Chapter 21 - Alexei
She hasn’t been gone three hours yet, but it feels like three years.
I sit in my study, trying to review compound security feeds, deciding which of my men I can still trust. The vodka bottle sweats beside me, condensation pooling on mahogany. A glass poured, untouched. My throat is too tight to swallow anything but doubt.
Three hours since she walked out to meet them. Three hours of not knowing if she'll choose them over me.
My phone buzzes. Katya calling from Moscow again.
Her messages pile up, each more urgent than the last about our mother's deteriorating condition.
I should answer. Should tell her I'm handling things here first. But I can't form the words, can't explain that I'm waiting for a Rosetti woman like my life depends on it.
She could stay. They're her blood, her real family. Resources, protection, the life she was born into. What do I have? A compound full of men who want her dead, a brother's ghost that won't let me sleep, and this obsession that's rewritten my DNA.
I check the guard rotation on my screen. Something's off about tonight's pattern. Pavel's on the wrong corridor, Boris took his break ten minutes early. Small things. I file them away, too distracted to analyze properly.
The cursor blinks on a weapons shipment report from Prague. The words blur together. Nothing exists except wondering if that car will ever return.
Pathetic. The great Alexei Volkov, pakhan of the Chicago bratva, reduced to waiting like a lovesick teenager. Waiting for a woman who has every reason to disappear.
Kaz's words echo: She collects Volkov men like trophies.
My jaw clenches hard enough to crack teeth. Mudak. No. What happened between us was real. The way she deleted that intel, chose me over her family's safety. The way she came apart in my arms, whispering my name like a prayer.
Real. It has to be real.
Headlights sweep across the window.
My heart stops, restarts at double speed. I'm at the window before I consciously move, watching the black SUV pull through the gates. She's here. She came back. She chose me.
I stand too fast, vodka glasses rattling. I pace to the window, back to the desk, already planning. If she's coming back after they tried to keep her, there might be retaliation. I pull up additional security protocols, text my most trusted men to be ready.
Twenty minutes feels like twenty years before she reaches my quarters.
Home. When did this place become home for her? When did I start needing it to be?
The door opens and everything else ceases to matter.
Sofia stands in the doorway, and one look tells me everything. She's wrecked. Emotionally gutted, like someone carved out pieces of her at that dinner table. Makeup still perfect, hair fresh and brushed, silk dress unwrinkled, but somehow she looks like she's been through war.
"You came back," I say, voice rougher than intended.
"I said I would."
We stare at each other across the room. I want to ask what happened, who said what, why she looks like someone died. But she's here, she chose this, chose me, and that's all that matters.
"You could have stayed," I manage.
"I know."
She crosses the room in three strides and crashes into me. Her mouth finds mine, desperate and hungry, tasting of salt and need. My hands tangle in her hair, pulling her closer, needing every inch pressed against me.
This isn't tender. It's claiming. Her nails rake down my back through my shirt, sharp enough to draw blood. I bite her lower lip, swallow her gasp, walk her backward until her spine hits the door.
"They wanted you to stay," I growl against her throat, needing confirmation.
"Yes."
"But you didn't. You came back for me."
"I came back for answers," she corrects, and the distinction destroys me.
I hike her dress up, find nothing but bare skin underneath. Already wet, ready, and the discovery makes me growl.
Her hands fumble with my belt, shoving everything down just enough.
When I thrust into her, it's rough, fast, no preparation because we both need this. Need to feel something real, something that anchors us when everything else falls apart. She wraps her legs around my waist, heels digging into my back.
"Harder," she demands, teeth finding my throat.
I fuck her against the door. Each thrust rattles the wood, echoes through the hallway. Good. Let everyone hear. Let them know she came back to me.
"Mine," I snarl into her ear. "You're fucking mine now."
She doesn't tell me she agrees, but she gasps, pussy clenching around my cock.
Her orgasm triggers mine, her crying out my name while I empty myself deep inside her. We slide to the floor, both breathing hard, clothes askew, bodies still joined.
Later, in bed, she traces the scratches she left on my back while I play with her hair. The silence feels fragile, like glass about to shatter.
"Sleep, kotyonok. You're safe here."
The lie tastes bitter even as I speak it.
The sound is wrong.
Three AM, Sofia warm against my chest, both of us half-asleep. But something in the corridor doesn't belong. A footstep where there shouldn't be one. The absence of Boris's regular patrol that I'd noticed earlier suddenly making horrible sense.
My instincts fire before I'm fully conscious. I shove Sofia hard, rolling her off the bed onto the floor just as the door explodes inward.
Gunfire splits the darkness. Two shots, close together, tearing through the space where Sofia was sleeping seconds ago. Feathers from destroyed pillows float like snow, the acrid smell of gunpowder filling the air.
I'm already moving. The assassin expects me to be disoriented, tangled in sheets. Instead, I hit him low and fast, driving my shoulder into his gut. We crash into the dresser, wood splintering, the sharp crack mixing with his grunt of surprise.
His gun skitters across the floor. I get my hands around his throat, see his face in the moonlight. Pavel's younger brother. One of my own fucking men.
The betrayal burns hotter than rage. I snap his neck, the wet crack echoing in sudden silence. His body drops, dead weight hitting hardwood, blood beginning to pool.
"Sofia?"
She's crouched by the bed, knife in hand. Of course she has a blade. I keep taking her knives away, but she's been finding ways to arm herself since day one, probably lifted this one from the kitchen when I was making food, or brought it back from the Rosetti manor. That's my girl, always prepared.
"Are you hit?" I demand, hands running over her, checking for blood, feeling her rapid heartbeat.
"No. You?"
"I'm fine."
Her eyes fix on the corpse. "You killed him."
"He was trying to kill you."
My mind races, tactical assessment automatic. Inside job. Someone sent him, someone who knew our routines, when we'd be vulnerable. The guard rotation irregularities I'd dismissed earlier.
"Next time let me handle it," she says, knife still ready.
"There won't be a next time. I'm killing anyone who looks at you wrong."
"That's not practical."
"Watch me make it practical."
Guards flood the corridor, late and useless. Their eyes take in the body, the gun, Sofia with her knife, me with blood on my hands.
"Clear the room," I order. "Deal with the body. Quietly."
When we're alone, I stare at the blood pooling on my floor. Someone sent him, someone inside this compound who wants Sofia dead badly enough to sacrifice a soldier.
Kaz's words echo: Don't expect me to stop them.
The decision crystallizes instantly. We can't stay. My own house has become a death trap.
"Pack your things," I tell Sofia.
She doesn't question it, just starts gathering clothes with quick efficiency while I pull cash from the safe, weapons from hidden compartments. Each movement is tactical, practiced. We're not just leaving. We're abandoning everything I've built, the bratva leadership, my position. All of it.
For her.
My phone buzzes again. Katya, another message about Mother. The guilt twists like a knife. My mother is dying, asking for me, and I'm fleeing Chicago with the woman whose family killed Mikhail. But if I go to Moscow now, Sofia dies. The choice is no choice at all.
"Where are we going?"
"The lakehouse. It was Mikhail's favorite place. No one goes there anymore."
She flinches at my brother's name, guilt flickering across her face. But she keeps packing, understanding what it means that I'm taking her to his sanctuary.
"Why not?"
"Too many ghosts."
I watch her fold my shirt into a bag, the domestic gesture surreal against the violence still hanging in the air. Someone in my organization just sent an execution order. The betrayal cuts deep, but not as deep as the fear that next time I won't be fast enough.
"I'll find who ordered this," I promise, voice dropping to that register that makes grown men pray. Starting with that fucker, Pavel. "I'll make them watch as I peel their conspiracy apart layer by bloody layer."
"We leave now," I tell her. "Through the service entrance. Same one you used for your midnight escapes. Can't trust the main routes now."
She nods, then holds up the knife she's still clutching. "Good thing I kept this."
"Where the fuck did you even get that one?"
"This one's from home." The ghost of a smile, even now. "The one hidden in the bottom of the closet is from your kitchen. You were distracted, talking about Mikhail's cooking."
Christ, this woman.
The service entrance smells like cigarette smoke from the guards. Sofia knows this route better than I do. She's used it enough times. Every shadow could hide another assassin, every echo another betrayal.
We emerge near the garage, slip into my car without anyone seeing. As I drive, Sofia's hand finds my thigh, warm and steady, anchoring me when everything feels like it's dissolving.
Chicago falls away behind us, city lights fading to black highway.
My phone lights up again with Katya's number, but I send it to voicemail.
My sister's messages are increasingly desperate.
Mother is fading fast, might not make it through the week.
The guilt eats at me, but Sofia's life matters more than my mother's last words.
Mikhail would understand that, at least.
"You're sure about this?" Sofia asks, though we both know it's too late to turn back.
"I'm sure I can't protect you there," I say, nodding toward the compound disappearing in the rearview. "And I'm sure you're not dying on my watch."
She squeezes my thigh, and something passes between us. Understanding. Recognition that we're both orphans now, cut off from our families by choice and circumstance.
The road stretches ahead, dark and uncertain. In the mirror, I swear I see him. Mikhail, watching from the back seat, that gentle smile that always made me feel like I was failing him. Taking his killer's sister to his sanctuary, about to live with her in his space.
My brother's ghost follows us through the darkness, and I wonder if he's horrified or if somehow, impossibly, he understands.
"How long?" Sofia asks.
"Two hours."
Two hours until I walk into my brother's abandoned dreams with the woman I've chosen over his memory. Two hours to figure out if ghosts can forgive. Two hours before I have to explain to Katya why I'm not on a plane to Moscow, why I'm choosing a Rosetti over our dying mother's last wishes.
I drive through the darkness with her hand on my thigh and my brother's ghost in the rearview mirror, leaving everything behind for the woman who cost me everything and became everything anyway.