Page 84 of Beautiful Ruin

Nikolai’s eyes dart down to it. There’s the slightest lift of his brow when he looks back at me.

Curiosity.

“I look forward to doing business with you, Pakhan Malyshko,” I tell him.

I’m not speaking to him as Ivan’s orphaned niece anymore. Not as the girl dragged back to Moscow and shut behind guarded doors while fed curated truths until driven to near insanity. I am addressing him as his equal in at least one respect now. A ruler addressing another, a claimant standing on the threshold of power and refusing to back down from it.

This time, a true smile does tug at his lips. It is small, but definitely more perceptible than the ones before it. Enough to make him look, for one split second, startlingly human.

His grip is firm when he finally takes my hand. It isn’t an attempt at dominance, exactly, more like the firm press of a wax seal on an important document. He squeezes my hand once before letting me go.

“Yes, looking forward to it as well. Pakhan Kuznetsov.”

Pakhan Kuznetsov.

I love the sound of that.

Nikolai sinks back into his chair again, one ankle crossing neatly over the opposite knee. “I will forward any information I find regarding your father once it’s compiled.”

“Thank you.”

He inclines his head once.

When we leave the safehouse, I breathe out slowly and pull in a deep lungful of air. It carries the faint smell of wet pavement from the rainstorm earlier this morning. For a moment, I just stand there with Rowan beside me and let myself feel it.

The release.

The strange, trembling lightness of true freedom.

It has been a long time since I’ve felt the weight resting on my shoulders finally lift, even if only by a fraction. Since my mother’s death became a question I could never touch, since Ivan’s house closed around me and Rowan’s exile ripped open every illusion I had left about family and love and safety, I have been carrying it with nowhere left to go.

For the first time in what feels like forever, I can acknowledge what I am becoming.

A leader.

A Pakhan.

A member of the Iron Pact.

Rowan is watching me carefully.

That habit of his can no longer be considered a protective instinct. Not as far as I’m concerned, at least. It’s reverent in a deeply emotional, half-broken way. Losing me once, even if temporarily, had taught him something valuable. It had forced him to salvage what little scraps he had left of his vigilance for self-preservation and turn it all into uninhibited love.

“That went better than expected,” I say.

His fingers lift to brush along my jaw and cheek when I finally tilt my chin up to look at him. The touch is feather-light, a stark contrast to the sheer force of the man giving it. “You did well. I’ve never seen Malyshko so… receptive to change before.”

The word choice alone almost makes me laugh. Such a painfully diplomatic way of saying he’s surprised Nikolai Malyshko didn’t immediately gut me for the audacity of being overly friendly. “Maybe I’m charming enough to warm him up to the idea.”

He chuckles, low and rough and warm enough to send heat blooming through me right there in the cold. “Perhaps. You have changed even me, Sofia. It would never surprise me for you to change others too.”

The simple declaration makes my heart swell until it feels too big for my chest.

God, he says things like that so plainly now but they never fail to stab me straight through the heart. I have somehow done the impossible and reached inside a man like him and made something new sprout and grow there.

I grab him and pull him down into a kiss. I’m still too full of adrenaline from what just happened, and what’s to come next, to act with finesse. Regardless, I don’t care. I’ve found that the only way to survive this life is to keep stealing proof that something beautiful can still exist within it.

He makes a low sound against my mouth. One hand slides to the back of my neck, the other wrapping around my waist as he pulls me flush against him. The kiss deepens fast, heat flaring between us in the cool afternoon air. When we break apart, it’s only because the sound of a car door slamming nearby reminds us that we are not alone.