Chapter 13 - Sofia
His bedroom smells like cedar and something darker. Smoke, maybe, or gunpowder. I’m not sure I want to know which.
It's been three hours since the guards escorted me here. Day eight of captivity, and everything has shifted.
My bag sits in the corner where I dropped it—pathetic, really. Just rough cotton dresses and basic toiletries. But my mind still catalogues everything: exit routes, camera angles, the guard rotation I observed on the walk over. The left corridor is favored. Old patterns. Exploitable.
I'm perched on the edge of the bed, waiting, when the door opens.
Alexei walks in without knocking. Why would he, it's his room after all. Evening light from the window catches the sharp lines of his face as he crosses the room, and he doesn't look at me until he's at the window, back to the glass, arms folded.
Then those pale eyes find mine.
"So," I say, breaking the silence that's stretched between us since he returned. "Your bedroom. Should I be flattered or concerned?"
He turns then, those pale eyes assessing. "You tell me."
There's something different about him tonight. Tension in his shoulders that speaks of bad news, hard choices. A tightness around his eyes I've learned means someone disappointed him. Someone might be dead because of it.
"You could have added more cameras to my room. More guards. Instead…" I gesture at the space between us. "This."
"This," he agrees, then moves toward a cabinet. "We need to talk."
"That sounds ominous."
"Everything with us is ominous." He pulls out a bottle from the cabinet I'd noted yesterday when I first surveyed the room. Locked, but pickable. The vodka label is in Cyrillic. Beluga Gold, if I'm reading correctly.
This afternoon when the guards first brought me here, I'd done my reconnaissance after he left.
The bed dominating the space. California king, dark sheets pulled tight with military corners.
The bonsai on his dresser that reminded me of the one in his study, but smaller.
The books on his nightstand: Russian poetry, military history, a thriller with a cracked spine.
The photo of him with Mikhail and their mother that made my chest tight with guilt.
Now, just a few hours later, I know this room better. Know which floorboard creaks near the bathroom. Know the leather chair faces the window at the perfect angle to see approaching threats. Know my knife rests under the mattress where I hid it, accessible but concealed.
"Drink?" he offers.
"Are you trying to get me drunk?"
"I'm trying to get myself drunk." He pours two generous measures. "You're welcome to join."
The crystal glasses are heavy, expensive. He sets one on the dresser near me, then takes his to the chair by the window. The vodka burns, then blooms. Smooth, complex. Nothing like the stuff I drank in college. This is what you drink when money means nothing.
"So," I say, the alcohol already warming my blood despite my tolerance. "What now? We just… coexist?"
"That depends."
"On?"
"On whether you can be honest with me for five minutes."
"I've been honest."
His laugh is dark, familiar. "You've been strategic. There's a difference." He refills his glass, gestures for me to bring mine over. "I have a proposition."
Every one of my muscles tenses. "I'm not sleeping with you."
"Not that kind of proposition." But his eyes drop to my mouth for just a second. "A game. Question for question. You answer honestly, I answer honestly. No deflection, no lies."
This is a trap. But I'm already calculating how to use it. What I can learn. What I can afford to reveal.
"And if one of us refuses to answer?"
He holds up the bottle. "You drink instead. But you only get three passes. After that…"
"After that?"
His smile is sharp. "After that, the game gets interesting."
"Rules?"
"Nothing's off limits. But whatever we say stays in this room. No using it against each other later."
I narrow my eyes. "And you'll honor that?"
"On Mikhail's memory."
The weight of that promise settles over us. He means it. Whatever happens in this room stays here.
"Fine." I take my glass and move to sit on the edge of his bed. The mattress dips under my weight, expensive and firm. "But I go first. How many people have you killed?"
He doesn't even blink. "Personally? Thirty-seven. By order? I stopped counting years ago."
Thirty-seven. Each one had a name, a family, a moment when they realized death had come for them. My mind automatically categorizes: guns, knives, hands? Quick or slow?
"Your turn," he says. "Same question."
I could lie. My fingers tighten on the glass as I calculate odds, advantages. But he'd know. He always knows.
"Twenty-one."
His eyebrows rise slightly. Not surprise. Confirmation. "The assassin rumors are true, then."
"I didn't say I was an assassin."
"Twenty-one kills isn't self-defense, kotyonok. That's a profession." He leans forward. "How old were you for the first one?"
"That's two questions."
"Fair." He drinks. "But I'm curious. Was number fifteen really a senator?"
My blood freezes. How could he know?
"You talk in your sleep sometimes," he says, answering my unspoken question. "Not often. But that one seemed to haunt you."
"He sold children." The vodka makes me reckless. "My brother Luca and I made it last three hours."
"Good." The approval in his voice shouldn't warm me. It does. He shifts in his seat, and the leather creaks beneath him as his shirt pulls across his chest.
"Your turn," I say, looking away from his chest, fixing my gaze on the window. "What did you overhear in the parking garage?"
"I didn't hear anything. I was across the street with a rifle scope, debating whether to put a bullet in your brother's head." He swirls his vodka. "I decided to let you play your game instead."
The casual admission of almost murdering Nico makes my hand move unconsciously toward where my knife should be. He notices.
"Relax. If I wanted your brother dead, he'd be dead."
"Why isn’t he?"
"That's your second question," he says. "I'll only answer if you drink."
I keep his gaze while I knock back another glass of vodka then hold out my tumbler for him to refill. "Go on, then. Answer."
He blinks once, slowly. "Because I wanted to see what you'd do. What information you'd pass. Whether you'd tell him about the Barone plot."
I snort, a less ladylike sound than I usually let myself make. I’m not used to drinking such potent stuff. "Barone Schmarone. Obviously fake."
His eyes narrow, as he takes in this new information: I didn't fall for his fake intel.
"Indeed." He refills our glasses. "My turn. Why did you really let me take you?"
The question I've been dreading. My fingers drum against the crystal, a tell I immediately stop.
He's implied before that he knew I let him 'kidnap' me, but I haven't admitted it yet. I'm tempted to lie, to play the innocent princess, but we're past that. Besides, I promised to tell the truth in this game, and for some reason that matters to me right now.
"I needed answers," I say, tracing the patterns in the crystal glass. "About what happened eleven years ago. About why I dream of your brother."
"You could have found answers other ways."
"Could I? Your family doesn't exactly take meetings." I drain my glass for courage. "Besides. I wanted to see you."
"See me."
"Know thy enemy." But even I hear the lie in it.
We trade questions like blows. Each answer peeling away another layer. The vodka makes everything softer, edges blurring dangerously. We've each used our three passes. The bottle is half empty.
"Okay," I say, pouring us both another glass. "Enough heavy questions. Tell me something ridiculous about yourself."
"That's not how the game works."
"I'm changing the rules. Something embarrassing. Something no one knows."
He narrows his eyes. "Why?"
"Because you're Alexei Volkov, bratva prince, terrifying crime lord. And I want to know something human about you."
His lips twitch, almost a smile, but not quite.
He's trying to play it off, to make me think this is just a game, but I see it in the way his thumb taps the rim of his glass.
The way he doesn't look at me for a full five seconds.
He drinks, winces, and for one strange, flickering moment, he's just a man trying to figure out how much of himself to show.
His jaw clenches like he's fighting himself.
"I'm afraid of butterflies," he says, so quietly I almost miss it. Then louder, with the steel edge he uses for business: "They disgust me."
I suck in a breath, trying to determine if he's joking, but his face is stone. He doesn't blink, doesn't smile. Just waits for my reaction, like a condemned man waiting for the verdict.
"I'm sorry. What?"
"Butterflies. Moths too. Those papery wings, the way they move unpredictably." He actually shudders. "When I was seven, one landed on my face while I was sleeping, those tiny legs creeping over my cheeks and that wormy body. It was disgusting. I've never recovered."
This man. Who broke Tork's fingers one by one. Who held a knife to my throat without trembling. Who has thirty-seven personal kills.
"Butterflies."
"Don't."
"I'm not…" But I'm already laughing. It bubbles up uncontrollable, the pure absurdity of it. "You… the basement… all those knives… and you're afraid of…" I'm gasping now, tears streaming. "Butterflies!"
"I will throw you out of this room."
"You moved me here! You're stuck with me!" I'm holding my stomach, doubled over on his bed. "Oh my God. The big bad wolf is afraid of butterflies."
"I should have let you keep bleeding on those shoes."
That sobers me slightly, but I'm still giggling. When I finally stop, wiping tears from my eyes, he's watching me with an expression I can't read. Not anger. Something raw. Hungry.
"Your turn," he says, voice rougher. "Something equally humiliating. Fair's fair."
I catch my breath, think strategically even through vodka haze. Something real but not exploitable.
"I can't whistle."
"Everyone can whistle."