see her teeth. Dominik sits on the edge of the bed and brushes her hair back from her eyes. He does it carefully, like it’s nothing.
I stand in the doorway with my hand on the frame and watch them, my fingers tightening before I realize it.
I took something from him that should have been his. I didn’t ask. I didn’t explain. I decided, packed, and left, knowing exactly what kind of man Dominik is and what he would do once he realized I was gone. He would come for us.
He’d come after us. He’d keep looking until he found us.
I wasn’t careless when I ran, but I also didn’t have a perfect plan. I figured things out as I went. I watched people. I paid attention to routines. I cut ties one by one, even the ones that hurt, and I stayed gone. I raised Mila with my own money, on my own time, and I held on to the belief that keeping her out of reach was the right thing to do.
Dominik was always in my head, more than I wanted him to be. Not as comfort, and not as longing, but as something fixed.
Every time I had to make a choice, I measured it against what he would call a risk, where he’d draw the line, and what he would never let slide. Even when I chose differently, I knew exactly what he would’ve said.
It wore me down. I slept light. I checked the street twice before stepping out. I stayed alert in rooms that never felt familiar.
