26. Erik
ERIK
T he dining room feels smaller than usual, with all four of us crammed around the mahogany table. Dmitri picks at his food, still pale from blood loss, while Alexi recounts some story about a tech startup he's been tracking. Nikolai cuts his steak with surgical precision.
Normal. Everything's supposed to be normal now.
Except my chest feels like someone's driving screws into my ribs, and I can't taste the expensive wine Nikolai opened.
Sofia appears in the doorway, phone in hand. Her face carries that particular expression she gets when she's about to deliver news that'll fuck up someone's evening.
“Erik.” She hesitates, eyes flicking to Nikolai. “There's something you need to know.”
My fork is still halfway to my mouth. “What?”
“Igor Lebedev just announced his daughter's engagement.” The words hit like bullets. “To Anton Petrov. The wedding is planned for next month.”
The fork clatters against my plate.
“Erik—” Nikolai's voice cuts through the roaring in my ears.
“No.” I push back from the table so hard that my chair topples. “No, that's not happening.”
Dmitri's already moving, blocking my path to the door despite his injury. “Think about this.”
“I am thinking.” My hands shake with the need to hit something, break something. “I'm thinking about how she looked when she left. I'm thinking about her locked in some room, being told she has no choice.”
“She's not our concern anymore.” Nikolai's tone is carefully neutral, but I catch the warning underneath.
“Like hell she isn't.” I try to push past Dmitri, but Alexi flanks me from the other side. “I'm getting her out of there.”
“Erik, stop.” Alexi grabs my arm. “You can't just?—”
“Watch me.” I wrench free, but they close ranks again. “She doesn't want this. You think she wants to marry that piece of shit, Petrov?”
“What she wants doesn't change what is.” Nikolai stands slowly. “Igor made his choice. She's his daughter.”
The rational part of my brain knows he's right. Knows charging into Lebedev territory is suicide. Knows Katarina isn't mine to save.
But the rest of me—the part that remembers her laugh, the way she felt in my arms, how she looked at me like I was something more than a killer—that part doesn't give a fuck about logic.
“She's not some stranger. She's?—”
“She's what?” Nikolai's eyes narrow. “What is she to you, exactly?”
Heat explodes through my chest. “Mind your own fucking business.”
“Erik—”
“No.” I spin to face him fully, years of buried resentment bubbling up. “You want to talk about what someone is to me? What was Sofia to you when you were stalking her for weeks, watching her every move like some obsessed freak?”
Sofia's face flushes red, but I'm too far gone to care.
“That's different—” Nikolai starts.
“Different how? Because you decided it was?” I laugh, but there's no humor in it. “At least I'm not pretending I'm not fucked up about this.”
Dmitri steps forward. “You need to calm down?—”
“And you.” I wheel on him. “You're really going to lecture me? Your obsession with Tash is what caused this whole mess. She got kidnapped because you couldn't keep it in your pants, and now she won't even look at you.”
His jaw tightens, but I keep going.
“How's it feel knowing she'd rather disappear than be with you? At least Katarina didn't run screaming.”
“That's enough.” Alexi's voice cuts through the tension, but I'm not done.
“Don't get me started on you.” I turn on my youngest brother. “Always making jokes, taking the piss out of everyone else instead of focusing on sorting your own life out. When's the last time you had a real conversation with someone who wasn't filtered through a screen?”
“I said enough.” This time, Alexi's tone carries sharp edges I rarely hear from him.
“Why? Because I'm actually saying what we're all thinking?” My voice echoes off the dining room walls. “We're all fucked up. We're all obsessed with things we can't have or people who don't want us. So don't stand there acting like I'm the only one who's lost his mind.”
Nikolai's shoulders are rigid, Sofia's still blushing, Dmitri looks like I just punched him, and Alexi's fingers drum against his thigh—his tell when he's pissed.
“Feel better?” Alexi asks quietly.
“No.” The fight drains out of me as quickly as it came. “I don't.”
The silence stretches like a taut wire until Sofia clears her throat.
“Well, this is cozy.” She sets her phone down with deliberate care. “Should I order popcorn for the next round, or are we done airing family grievances?”
Alexi snorts despite himself. “I vote popcorn. Haven't seen Erik throw a tantrum like that since he was twelve, and Nikolai wouldn't let him blow up the neighbor's shed.”
“I had a perfectly valid reason for that explosion,” I mutter.
“Yeah, you were bored.” Dmitri eases back into his chair. “Just like now.”
“This isn't boredom.” But the words lack the venom they had moments ago.
Nikolai pours himself more wine, movements deliberate. “No one's saying it is.”
Sofia moves to stand behind Nikolai's chair, her hand settling on his shoulder. “When I first met your brother, I thought he was completely insane. Stalking me, manipulating my life, making decisions about my future without asking.” She looks directly at me. “Sound familiar?”
“That's not?—”
“It is.” Her voice is gentle but firm. “The difference is, I chose to stay. Eventually.”
Alexi leans back in his chair.
“So, what's the plan?” Alexi asks as if it's already decided that I'm going after her.
I drag my hands through my hair. “There is no plan. That's the problem.”
“Since when has that stopped you?” Dmitri shifts in his chair, wincing slightly. “You've done stupider things with less reason.”
“This is different.” The admission tastes bitter. “Igor's expecting retaliation. He'll have her locked down tight.”
“Good thing you know something about breaking into locked places.” Alexi's fingers tap against the table. “I could pull building schematics, security layouts?—”
“No.” Nikolai's voice cuts through the room like ice. “We're not starting a war over this.”
My jaw clenches. “She doesn't deserve what's happening to her.”
“Probably not. But that doesn't make her our responsibility.”
Sofia's hand tightens on Nikolai's shoulder, and something passes between them—one of those silent conversations married couples have.
“What if it was Sofia?” I ask. “What if someone was forcing her into marriage?”
Nikolai's fork pauses halfway to his mouth. “That's different.”
“How?”
“Because Sofia is my wife.”
“And I want Katarina to be mine.” The words slip out before I can stop them.
Alexi whistles low. “Well, shit.”
Dmitri leans forward despite his injury. “Does she know that?”
“It doesn't matter what she knows.” I push back from the table again, but this time, nobody moves to stop me. “What matters is that she's being sold off like cattle to strengthen an alliance between two families who see her as a bargaining chip.”
“Erik—” Nikolai starts.
“She built something. From nothing. Her own company, her own reputation, her own life.” My hands curl into fists. “And now Igor's stripping all of that away because it's convenient for him.”
The room falls quiet except for the ticking of the antique clock on the mantel.
“She chose to leave with him,” Dmitri points out.
“To save your girlfriend's life.” I turn on him. “She made that choice to protect someone she'd never even met. You think she wanted to go back to that prison?”
Sofia clears her throat. “What exactly are you proposing?”
“I don't know yet.” The honesty burns. “But I'm not sitting here eating dinner while she's locked in some room being told her life is over.”
“Even if it means going against family?” Nikolai's question carries weight.
I meet his eyes. “She belongs with me.”
The words hang in the air like smoke from a gunshot.
She belongs with me.
Even as I say it, part of my brain—the tactical part, the part that's kept me alive through dozens of missions—screams that this is insanity. That I'm throwing away everything I've built, everything I've sworn to protect.
But for once, I don't listen.
“This isn't about family loyalty or business strategy.” I look each of my brothers in the eye. “This is about me. What I want. What I need.”
Nikolai's expression doesn't change, but I catch the slight tightening around his eyes. “And what you want matters more than?—”
“Yes.” The word comes out harder than I intended. “For once in my life, yes. What I want matters more.”
“Well, fuck me sideways. Erik Ivanov just chose himself over duty,” Alexi quips.
“Twenty-eight years.” I pace, unable to stay still. “Twenty-eight years I've been the good soldier. Following orders. Protecting the family. Putting everyone else's needs before my own.”
The memories flood back—every mission I didn't question, every assignment I completed without complaint, every time I swallowed my own desires for the greater good.
“Remember when I was sixteen and wanted to join that exchange program in Germany? You said the family came first.” I point at Nikolai. “When I was twenty-two and I was offered a job in Paris? Family came first, then too.”
Sofia shifts beside Nikolai, her expression thoughtful.
“I've never asked for anything.” My voice drops to barely above a whisper. “Not once. I learned to kill because you needed me to. I learned to fight, to plan, to follow orders without question. I became the weapon you needed.”
Dmitri winces, and it's not from his gunshot wound.
“But this?” I stop pacing, planting my feet. “This is mine. She's mine. And I'm not giving that up. Not even for family.”
The silence stretches between us like a chasm.
“So that's it?” Nikolai's voice is carefully controlled. “You're choosing her over us?”
“I'm choosing myself. For the first time in my life, I'm choosing what I want instead of what's expected.”
Alexi breaks the silence first, clapping slowly. “About fucking time.”
“What?” I stare at him.
“We've been waiting for you to grow a spine for years.” He grins. “I was starting to think you'd died and been replaced by a duty-obsessed robot.”
Dmitri nods, surprising me. “Remember when we were kids, and you used to sneak out to feed that stray dog? You'd rather take a beating from father than let anything happen to something you cared about.”
“That was different?—”
Nikolai remains quiet, swirling wine in his glass. The silence stretches until he finally speaks.
“You're right.”
“I'm what?”
“About all of us being fucked up. About choosing what we wanted.” He looks at Sofia. “I stalked my wife for weeks before she gave me the time of day. If someone had told me to walk away for the good of the family, I'd have told them to go to hell.”
Sofia laughs, the sound cutting through the tension like a blade. “So, we're all in agreement that this family makes terrible life choices?”
“Speak for yourself,” Alexi protests. “My life choices are perfectly reasonable.”
“You once hacked into NASA because you were bored on a Tuesday,” Dmitri points out.
“That was research.”
“For what?”
“Classified.”
I feel the knot in my chest loosening for the first time since Sofia delivered the news. “You're all insane.”
“Says the man planning to storm a fortress for a woman he held captive,” Nikolai observes dryly.
“When you put it like that, it sounds romantic,” Sofia adds with a straight face.
Alexi snorts. “Nothing says true love like Stockholm syndrome.”
“It wasn't Stockholm syndrome.” The words come out sharper than I intended. “She—” I stop because explaining what Katarina is to me feels impossible.
“She what?” Dmitri leans forward despite his injury. “Come on, enlighten us. What makes the ice princess worth starting a war over?”
“She argues with me.” The admission surprises even me. “Every day. About everything. She doesn't back down, doesn't try to manage me or placate me. She just... fights.”
“Most people fight with you,” Alexi points out. “You're not exactly sunshine and rainbows.”
“Not like her.” I rake my hands through my hair. “She fights like she's trying to understand me, not beat me. Like the argument itself matters, not just winning it.”
“Jesus,” Dmitri mutters. “You're completely gone.”
“Utterly fucked,” Alexi agrees cheerfully. “It's actually kind of beautiful.”
Nikolai sets down his wine glass with deliberate precision. “So. What do you need?”
The question catches me off guard. “What?”
“To get her out. What do you need from us?”
“I thought you said?—”
“I said we weren't starting a war. I didn't say we wouldn't help you start one.” His mouth quirks up at the corner. “Besides, Igor's been a problem for too long anyway.”
Alexi rubs his hands together. “Finally. I was getting tired of playing defense.”
“This is not an excuse to blow things up,” I warn him.
“Everything's an excuse to blow things up if you're creative enough.”
Sofia shakes her head. “I married into a family of sociopaths.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing,” Dmitri grins, then winces as the movement pulls at his wound.
Somehow, I feel more positive than I have in years, especially with my family on my side.