Page 78 of Beautiful Ruin

God, she has a way of making the most gruesome things sound so sweet.

For one impossible moment, I let myself imagine what it would feel like to not do this alone. To have her near me in a way that doesn’t end in one of us having to say goodbye. What would it be like to look at her across a table and know that however monstrous the next chapter of our lives become, I am not the only one left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath?

My hand tightens around the phone so hard it almost hurts. I hope she is there once the dust settles.

I hope…

I want to be by her side. Wherever she goes, whatever she decides to do once she is out from under her uncle’s control, I will be there. No matter what. She is the star I will follow in the night’s sky. The beacon of light that will guide me into this next phase of our lives.

I will devote everything to her so long as she allows me to.

“Thank you, Sofia.” I whisper, choking on the words as a single tear trails down my cheek. “I will let you know after the meeting what is discussed and our next steps.”

“I will be waiting for you, Rowan. Always.”

The final confrontation begins long before I reach Ivan.

It begins the moment I step back onto the familiar grounds of the Kuznetsov estate as night cloaks the property in cold black silk.

For years this place was more than a residence. It was proof that I had risen above the fighting pits and the starving for food and love and a place to belong. These walls gave my life meaning. Now it looks like an enemy compound that I know every weak point to. And this time the enemy is the one inside these very walls that I have spent years protecting.

The darkness around me reminds me of a hundred other raids and a hundred other nights I’ve slipped through barrier walls and shadows, moving silently with men at my back while we cut our way into some other bastard’s safe place. I remember the old rhythm of it too easily. How the adrenaline pulsing through my veins would feel.

Behind me, the coordinated assault is already underway.

Men loyal to all three Iron Pact members move across the estate in tight formations, black shapes cutting through the dark with ruthless discipline. Malyshko’s men take the perimeter first while Volkov’s own soldiers move faster toward the front of the house. Sokolov’s people fill the seams in between, covering blind spots and locking down exits to make sure panic doesn’t turn this into a slaughterhouse before the real target is reached.

Their teams breach the outer gates with almost no fanfare, sweeping through the grounds to neutralize any guards before alarms can properly spread through the compound. I know every inch of where they’re moving through. The angle of the cameras, the dead zones between the floodlights, the guard rotations I helped refine over years of paranoia and protocol—all of it is being used now against the very house I once swore no one would ever breach.

That irony should make me sick.

It does, in a way.

But layered beneath the sickness is something else. Sofia helped build half our plan from inside. That knowledge fills me with a deep, aching sense of pride so fierce it almost burns.

I feel it even now as I move through the darkness behind the other soldiers as we breach the foyer. Despite being locked inside that house with only one singular access point to the outside world, Sofia managed to help in every way she could.

The whispered strategy meetings with her and the Iron Pact over the last week have been a true testament to that clever brilliance. Coupled with Volkov’s own strategist wife, all six of us had come together to develop an ugly little war council stitched together out of necessity, mutual distrust, and the undeniable fact that Ivan Kuznetsov had become too dangerous to leave unchecked any longer.

Things moved quickly after I’d given them the bones of the estate—the private hallways, the routes to all the major landmarks, the security bypasses, the popular bottlenecks, the best place to cripple communications without plunging the entire house into chaos too early. I handed them the blueprint of my own home and watched them turn it into a kill map.

That still feels surreal when I think about it.

And yet the pride remains because Sofia is part of this.

Even now with my former home waking up to violence, I can feel the shape of her mind in the operation unfolding across the grounds. She is there in the rerouted guard team near the southern entrance. In the timing of the east-wing breach. In the fact that the staff quarters are to be avoided at all costs to keep innocent blood from being spilled.

She helped make all of this possible.

That is both beautiful and horrifying.

Gunfire erupts somewhere near the east wing.

The crack tears through the main part of the home as guards begin to flood from their posts. Without warning, my entire body tries to pivot toward it, toward her, to find her and keep her safe from all of this.

I catch myself before I can and force myself to keep moving.

I have to trust that she is staying safe.