Page 14 of Beautiful Ruin

The closer we get, the more Italy already feels like a fever dream. Ahead of me is the cold machine of a city my family comes from, the place they sent me away from to escape and now apparently has decided wants me back. And somewhere down there waiting beyond the runway is the truth about what happened to my uncle.

We land at a private airstrip where another black car is waiting with the engine already running. Cold, wet air cuts through the stale luxury of the cabin’s warmth and wraps itself around my entire body in a chokehold.

One of the men motions me forward, and I step down onto the tarmac in shoes better suited for Italian summers than Russian winter. The cold seeps through the soles immediately. The interior of the car is overheated, smelling faintly of leather and expensive cologne that is soaked deep into the upholstery. The warmth should be comforting after the cold outside, but it only makes me feel more trapped than before.

The drive to my uncle’s estate is silent. The only noise comes from the low hum of tires on slick asphalt and the occasional crackle of the driver’s radio, clipped phrases breaking through static before growing silent again. I can’t make out most of the words, just fragments that sound like, gate open, arrival confirmed.

I press my forehead lightly to the glass and watch Moscow slide by. It is beautiful in a brutal sort of way.

Eventually, the road narrows and bends, the trees thickening on either side of the road until they feel more like a forest than state-funded agroforestry. Then, without warning, iron rises out of the dark.

The gates are enormous—black, ornate, and severe enough to look punitive rather than decorative. Scrolling metalwork and spear-tipped bars make scaling them feel laughable. They begin to open before we fully stop, gliding apart slowly in silence. Beyond them, floodlights sweep slow white arcs across the grounds.

When we finally pass through the gates, my uncle’s estate rises out of the darkness. I have barely any memory of the outside of it, but even from here it is not a home in any sense that my life in Italy has taught me to understand. It is a fortress made elegant by the refinery of the stonework and made monstrous by the cameras visibly jutting out from the alcoves. The shape of the building is all hard symmetry and Old-World wealth, stripped of any warmth and leaving only intimidation in its wake.

The car slows beneath the portico. The headlights cast long, pale bands across the front steps and the columns holding up the overhang, turning the entrance into a grand vestibule. The house towers above us in silence, looming rather than welcoming.

I step out onto the drive once the car is fully parked, my shoes meeting slick stone and sliding slightly on it. The estate hums with a strange sense of watchfulness, and I find myself focusing on the men patrolling around the front perimeter. Their footsteps crunch over the icy ground, leaving distinct paths in the snow.

Then the rear door opens.

A man appears just inside the doorway, and for one disorienting heartbeat, the whole world seems to narrow until there is nothing left but him framed in the warm light behind him. My eyes sweep over him before I can stop myself.

He’s tall, well over six feet, maybe more. His dark hair is cropped short at the sides, the top left just long enough to curl slightly and look a little messy. His eyes hold me in place, cutting straight through me. There is no softness anywhere on him. Not in the hard cut of his jaw or the high ridge of his cheekbones. Not even in the way he holds himself.

For one stupid second, I forget to breathe.

The reaction is so immediate and so wildly inappropriate that it makes irritation flash through me almost as fast as the cold. My body has picked a fine time to register the dangerous appeal of a man who looks like he belongs in the center of every nightmare my family has kept from me.

This is not the time, nor the place, for fascination.

Not when I’ve been ripped from a life I know with sick, awful certainty I may never get to see it again.

“Sofia Kuznetsov,” he says, stepping away from the doorframe and out into the cold. My name in his mouth sounds different than it did from the men in Italy. It’s rougher sounding, less formal somehow despite the lack of warmth in his tone.

The distance between us contracts.

It’s only a few steps, but everything around that movement sharpens in strange, punishing detail, each step cutting through the silence like a countdown.

When he stops again, he is close enough now that I can see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw and the tiredness bruised deep beneath a set of steel-gray eyes. There is a tiny crease between his brows that looks permanently etched there, as if irritation is simply his natural resting state and the world has spent years giving him reasons to keep it. Up close, he smells faintly of leather and something darker beneath it, gun oil, maybe. It hits me in an intimate way I immediately resent.

He is beautiful in the worst possible way. A face that would look obscene in the sunlight and somehow completely at home in darkness.

I lift my chin to meet his gaze. “And you are?”

He doesn’t smile.

I didn’t really think he would, but some traitorous sliver of me had expected the barest curve of politeness, a hand extended in the space between us with false reassurance and sincerity civil men usually give to strangers, but he offers none of it. Both hands remain clasped behind his back, his posture so rigid it feels almost military-like, though there is something about him that seems too rough-edged for officially granted titles.

“Rowan Vasiliev,” he says. “You will be under my protection and supervision until further notice.”

Protection?

Supervision?

And just like that, the old feeling rises in me again. The same awareness I felt at thirteen when I first began to understand that the world attached to my surname was not made of affection but of power. Protection is a word used when they want obedience without argument. It’s what they call a cage while still expecting you to be grateful. And supervision? That one doesn’t even bother dressing itself up to be nice.

I let my gaze drag over him again, slower this time.