Chapter 5 Alexei
"Alyosha." Katya's voice comes through tired, strained. "Mama had a bad night."
"How bad?"
"The doctors say weeks now. Maybe less."
I stare out my window at the grey Chicago dawn. The city looks cold, indifferent. Eleven years I've been planning this moment, and now time runs out like sand through fingers.
"She keeps asking about Misha. Whether he's been avenged." My sister's voice cracks slightly. "She says she can't rest until she knows."
My jaw tightens. "Tell her soon."
"Is it? Soon?" Katya's voice drops. "Because whatever you're doing there, whatever you're planning, she's running out of time, Alexei."
"I said soon."
"She wants to die knowing her son's death meant something. Can you give her that?"
I think of Sofia in her suite upstairs, calm as still water. Unbothered. Unbroken. The woman who mentions Mikhail's name like she has any right to speak it.
"Today," I say. "Tell her today."
I hang up before Katya can respond.
Mama's dying breath will ask if I've avenged him. How do I tell her that his killer makes me hard? That I think about her mouth more than I think about her death?
The security monitors glow in the morning darkness. I pull up Sofia's feed. She's still asleep, curled on her side in the rough cotton nightdress I provided, nothing like the pampered princess she pretends to be. Her breathing is even, peaceful.
The feed shows her sleeping now, but I saw earlier… No. I push that image away. It changes nothing.
Eleven years of waiting. My mother dying without peace. And the woman responsible sleeps like a child.
Enough.
I study the feed logs from last night. Something catches my eye.
Gaps between 2 and 4 AM. Three cameras flickered.
Fifteen-second blackouts, staggered. That's not a glitch.
That's deliberate. Professional. My jaw clenches as the implications hit.
Someone tampered with my security. In my own compound.
I rewind through the footage, studying every frame before and after the blackouts. The hallway cameras show nothing. Her room feed shows her in bed before, in bed after. But those fifteen seconds…
She knows things. Has skills she's hiding. Good. When I have her in the basement, I'll make her tell me everything.
Today, Sofia Rosetti dies.
I don't knock. The door slams open against the wall, and she's awake instantly. Not princess reflexes. Soldier reflexes. She sits up, pulls the thin blanket to her chest. Those blue eyes find mine, assess the danger immediately.
For the first time since I took her, I see something flicker there. Fear. Real fear.
Good.
"Get up."
"Alexei…"
"Now."
She stands without argument. The nightdress hits mid-thigh, her feet bare against the cold floor. She looks small, fragile. I know better.
I grab her arm hard enough to bruise and haul her from the room. She doesn't fight, doesn't scream. Just moves with me, bare feet slapping against marble. Down the corridor. Past guards who look away. Good. If any of them had looked at her in this nightdress, I'd have to kill them.
To the stairs. Down one flight. Down again.
The temperature drops with each step. The air turns clinical, tastes of bleach. I feel her resistance now, slight, involuntary. She knows where we're going. I can smell her now, that faded floral perfume mixing with sweat.
"Alexei, wait…"
"You've had enough waiting. So have I."
The basement door opens to darkness. I flip the switch, fluorescents humming to life, revealing concrete floors with drains, the metal table bolted to the center, tools arranged on the walls. The chair waits in the middle. Steel frame, leather restraints.
The concrete radiates cold. This room has heard things. Seen things. The walls hold echoes of men who thought they were tough until they weren't.
I drag her to the chair, force her down.
The leather is cold against her skin. I see the goosebumps rise on her arms. I bind her wrists to the armrests, her ankles to the legs.
The leather bites into her skin, and she gasps, and something dark coils in my gut.
Her pulse hammers against my fingers when I grip her wrist, rabbit-fast and warm.
The restraints are tight enough to mark but not enough to cut circulation. I want her conscious for this.
She's breathing fast now, chest rising and falling in that thin cotton. The poise finally cracking like ice under pressure.
I select a knife from the wall. Not the biggest, something precise. The blade catches the harsh light as I return to stand before her.
"Do you know why you're here?"
She swallows, throat working. "Because of Mikhail."
"Because you killed my brother."
"I didn't…"
"You told your family about the Russian boy sniffing around their princess.
" The knife presses against her throat, not cutting, just letting her feel the edge.
She swallows and I watch her throat work, imagine marking it with my teeth instead of steel.
My body's betrayal makes me press harder.
"And they carved out his chest with a dagger. That's on you."
Tears finally. Fucking finally. They shine on her cheeks and I hate that they make her more beautiful, hate that my cock notices even as I hold a knife to her throat.
She's crying and afraid and tied to my torture chair, and I'm getting hard. What kind of monster does that make me? The kind she deserves.
"My mother is dying," I tell her, keeping the blade steady. "She's been waiting eleven years to know her son was avenged. Today, I give her peace."
"Will it bring him back?"
The question stops me cold.
"Will killing me bring Mikhail back?" she presses. "Will it undo what happened?"
"It will balance the scales."
"No, it won't." Her voice shakes but she holds my gaze, those blue eyes fierce even through tears. "He'll still be dead. Your mother will still be dying. And you'll have one more body in this room. That's all."
"You don't get to…"
"I dream about him."
The words freeze me completely. The knife wavers.
"Every night. I dream about a boy calling for his brother. I hear Russian words I shouldn't understand. I wake up crying and I don't know why." Fresh tears spill over, real and raw. "There's something I don't remember. About that night. About before."
Silence stretches between us. Just the hum of fluorescents and her ragged breathing.
"You're lying."
"I'm tied to a chair with a knife at my throat. Why would I lie now?"
The logic cuts through my rage. I study her face, searching for deception, finding only confusion and grief that mirrors my own.
"What do you dream?"
She tells me in broken whispers. Fragments of a garden, Russian words that come naturally to her lips, a boy's laugh that makes her chest ache. Someone calling "Misha, Misha" and she doesn't know if she's hearing it or saying it.
The knife hangs forgotten at my side.
"What was he like?" she whispers, and the genuine need in her voice undoes me. "Please. I need to know."
The words tear from my throat like shrapnel. I hate myself for each one, but they keep coming.
"He was gentle in a family that valued violence.
" The words come without permission. "At fifteen, he found a wounded dog.
Instead of putting it down like Father ordered, he drove it to a veterinarian, paid for its treatment with his own money.
Father beat him for it. Mikhail just smiled and said the dog lived. "
Her crying intensifies, but she doesn't look away.
"He played chess terribly because he couldn't sacrifice pieces.
Said even pawns deserved to survive. He kept a bonsai tree, inherited from our grandfather.
Spent hours trimming it, talking to it like it could hear.
" My voice catches. "He wanted to be an architect.
To build things instead of destroying them. Said our family had enough warriors."
I'm pacing now, the knife loose in my grip, lost in memories I haven't let myself touch in years.
"His laugh was loud, unguarded. Nothing like a Volkov should sound. When he laughed, the whole room changed. Even Father smiled sometimes, hearing it."
I lean close enough to taste her tears, my mouth inches from hers. "Tell me why you came here, Sofia." Her lips part, and for one insane moment, I almost close the distance. Almost claim that mouth that speaks my brother's name.
A flicker of something crosses her face. Not quite surprise. More like resignation.
"You kidnapped me," she says evenly.
"You have training. Skills your family doesn't advertise." My mind races through the implications.
I look her up and down, really slowing down to take her in. Legs spread, ankles lashed to the chair legs, wrists tied to the armrests. Rough cotton nightdress riding up to mid-thigh, exposing more than it should.
But maybe it's hiding something too.
I put the tip of my knife into the gap between her legs and use it to drag her nightdress higher, trying not to think about the skin of her thighs that I'm exposing and whether she's wearing anything underneath.
There. Strapped high to the outside of her thigh. A blade. A fucking blade.
"You have a knife," I say.
She doesn't reply, just drills into me with those fucking blue eyes of hers.
She could have used it on me. Stabbed me in the side while I was dragging her down here, or when I pushed her into the chair. She had minutes of opportunity to save herself but she chose not to.
Was she really so scared she forgot about her only weapon? No. Not Sofia. Everything about her is too controlled, too precise. Even tied to a chair with a knife at her throat, she's analyzing, planning.
"You had this the entire time."
She doesn't answer.
"When I tied your wrists. When I pressed the knife to your throat. You could have cut yourself free. You could have killed me when I was—" Talking about Mikhail like a fool. Open. Unguarded. "—distracted."
Still she says nothing.
"Why didn't you?"
She looks up at me. Tears still wet on her face. "I don't know."
I stare at her, then at the knife in my hand. I should finish this. My mother is dying. Mikhail remains unavenged. The scales demand blood.
But I cannot kill her. Not like this. Not until I understand.
Why she didn't fight.
Why she dreams of my brother.
Why I just spent precious minutes telling my enemy about Mikhail's gentle heart.
Why she disabled my cameras to explore my compound.
I cut one wrist free with my blade, then step back.
"Free yourself. Or don't. Someone will check on you in the morning."
"You're leaving me here? In the basement?"
"Consider it time to think about what you're hiding from me. Whatever game you're playing, it ends now."
I turn for the door, needing distance between us before I do something stupid. Something weak. She'll spend the day in this cold concrete room, surrounded by the tools of my trade, wondering if dusk brings death or something worse.
"Alexei."
I stop but don't turn.
"I'm sorry about your mother."
The words hit hard. I slam the door behind me, the sound echoing through the basement corridor. Let her sit in the cold and dark. Let her wonder.
In the corridor, I lean against the wall. My hands are shaking.
She came here armed with a professional's blade. She's been playing me from the start, and I let her because I was too focused on revenge to see what was right in front of me.
But then why let me threaten her? Why not fight when she clearly has the skills?
What are you really, Sofia Rosetti?
Not the princess. Not the victim. Something else entirely.
And I'm not going to kill her until I understand why.
I climb the stairs to my surveillance room and flick on the basement cameras.
I'll watch her on the monitors, watch her free herself with movements too practiced, too precise for a pampered princess.
Watch the nightdress ride up her thighs as she works, revealing more of that smooth skin I shouldn't want to taste.
My cock throbs as I settle into my chair, multiple angles of her filling the screens. She's already working on the restraints, her freed hand moving with disturbing efficiency. Professional. Trained. Deadly.
I grip the arm of my chair hard enough that my knuckles turn white, hard enough to hurt. The pain does nothing to diminish the heat building in my spine as I watch her arch her back, testing the give of the remaining restraints. The thin cotton clings to her breasts, outlining every curve.
My hand moves to adjust my painful erection, lingering longer than it should, and the adjustment turns into a stroke, and before I know it my dick is in my hand, my eyes glued to the screen, even as I think about how to kill her.
I don't know how long I sit there, watching her work the restraints.
My hand moves faster on my cock as she frees her other wrist, which I must have tied looser than I thought.
With both hands free, she can bend down and reach the knife on the floor, which she uses to release her ankles.
The way she moves—efficient, calculated—only confirms what I suspected.
This woman is trained. Military? Intelligence? Something else entirely?
I should be furious. Instead, I'm fucking my fist like a teenager, watching her rub circulation back into her wrists.
When she stands, she stretches her arms above her head, arching her back. The nightdress rides higher, and I grip myself harder, hating my weakness. Hating that I'm stroking myself to the woman who got my brother killed.
But I don't stop.
She explores the room, examining each tool on the wall with professional interest. Not fear—curiosity. She runs her fingers along a serrated blade, tests the point of a hook against her fingertip. The intimacy of the gesture makes me groan.
She looks directly at the camera then, and I freeze. Can she see the red light? Or does she just know instinctively where the surveillance would be? Those blue eyes stare right at me, and for a sick moment, I imagine she can see me with my dick in my hand, watching her like a fucking pervert.
I jerk my hand away, disgusted with myself. With her. With whatever this twisted game is between us.
But I can’t force myself to look away from the monitors. Sofia has settled back in the chair, legs crossed at the ankle, looking for all the world like she's waiting patiently for a dinner reservation rather than sitting in a torture chamber. The calm is unnerving. Calculated.
I'm sick. Disgusted with myself. But I can't take my eyes off her, and soon my hand is stroking my cock again. I come hard in my hand, shame burning through me like acid.