Page 19 of Beautiful Ruin

Not fast enough to betray the urgency flitting through my veins, just first.

Always first.

One of the drivers reaches for the handle at the same time I do and wisely lets me take it when he realizes. Ivan sits inside, pale beneath the winter light, one hand braced against the seat as he prepares to stand.

He looks better than he did in the hospital, worse than he would want anyone to notice. The color has not fully returned to his complexion and the set of his mouth is harder than usual, pain pulling at his composure no matter how well he fights to disguise it. But his eyes are clear and alert. The sight of that alone slowly loosens something in my chest I hadn’t been aware was choking me.

For one irrational second, I want to tell Sofia to go back inside.

The thought arrives fast enough to surprise me. It is not tactical in any sense, nor is it built from any amount of risk assessment or protocol or any of the other cold, practical instincts I trust. There is no immediate threat in her standing on the front steps with her coat pulled tight against the morning chill and her blue eyes fixed on the convoy.

Still, the urge comes.

Don’t stand there.

Go inside.

Don’t try to take this from me.

The last thought is so ugly and childish that for a second I almost recoil. Because that is what it is, isn’t it? Not merely a cause for concern that Ivan’s return will overwhelm her or expose more of his injuries than he’d want her to see. It would be easier if I could file these feelings under duty and close the drawer before locking it tight. But the thing twisting inside my chest is more exposed than that.

I have never been just his enforcer. I have always been his right hand. The one person he can lean on without judgment, the only one capable of keeping secrets no one else in this world knows. I have carried them for him without complaint. I have killed to protect them, bled for them. Built an entire life out of standing exactly half a step behind Ivan Kuznetsov and making sure every man in the room understood that reaching for him meant going through me first.

To share that bond with anyone else, even merely a fraction of what Ivan and I have developed, irritates me.

I have never had to compete for my Pakhan before. Not in any real sense. Men have wanted his favor, feared his displeasure, begged for his approval, but none of them ever occupied the space I did. None of them understood him the way I do and earned the kind of trust built through obedience and the long, brutal years of becoming exactly what he needed me to become. Least of all in a childish sense like the one I feel now.

Sofia is his blood.

That should be the end of it.

She belongs beside him in a way I never can, no matter how much of myself I have fed into his empire. She carries his beloved sister’s face, his family’s name on her documents, his protection in her bones. She does not have to earn a right at his side because she was born already having it. Hidden from it, yes, and protected. But born into this life all the same.

I was made. That is the difference.

“I can walk,” he murmurs, low enough that only I hear.

“I know,” I answer.

I offer him my arm without another word, not at all surprised when he hesitates to take it. The hesitation is brief enough that most would miss it. It is a fraction of a second that his fingers flex in his lap before slowly lifting, pausing just as they level with my arm.

Ivan hates weakness.

Not in others, of course. That he expects. He uses it to his advantage, punishing those stupid enough to allow themselves to be so thoroughly exploited when necessary.

Weakness in himself is something else entirely, a betrayal by the body he has spent decades honing. I know him well enough to understand that taking my arm in front of not only Sofia but also the medics and his own men costs him a great deal.

Our syndicate is never supposed to see him weak.

I keep my face blank when he finally wraps his hand around me and uses it to lift himself up off the seat. That is the one mercy I can offer him in this moment. I lean slowly, shifting my weight backward in a momentary adjustment because the ground is slick and the doctors are irritatingly insistent the closer they hover.

It forces me to cut them a look before they can step any closer. I will not have them crowding him like he’s a fragile old man.

“Uncle Ivan!”

Ivan’s gaze moves past me.

The change in him is slight, but it is there—a softening around the eyes that I have seen maybe a handful of times in all the years I have served him. It’s the kind of thing he would never give a room full of lieutenants or foot soldiers. All because she is Irena’s daughter. Because she is blood.