Page 68 of Beautiful Ruin

But now it’s been overtaken by insatiable hunger, madness dressed well enough to pass for strategy with no one left at the helm to turn the ship around once the skies begin to darken. Challenging a swell of this magnitude, going up against the Iron Pact as a whole in general, will end with only one conclusion. Complete and utter destruction of the Kuznetsov Bratva.

Malyshko, Volkov, and Sokolov will make sure of it. They will not allow defection to go unpunished. Not even when one of their own is at the center of it.

I force myself not to lower my eyes. “You would be a fool to believe that, Pakhan.”

His eyes harden. “If you are not with me, Rowan, then you are against me.”

The room seems to tighten after that sentence.

My chest squeezes.

I feel seventeen years old in the wrong memory, small and filthy, and starving for approval, terrified of losing the only hand that has ever fed me. Back then, I mistook being chosen for being saved. Maybe that is the cruelest kind of shackle, the one forged out of gratitude.

I’m not prepared for the emotion that swells within me, the pieces of that little boy begging for affection from my master slowly rising from the dead. They crawl out of every buried place inside me, starving and open mouthed. A lifetime ago, one word from Ivan would crush even the smallest traces of rebellion within me.

It would be so easy to fall back into that familiar cage and allow the door to slam behind me.

“You know I am always with you,” I say.

His eyes narrow. “Then you will support me in this.”

Three months ago, I would. Without question.

But Sofia has changed me. She has taken those small embers within me and blown gently into them, coaxing them slowly into a fire I can no longer starve of oxygen.

“I can’t.” The words are barely above a whisper.

For the first time since this conversation started, true sadness fills his eyes.

“Then you leave me no choice but to exile you.”

22

SOFIA

Rowan’s exile changes the estate overnight.

I feel it the moment I wake up. Nothing else can explain the sudden pressure sitting on my chest when I open my eyes to the pale morning light bleeding in through the curtains.

Before, Ivan’s estate always carried a dull level of tension hidden beneath its polished surface. It lived in the walls like slowly encroaching mold, impossible to see unless you knew where to look. It had always felt controlled to a certain extent.

Now this place feels strangled.

I learn within a half hour of waking that Ivan had Rowan removed during the night after a closed door meeting turned sour. Whatever happened between them to cause such a riff has been the talk of the entire estate, though quietly and behind closed doors.

I don’t know who I am without him.

And now Ivan has forced him to find out.

The thought twists inside me hard enough that I have to close my eyes. For one terrible moment, I imagine Rowan somewhere outside these walls stripped of his purpose that once made him whole. Now he has no protection from the world beyond that would love to find out how much of the blade remains when the hand that once held it finally lets go.

Did he leave willingly?

Did he fight to stay? To take me with him too?

His absence leaves a strange hollow inside me.

Now there is only Ivan and the men who obey him without question. Unfortunately, my uncle has made one crucial mistake. He still believes I am controllable, that I am the frightened girl he sent away years ago and will keep my head down and not cause any more waves.