Chapter 32
GABBY
The next night…
I’m not snooping—I’m auditing.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I waited until late, when the penthouse settles into a quiet hush. Between the dark stone and the amber lighting, the place feels less like an apartment at night and more like a fancy, futuristic tomb. It’s both Zen and unsettling at the same time.
Sasha’s office door is locked, but I’ve been paying attention—I know where he keeps the maintenance keycard. I slip it out of my pajama pants pocket and hold it in front of the sensor. A green light illuminates, and a lock softly shifts out of place.
I’m in.
The moon is full and high in the clear night sky, casting the space in an eerie, silver glow. I’m wearing my slippers, so each footfall is hushed.
Unfortunately, I’m not quite sure what I’m looking for.
The truth. That’s what Ruth had mentioned.
Where do I even begin? My eyes land on the sleek computer monitor on the massive desk.
Part of me wonders if Sasha’s the type to keep everything important locked behind a dozen passwords on his computer.
Hacking is not in my skill set, so I’d be out of luck there.
I turn, sweeping my gaze over the built-in bookshelves.
They’re a total intellectual flex—finance, great literature, military history, many gorgeous first editions all lined up like soldiers, neatly placed.
I move closer. One shelf is different from the rest. Instead of impressive tomes, it contains photo albums. Old ones.
The kinds with paper and plastic sleeves and ink fading on the spines.
I’d never taken Sasha to be the sentimental type, but here’s proof right in front of me that he literally holds space for the past.
I pull one down. It’s a heavy black-leather thing, the title on the front reads “1994–1999,” with something scrawled in Cyrillic beneath. I tuck it under my arm and hurry to the sitting area, placing the book on the center table and flipping it open.
The first few pages are a city I don’t recognize—Moscow?
St. Petersburg? Photos of a young couple, one of them holding plane tickets to the camera, is the first I see.
The scene shifts. It’s winter, but it’s a winter I recognize—Chicago.
Yellow cabs, men in heavy coats, women in fur hats.
I recognize some of the streets, some of the buildings.
I realize what I’m looking at. These are photos of Sasha and his family moving to the US.
The man is Ivan, his father. And the woman must be his mother, but I don’t know her name.
Sasha doesn’t talk about her very much. She’s beautiful, with elfin features and the same dimples Sasha sports.
Ivan is the rest of Sasha—tall, handsome in that brooding way, well-built. And those same dark, brooding eyes.
My heart skips a beat when I realize that Sasha has to be in some of these pictures. I flip the page and there he is. Barely a teenager, already all angles and stormy eyes, his mouth sporting the knowing, scheming smirk I’ve seen so many times.
I turn another page and almost flinch. It’s a picture of Ivan up close.
The resemblance is even more uncanny in this photo: same eyes, same bone structure, same gravity.
There’s warmth in some of the other pictures of Ivan—him at one of Sasha’s birthday parties, him seated in a recliner with a loose tie.
But everything else about the man radiates power and control.
Very much like his son.
I keep flipping the pages, and I find a spread that practically stops my heart. It’s a photo of a summer picnic in Lincoln Park, complete with throw blanket, paper cups, and gorgeous sunlight beaming through the branches of the trees above.
And my mom.
She’s laughing at someone off camera, head tipped back, her profile the same as my own. I place my fingertips on the page, as if I could somehow touch her through the photo. My eyes become wet with tears. I lift the album and place it on my legs.
I turn the page and find another shot of her. This time, however, she’s with Ivan. She’s seated next to him—not in a lovers’ sort of way, but closer than strangers. I don’t really understand the connection between them. I touch the page again, the plastic crinkling.
“What the hell?” I whisper the words, and the office is so still and quiet and vast that they echo through the space.
“Gabriella.”
I gasp and jump. The album slips, and I barely catch it, more plastic crinkling. Once I have it in hand, I look up and see Sasha.
He’s standing in the office doorway, his outline framed by the amber track lighting of the hallway.
He’s wearing a charcoal button-up with the sleeves rolled, the top two buttons undone.
His jaw is tight, and he looks like he’s about to give me the scolding of a lifetime for sneaking into his inner sanctum until he sees what I’m holding.
He clears his throat. “Where did you get that?”
“It was on your shelf, next to the Tolstoy.”
He takes one big step into the room, shutting the door behind him. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“And you shouldn’t have pictures of my mom on your shelf. What the hell is going on, Sasha?”
He swallows and glances down at the photo album on my lap, then back to me. “Give it to me.”
“No.”
We stare each other down like its high noon, and we’re about to draw pistols. I’m trying to play it cool, but my pulse is pounding in my ears.
“You knew her.”
“Barely. I was a boy.”
“Try again. And I want the straight goddamn truth.”
He clenches his jaw, his cheeks muscles rippling. “My father knew her.”
“Your father knew her,” I repeat. “In what way?”
He says nothing, as if trying to put together a story in his head, but I don’t want to hear whatever he’s cooking up. I’m done with the lies.
“It’s complicated, but not what you’re likely thinking.”
I chew the inside of my cheek for a moment. “Is this the ‘truth’ Ruth was referring to? That you and your family have some sort of connection to mine?”
He steps slowly over to the desk, leaning forward and flattening his hands on it. Moonlight covers him in the same silver sheen as the rest of the room. “I’ve been trying to protect you. That’s what all of this has been about.”
“What are you protecting me from, exactly? What does this mean?” I ask, shaking the album.
He pushes off the desk and steps around it, moving to the chair, as if he’s only comfortable when he can be in the position of the boss. “Gabriella.”
“I’m done being handled,” I say, closing the album. My palms are sweaty, shaking. “I’m done being the clueless girl in the dark while the men decide what version of reality I’m allowed to see.”
He flinches. It’s small, but I see it. “I didn’t want to drag you into a history that wasn’t yours.”
“Wasn’t mine?” I sweep my hand towards the photo album. “My mother is in those photos. This history seems like it’s just as much mine as it is yours.”
He says nothing, looking down at the desk, his hands once more fanned open on the surface. The sight of him sitting there, silent, not telling me what I want to know infuriates me.
“You know what? Screw this.”
I rise to leave. With surprising speed and only a few strides of his long legs, Sasha stands and moves toward the office door, blocking me. By the time I reach the door, he’s already a solid wall.
“Move.”
He looks away for a moment, then turns those dark eyes toward me, the reflection of the moon a silver pool in the obsidian. “Please.” The word is foreign in his mouth. “Don’t go. Not like this.”
It’s strange to hear him speak like this, but it doesn’t change the fact that I want to be out of there. Now.
“Not like this? Like what, of my own accord?”
He closes his eyes, the twin moons in his eyes vanishing for a moment. “I have failed you.” He opens his eyes again, and there’s a vulnerability to his gaze that’s wholly unfamiliar to me. “I know that.”
The admission sucks the air out of the room.
“Failed me?”
He nods. “I have feelings for you that cloud my judgment at times. I’ve taken vows to keep you safe that prevent me from making honest choices. And I have the ghost of my dead father always lurking, reminding me of a promise I made so many years ago.”
My heartbeat grows loud, thudding against the silence. “What promise?”
He takes a deep breath, then nods towards the album on the table behind me. “Your mother came to my father a long time ago and asked him for help to disappear. He helped her do just that. For years after, he continued to watch over her and her daughter from a distance.”
“I’m assuming you mean me?”
He nods. “Yes. Before my father died, he made me promise I would continue that protection. I wasn’t left with clear instructions.
I had to improvise, but I did what I could.
I watched over you, arranged the scholarship for college—though your academics spoke for themselves.
And I opened the door for you at AngelCorp. ”
I shake my head, trying to process all of this. “So everything I have is because of you.”
He shakes his head. “No, not quite. If you weren’t as brilliant as you are, I wouldn’t have positioned you so highly at AngelCorp. But I saw your potential. Keeping you close and utilizing your capabilities was a win-win. And you’ve proved my instincts correct.”
I step back, bumping into the headrest of the chair. “You’ve been watching me since I was a teenager?”
A pause. “Yes.”
“Because my mother…”
“Because my father cared for her. Because she was in danger, and he wanted to keep her safe, even if that risked war.”
Another question occurs to me. “And my father?”
His jaw works again, but his eyes stay sharp, unreadable. “I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I said, I don’t know.” Something in the way he says the words makes it clear the topic is off-limits. I’m suddenly too tired to push. He steps closer to me. “Say something.”
I shake my head, my gaze locked on the ground. “I don’t know if I can forgive you for this, for controlling my life.”
“It was to keep you safe.”
“That’s what you say. But now look at me—I’m locked in your home, no freedom of my own. And that’s also to keep me safe. How much control am I supposed to tolerate? How much smaller is my life going to get?”
He says nothing, and I suspect this is his way of expressing his lack of an answer. Not one that I would like, anyway.
Sasha takes in a deep breath. “I’m not asking you to forgive me for keeping this from you. I wouldn’t deserve it, in any case.”
His words hang in the air. It’s strange seeing him like this. The man is normally so composed, so in control. But now, he’s standing before me like he isn’t sure what to do or say to make things right.
Part of me wants to tell him I don’t need his protection. My life is my own, and if that puts me in danger, then so be it. It’s what I should say. Instead, I feel myself tipping toward him.
“You scare me,” I say simply.
“I scare myself,” he says. “Every time I think about what I’d do to protect you.”
I shake my head. “That’s not love, you know.”
Love. Crazy to think such a word could even factor into what’s going on here. But it does, in a strange way.
“It’s the best I can do.”
There’s truth in his words, truth that hurts to hear. In those moments, he seems wounded, vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen him before. As if being pulled by gravity, I walk toward him.
Once I’m standing in front of him, I look into his eyes.
His gaze searches mine, asking for forgiveness he feels he hasn’t earned.
There’s something different about him. It’s still Sasha, still the man who’d burn this city to protect me and our children, but there’s something different, too.
It hits me what it is. Yes, he’d protect us.
But for the first time, I understand his fear that he might not be able to.
I lift my hands, placing them on his chest, feeling the heat, the solidity, the steady heartbeat that proves he’s a man and not some monster.
“Don’t lie to me again. Please.”
“I won’t.”
Against my better judgment, against every wall I put up when he entered the office, I rise to my toes and kiss him. It’s not a kiss of forgiveness; it’s more like a truce. He places his hands on my hips, and it’s a touch of claiming and care. My fingers curl into his shirt.
I break the kiss first. He rests his forehead on mine, his taste lingering on my tongue. Heat spreads outward from between my thighs.
“Stay,” he says. “You don’t need to run.”
I don’t say anything. I just… stay.
He places his hand on my chin and tilts my face up towards his. “You can’t tell me all you want is a kiss.”
He grins, and God help me, I grin right back.
Sensing my answer, he wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me close.
It’s exactly what I need.