Chapter 19 - Alexei
Sofia is hiding something. I can see it in the way she won’t meet my eyes.
She stands at the mirror in my quarters, adjusting the collar of her blouse for the third time. The Rosetti princess mask sliding into place with each small gesture. Her fingers tremble slightly as she smooths her hair, and I know it's not about seeing her family.
"What did Kaz say to you?"
Her hands still for just a moment before continuing their unnecessary adjustments. "I told you. I can handle it."
"Sofia."
"It doesn't matter." She turns from the mirror, that perfect composure firmly in place. Like armor she's welded to her skin over years of survival. "I should go. The car is waiting."
I cross to her, catching her chin between my fingers. Making her look at me. "He threatened you."
"He shared his perspective." Her voice stays steady, but her pulse hammers beneath my thumb like a trapped bird. Another deflection, another shield. "And I threatened him right back."
She's protecting me from whatever poison Kaz dripped in her ear. Or protecting herself from having to repeat it. Either way, my cousin crossed a line by approaching her alone in my own compound.
"The driver will wait for you," I tell her, releasing her face. "However long you need. But I want you back by midnight."
Something flickers in her expression. Surprise, maybe gratitude. "Thank you. For letting me go."
"You'll come back before midnight." Not a question. A certainty that sits in my bones like shrapnel.
But what if she doesn't? What if she never returns? I finally have her under lock and key, properly secured for the first time, and I'm letting her go. Does that make me a fool?
"I'll be back by midnight," she agrees, then rises on her toes to kiss me once. Soft, brief, but I taste something like goodbye in it that makes my chest constrict.
I watch her walk to the door, every line of her body in perfect control despite whatever weight Kaz added to her shoulders. When she's gone, when I hear the car pull away from the compound, I make my decision.
Time to remind my cousin about boundaries written in blood.
The east wing feels like a mausoleum. These were Mikhail's rooms once, before.
I don't finish the thought. Can't afford to, not when I need the cold clarity that comes before violence.
I find Kaz in what used to be Mikhail's sitting room, vodka bottle open on the side table, tablet in his hands like he hasn't just cornered my woman in a hallway. The casual arrogance of it makes my jaw clench.
"Cousin." He doesn't look up. "Drink?"
"What did you say to her?"
Now he raises his eyes, that cold smile I remember from childhood spreading across his face. The one that meant someone was about to bleed.
"The Rosetti girl? We had a conversation. Nothing sinister."
"She won't tell me what you said."
"Then perhaps it's not your business."
I cross the room slowly, deliberately, and sit across from him. Between us sits Mikhail's chess table, the one where the three of us spent countless hours, back when we thought we'd rule the world together. My fingers itch for the knife at my belt.
"Everything about her is my business."
Kaz sets down his tablet, pours two vodkas. Slides one across the chess table. The liquid doesn't even ripple, his hand that steady. "Do you remember when we were twelve? That summer at the lake house?"
I don't touch the glass. The vodka would burn going down, and I need the edge of sobriety. "What about it?"
"Mikhail taught us both to swim that summer." His expression softens, genuine for once. "You were terrified of the deep water. Wouldn't go past your waist."
The memory surfaces unwanted. Mikhail's patient voice, his hands steady on my back as I learned to trust the water. The terror of drowning, lungs burning, before his arms caught me.
"Misha spent three days coaxing you," Kaz continues. "Patient as a saint. And when you finally swam to the dock, he acted like you'd won an Olympic medal."
You did it, Alyosha! I knew you could.
My chest tightens at the memory of his pride, pure and uncomplicated.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because that's who he was. Patient. Kind. The best of us." Kaz's voice hardens to steel. "And she got him killed."
"We don't know what happened that night."
"We know enough." He leans forward, vodka forgotten. "The only reason Mikhail was at that fucking Rosetti-Moretti meeting was because of that girl. Her. Your Rosetti bitch. Eleven years, Alexei. Eleven years we've been planning revenge."
His voice drops, each word precise as a blade between ribs. "And now you're fucking her in Misha's house."
"This isn't Misha's house."
"It was supposed to be. He was supposed to inherit. He was supposed to be pakhan." His fist hits the table, making the chess pieces jump. "Instead he's in the ground and you're in his place, letting his killer's sister warm your bed. You're spitting on his grave every time you touch her."
"I'm not—"
"You ARE." Kaz stands abruptly, pacing like something caged. "Kill her. Send her back in pieces. But this? Keeping her like a pet, parading her at galas, letting her walk free in our home?"
"She doesn't walk free."
"She was in the corridor ALONE. I could have killed her in thirty seconds."
"But you didn't."
Kaz goes still, and that stillness is more dangerous than his rage. "No. I didn't."
"Why not?"
"Because I wanted to see what you'd do. Whether you'd defend her. Whether you'd choose her over blood." His smile turns bitter. "And here you are. In my quarters. Defending her. I have my answer."
"Kaz."
"Do you remember what your father used to say? About wolves?"
My jaw tightens until I taste copper. I don't want those words from his mouth.
"A wolf who won't protect the pack isn't a wolf anymore. He's just meat." He picks up his vodka, drains it in one burning swallow. "The men are watching, Alexei. They see you choosing a Rosetti whore over Volkov blood. How long before they decide you're meat?"
"Is that a threat?"
"It's an observation." He sets down the empty glass. "She's got you drinking from her hand like Mikhail's lost puppy. Except the water bowl is full of poison."
I stand, and we're face to face now. Mirror images of Volkov blood, of shared history, of grief that's calcified into something sharp enough to cut.
"I'm only going to say this once." My voice drops to that register that makes grown men piss themselves. "Sofia is under my protection. Mine. If you touch her, if you threaten her, if you so much as look at her wrong, I will forget we're family."
"You'd kill me? For her?"
My hand finds the knife at my belt, the one that's tasted blood for lesser offenses. Kaz's eyes track the movement, and I see him calculate distances, angles, probabilities.
The answer comes without thought, pure truth. "I'd kill anyone for her."
The words hang between us, irreversible. I see the moment Kaz truly understands what's happened, what I've become.
He laughs, soft and sad. "The Rosetti girl collects Volkov men like trophies. First Misha, now you."
"Don't touch her," I growl. "Or you'll find out just how much I mean that."
"I won't touch her. You have my word." He holds up a hand in mock surrender. "But I won't protect her either. And when the men decide she's a liability, when someone else makes a move, don't expect me to stop them."
I leave Kaz's quarters without another word, my pulse thundering in my ears. The hallway stretches before me, and everywhere I look, I see the ghosts of what we used to be. Three boys with wooden swords, swearing blood oaths we didn't understand.
The men I pass nod respectfully, but I catch it now. The glances that linger, the whispers that stop when I'm near. They're watching, judging, wondering if their pakhan has gone soft over enemy pussy.
Kaz isn't wrong about that part. The doubt spreads through my ranks like blood in water.
I stop at Mikhail's portrait in the main hallway. Painted when he was seventeen, already being groomed for leadership. Those warm eyes that could see the best in everyone, even our father.
"Promise me you'll take care of them, Alyosha. If anything happens to me."
The memory cuts deep. The night before the massacre, when Mikhail had been strange and distant. I'd thought he was nervous about his upcoming exams.
Now I wonder what else he knew. What he was hiding.
My phone buzzes. A text from the driver: Arrived safely. She's inside now.
Sofia. Surrounded by her brothers, her family, the people I'm supposed to destroy. Sitting at their table while carrying my secrets, my touch still marking her skin. I can still feel her nails raking down my back.
Her scent ambushes me the second I enter my quarters.
It saturates everything. That subtle perfume mixed with sex, with her arousal from when I made her come twice before breakfast. She's been gone less than an hour and already her absence feels like missing organs.
I strip off my jacket, pour vodka but don't drink it. The glass sweats in my hand while I stare at the bed where we slept tangled together. The pillow still holds the indent of her head. I press my face to it like a desperate man, breathing in the scent of her hair.
The compound feels like a tomb without her. Too quiet despite being full of armed men. Just walls and weapons and old ghosts that won't stop whispering about betrayal.
The truth tears through me: what I feel for her has a name I've been refusing to speak, even in my own mind.
Love.
The admission feels like betrayal to Mikhail, to my mother dying without revenge, to every promise I've made. But denying it would be worse. It would be cowardice.
Not just want her. Not just need her. Love her with the kind of desperation that makes men burn down empires.
When did it happen? When she smiled at me over breakfast? When she stood up to Kaz? When she deleted intel that could save her family because she couldn't betray me?
Or was it always there, growing like Mikhail's carefully tended trees, one small cut at a time until the shape was undeniable?
I lie on the bed fully dressed, my cock already half-hard from her scent alone. Pathetic. In a few hours, she'll walk back through that door. Or she won't. Maybe her brothers will convince her to stay. Maybe she'll remember who she's supposed to hate.
The thought makes something violent rise in my chest, dark and absolute.
If she doesn't come back.
I'll burn the world down.
I'd torch everything. The compound, the bratva, every careful plan I've spent eleven years building. None of it matters without her.
My phone sits silent on the nightstand. No word from the driver. No update. Just me alone in sheets that smell like the woman who's remade me into someone I don't recognize.
Someone who would betray his brother's memory. Someone who would kill his own blood. Someone who lies here like a lovesick fool, counting minutes until she comes back.
Come back to me, kotyonok.
Because if she doesn't, if she chooses them over me, I'll become exactly what Kaz predicted. A wolf who abandoned his pack. Meat for the taking.
But worse than that, I'll be a man without his heart.
And that's not survivable.