Chapter 15 - Sofia
When I finally remember who I am, an infiltrating spy from an enemy family, not some lovesick teenage girl. I kick myself out of bed and take advantage of Alexei’s absence.
He didn't even bother locking the door to his study. He obviously knows I can get in there, so why bother stopping me? His study still smells of him, and, taking a deep breath, I smile for a moment before forcing it away.
Then I get to work.
The Kuzmins meeting schedule sits on top of scattered pages, his usual precision destroyed by whatever demons he wrestled with while I was passed out in his bed.
Finally. Real intel my family needs. Shipping manifests with Cyrillic annotations. Security details in his neat handwriting. I photograph it all quickly with the burner phone Nico gave me.
The phone weighs heavier with each captured secret.
Three locations for next week's meetings.
Guard rotations. Weapons shipments that could shift the balance of power in Chicago.
My thumb hovers over the send button. One tap and this information saves my family.
One tap and I'm still the weapon they forged me to be.
But I keep seeing Alexei's face. Destroyed, red-rimmed eyes that couldn't meet mine. The man who's held knives to my throat couldn't even look at me after learning I loved his brother.
Before I can overthink it any more, I dial the number. Nico.
"Sof? What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I just needed to check in."
"That's twice in two days." His voice sharpens the way it does before violence. "After our meeting, now this. What's happened?"
The words pile up in my throat. My chest constricts like someone's fist is squeezing my heart.
I found out I was in love with Mikhail. Or he was in love with me.
Maybe both. He was trying to warn me about something.
I collapsed speaking Russian last night.
I'm falling for my captor and I can't remember why I'm supposed to hate him.
"I have more intel," I say instead, my palm sweating against the phone, making it slippery. "Beyond what I gave you before. The meeting with the Kuzmins and Volkov captains. New locations, times, updated security details."
"Send it."
My thumb moves toward the photos on the screen. Such a simple motion. So why does it feel like a monumental betrayal?
"Sof. Send it."
"I'm still verifying. I don't want to make a mistake."
"You said the same thing about the Barone intel." His voice has gone hard now, the tone he uses with enemies. Never with me. "What's going on? Is he doing something to you?"
Yes. He's unraveling me. He's making me question everything I thought I knew about that night, about myself, about what loyalty means. My pulse races, hammering against my ribs.
"No. I just need more time," I say.
"Time for what?"
The question hangs between us, and I realize I don't have an answer that makes sense. Time to understand why my body craves my enemy's touch? Time to remember what I promised a dead boy? Time to figure out how I can want Alexei even knowing what his family did to mine?
"Sofia." Nico's voice drops into that register that used to comfort me after nightmares. "Talk to me. Whatever it is, tell me."
"There's something else about the Russians. About their connection to me."
The words escape before I can stop them. The silence that follows feels infinite.
"What connection?"
"Mikhail Volkov. Before the massacre. I knew him, Nico. Really knew him. He wrote about me in his diary. Pages and pages about someone he called 'S.' It was me."
"Jesus. Are you saying…"
"I blocked it out. The memories. But I've been having fragments for years. The nightmares, the Russian I somehow speak. It was him teaching me. It was always him."
"Christ, Sof."
"He was going to warn me about something. The night before the massacre. And I can't remember what."
Nico exhales, and I can picture him running his hand through his hair the way he does when situations get complicated. "Sof… even if that's true, it doesn't change what happened. His family killed Dad. Killed the Morettis too. They destroyed everything."
"I know."
"Do you? Because it sounds like you're getting confused about who the enemy is."
The accusation lands hard. Am I confused? When Alexei touches me, when he looks at me with those pale eyes full of hunger and grief, when he leaves me coffee exactly how I like it, is that confusion or clarity?
"I'm not confused. I just need to understand. What I forgot. What I promised him."
"And then?"
"And then I come home. With everything I know."
The lie burns my throat, bitter as the truths I'm swallowing to keep my family safe from what I'm becoming.
After I hang up, I stare at the photos on my phone. Everything my brothers would need to cripple the Volkov operations.
I delete every photo. The Kuzmins. The shipments. Everything my family needs, gone with three taps. The Rosetti princess would never do this. But the woman who loved Mikhail, who might be falling for Alexei, she needs answers more than revenge. God, I hate myself for this weakness.
Back in his bedroom, morning light filters through bulletproof glass. My body still aches from yesterday's collapse, muscles tender from whatever seizure gripped me when the memories tried to surface.
The bedroom door opens.
Alexei looks destroyed. That's the only word for it. His shirt is wrinkled, collar undone. Stubble shadows his jaw. His eyes are red-rimmed, whether from lack of sleep or something else, I don't want to know.
He stops when he sees me, something flickering across his face too fast to read.
“I brought you coffee.” He places a steaming mug on the dresser instead of handing it to me. The gesture feels both tender and distant, like an apology for absence rather than presence.
“Thank you,” I say, crossing to pick up the mug while he retreats back toward the corridor.
"How do you feel?" His voice is hoarse, like he's been talking to ghosts all night.
"I'm fine."
"You collapsed. You…"
"I said I'm fine."
The silence stretches between us, thick with everything we can't say.
"I have meetings today." His voice has gone flat, professional, like we're discussing weather instead of the earthquake that just rearranged our entire dynamic. "You'll stay here."
"Alexei…"
"We'll talk tonight."
He moves toward the door, not meeting my eyes. This man who's held knives to my throat, who's made me bleed, who's had his fingers inside me, he can't even look at me now.
The door closes with a soft click. The lock engages.
I hurl the coffee cup against the wall. Ceramic shards scatter across hardwood, one piece sliding to rest against my bare foot, sharp as my guilt. Brown liquid runs down white paint like all the words I should have said.
Hours pass in slow agony. I shower using his soap, letting the scent of him cover my skin like absolution for sins I keep committing. The rough cotton dresses hang in the wardrobe like accusations, but I can't bear them today. Not after everything.
Instead, I find another one of his shirts.
White, expensive, the cotton soft from countless washes, nothing like the punishment of rough fabric he's been forcing on me.
It hits mid-thigh when I put it on, the sleeves falling past my hands.
I roll them up, fastening the buttons with fingers that won't quite steady.
The bonsai on his dresser needs water. I can see it in the slight droop of the leaves. Such a patient art, shaping something beautiful through years of careful cuts. I find a glass in his bathroom, fill it with lukewarm water, and tend to the tree with the same focus I bring to cleaning weapons.
The ritual calms something in me. Each drop of water absorbed by soil, the tree drinking what it needs to survive another day of being slowly shaped into someone else's vision of beauty.
Like me. Like what he's doing to me, cut by cut, moment by moment.
The lock clicks. Evening light slants through the windows now. I've lost an entire day to guilt and waiting.
Alexei enters and stops dead when he sees me.
I'm sitting on his bed, bare legs crossed, his shirt riding up just enough to be dangerous. The evening light turns my hair gold, throws shadows that emphasize every curve the shirt pretends to hide.
His eyes travel down. Linger. Travel up. His throat moves in a swallow that tells me everything about his self-control right now.
"That's my shirt."
"I got tired of feeling like a prisoner."
"You are a prisoner."
"Not in this shirt."
The air between us changes, thickens like it does before summer storms. He's still standing by the door, tension in every line of his body.
"We need to talk," he says, but his voice has gone rough.
"I know."
"About Mikhail. About what you remembered."
"I know."
"Sofia…"
"I've been thinking about it all day." I stand, take a step toward him. "About your brother. About what I forgot. About this, whatever this is between us."
"And?"
Another step. I can smell him now. Cologne mixed with the city, with meeting rooms and difficult decisions.
"And I don't have answers. I can't remember what I promised him. Can’t remember if I kept the promise. I don't know why I blocked it out." I'm close enough to touch now, but I don't. Not yet. "But I know one thing."
"What?"
I meet his eyes, let him see the decision I've made. Every time he's touched me, it's been on his terms. His control. His decisions. But I've already betrayed my family for him today. If I'm damning myself, I'm going to take something for it.
“I’m tired of being the one on my knees,” I say, voice raw and shaking with the hunger I’ve been denying. “Come here.”
He hesitates, a million calculations flickering behind his eyes.
Muscle ticks in his jaw, the vein in his temple pulses, but still, he doesn’t move.
I see the struggle, the war between his need for control and some deeper, bone-deep compulsion to obey me.
It’s almost pitiful, the way he wants it and hates himself for wanting it.
“Sofia,” he says, like my name is a code he’s spent his whole life trying to break.
“That wasn’t a request.” I step toward him, slow and predatory, and he flinches like he expects a slap instead of a kiss.
It almost makes me laugh. Almost. Instead, I put my palm to his chest and push.
Not hard, just enough to let him feel my strength, to let him feel me taking up space in this room, in his life, the way he’s consumed mine.
He gives, lets me march him backward until the backs of his knees collide with the edge of the chair.
“Sit.”
He sits. Stiff, rigid, but compliant, which is almost more intoxicating than if he’d fought me.
His hands grip the arms of the chair. I can see the tension in his fingers, all that violence coiled beneath the skin.
I straddle him in one motion, thighs bracketing his hips, the hem of the shirt riding up high enough to feel the heat radiating from his body.
He stares up at me, those pale eyes glassy with need and terror. For once, he looks small. Human. I want to devour him.
His hands go straight to my hips, greedy, desperate. I catch his wrists and pin them to the armrests. He could break free, snap my bones like twigs, but he doesn’t. That knowledge makes every cell in my body spark with power.
“No,” I say, savoring the word. “You don’t get to touch.”
He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. The mask is gone; all that’s left is the man underneath, and I wonder for a split second what would happen if I drove him past the limits of his control.
He tests my grip, flexes his wrists once, twice, then goes still. There’s a kind of worship in the way he surrenders.
“Sofia…”
The sound of my name in his mouth, desperate and pleading, is better than any apology. Better than any vengeance. I lean in, put my lips to his ear, let my hair fall in a golden curtain that blocks out the world.
“You’ve had me on my knees. You’ve made me bleed. You’ve taken whatever you wanted from me.” I bite his earlobe, just enough to make him shiver. “Tonight, I’m taking something from you.”
His breathing stutters, and I can feel him harden beneath me, the evidence of his need pressing against the thin cotton between us. I rock my hips, slow at first, savoring the way his restraint crumbles molecule by molecule.
“Please,” he says, and it sounds like a confession. “Let me touch you.”
I almost do. I almost let him have it, because I want it too. But not yet.
“No.”
I shift, grinding down until I feel the length of him, hard and insistent. He lets out a guttural sound, fists clenching white-knuckled on the wooden arms. It’s almost funny, how close he is to breaking, how much he wants to let go.
“You’ve been watching me all this time,” I say, angling my hips to drive him insane. “All those photos on the wall. All those nights you thought I didn’t notice you standing outside my door. Did you touch yourself thinking about me?”
“Yes.” The word is ripped from him, raw and unashamed.
“Did you imagine this?”
“I imagined everything.” He’s panting now, eyes dilated, voice thick with reverence and self-loathing. “I’ve imagined you killing me. I’ve imagined you fucking me. I’ve imagined you saving me.”
I’m not sure which of us he hates more in this moment.
I hold his gaze, let him see exactly who’s in control. “You’re not the only one who can take things, Alexei. You’re not the only one who knows how to hurt.”
I reach between us, find his belt, and work it open with deliberate slowness.
He arches his hips, desperate for friction, but I keep him pinned.
When I free him, he’s so hard it’s almost obscene.
I wrap my hand around him, the heat of his skin shocking against my palm.
He gasps, head falling back, throat exposed.
“Do you know how many times I’ve thought about this?” I stroke him, slow and ruthless, squeezing just enough to make him gasp again. “When you locked me in the basement. When you made me eat out of your hand. During that fucking shoe fitting.”
“You thought about my cock while I made you bleed?”
I laugh, low and mean. “I thought about making you beg.”
His eyes go dark, pupils blown wide. He shifts under me, testing the limits of my grip on his wrist, but still doesn’t break free, doesn’t even move his free hand from the armrest. He’s giving me this, offering himself up like a sacrifice. It’s almost pure.
“Then make me,” he says, voice breaking on the edge of a moan.