Page 66 of Prey of the Bratva

Timofey leaned back again, stretching slightly. “And preferably make it extremely painful for everyone involved.”

“Of course you would say that,” Zhenya said.

“I’m consistent.”

Elisse let out a small breath, tension easing just slightly from her shoulders. “Good.”

I stood there for a moment, taking it in. All of it. The shift.

The incomplete acceptance of Kliment and how they were not trying to take the mission away from me anymore. They weren’t trying to control it themselves, but they were stepping into it. With me.

“I’m not stepping back or ending this. I might be home, but the mission stays, and so does Kliment,” I said.

Iosif’s gaze met mine. “I know.”

Something in my chest tightened. It was not painful, just unfamiliar.

“And we’re not asking you to surrender anything,” he added.

Avgust nodded once, more reluctantly but no less certain. “We’re asking you to let us stand with you.”

“I can work with that,” I said.

Timofey grinned slightly. “Look at that. Growth.”

“Don’t push it,” Avgust muttered.

Zhenya rolled her eyes. “You’re all impossible.”

“And yet,” Timofey said, “we remain deeply effective.”

I let out a quiet breath, something in me settling for the first time in weeks. Months. Maybe longer, because finally I wasn’t alone. Not anymore. And this time, I didn’t have to fight for that.

Chapter 18 - Kliment

“I chose control over trust.”

The words sat between us like something that had taken years to reach the surface and refused to soften now that it finally had. Fyodor didn’t answer immediately. He stood across from me in the narrow corridor outside the war room, his shoulders squared and gaze steady in a way that used to mirror mine before everything fractured.

Now it didn’t mirror anything. It evaluated me like a stranger.

“That’s not new information,” he said after a moment, voice level. “You’ve always chosen control over everything else.”

“I know.”

Silence stretched again. It was not empty. Just measured.

“I should have trusted you,” I continued. “About Elisse, about your choices, and about the fact that not everything needed to be forced into order to survive. I chose not to out of my own pride and ego, and that resulted in nothing but a fracture between us. I am sorry I let that happen.”

His jaw tightened slightly, but he didn’t look away.

“You didn’t just mistrust me,” he said. “You tried to break what I chose and tried to push me away from the one person I loved.”

“Elisse made you a target, and I was worried about you, Fyodor. In my own misguided way, I was trying to protect you from everything that could have harmed you, but I didn’t realize it would end up pushing you away from me.”

“Elisse made me human,” he corrected, sharper now. “You just didn’t know what to do with that.”

That landed exactly where it was meant to, and I didn’t argue. For the first time in years, I didn’t try to win the conversation.