Chapter Fifteen - Vivienne
The file sits on the edge of the desk, and my eyes keep dragging back to it, no matter how many times I force myself to look away. Velvet drapes hang heavy across the windows, shutting out the world, but the air feels too bright, too sharp, as if the truth is humming inside that folder.
I don’t touch it. Not for hours. I pace the room, pour water, sip it without tasting a thing, lie down, sit up again. Anything to avoid peeling back those pages. It has to be a trick. Another one of his games—something designed to twist me in knots until I break.
Alexei Sharov doesn’t give without reason. He doesn’t yield. If he left that file with me, there’s a trap coiled inside it.
Still… his face when he laid it down keeps gnawing at me. Not hard, not commanding, not cruel. Quiet. When he walked out, he didn’t lock the door behind him. That, more than anything, unsettles me. His restraint frightens me worse than his rage.
Eventually, I can’t bear it anymore. My fingers hover over the folder, trembling despite the steel I’ve honed in myself. I snap it open, the sound loud in the hush of the room.
Dates. Signatures. The official seal. My throat tightens as I trace the neat lines of ink. The final order isn’t signed by him. Not his name. Not his handwriting. The world tilts under me.
I read it once, then again, then a third time. Each word is a blade slicing through years of certainty. It’s not him. My entire life has been pointed like an arrow at the man I believed killed my father. Here, in black and white, it says otherwise.
I search for flaws. A forged date. A fake seal. Something sloppy in the paper’s texture. My pulse hammers as I flip through page after page, hunting for the lie. He’s clever enough to forge this, I tell myself. He’d do it if it suited him.
It isn’t fake. The details are too meticulous, too consistent with the records I’ve studied before. The name at the bottom—his father’s—sits like a weight pressing down on my chest.
I slam the folder shut and shove it away, as if distance could make it less real.
It terrifies me more than if it were a lie. If Alexei had killed my father, it would make sense. It would fit the story I’ve told myself every night for seven years, the story that carried me through law school and into this blood-soaked masquerade.
His father? That changes everything.
It doesn’t erase Alexei’s crimes. It doesn’t cleanse his hands of blood, but it tears a hole in the vengeance I’ve built my life around, and I don’t know who I am without it.
I sit on the edge of the bed, palms pressed to my thighs, staring into the dark. The silence presses too close. My mind is a storm.
If it wasn’t him, then what have I been doing? What have I risked my life for? Every lie I told, every file I stole, every night I lay awake plotting how to gut his empire—it was aimed at the wrong man.
The thought twists my stomach, nausea rising hot in my throat. I push to my feet, pacing the carpet in uneven strides.
His father. The monster behind the curtain, now dead and buried. Untouchable. My father is in the ground because of a man I can’t strike, a man I can’t look in the eye and say you took him from me. That revenge was stolen before I ever began.
My hands curl into fists until my nails bite skin.
I think of Alexei again—his voice low, steady when he told me it wasn’t him. No apology, no denial. Just those words, simple and stripped bare. He’s never apologized for anything, never explained himself. Yet there had been something raw in his tone, almost fragile.
I hate that I noticed. Hate that I believe him now.
If it’s true, then I’ve been wrong. Not about him being dangerous, not about him being ruthless, but about where to aim the blade of my hatred.
I sink into the armchair, dragging the file back into my lap. My father’s name stares up at me from the pages, reduced to a line in a ledger. Informant. Terminated. Collateral.
I remember the way he smelled of coffee and ink, the way he tucked me in with legal briefs scattered across his desk. The pride in his voice when he told me I could be anything. The way his hand lingered on my shoulder that last morning before he left the house.
Now this is all that’s left.
Tears threaten, but I swallow them down hard. Crying won’t bring him back. Crying won’t fix this gaping hole in me.
I close the file again and hold it tight against my chest, as if I can press the truth back into silence.
It doesn’t work.
I stand and shove the folder into the drawer of the desk, slamming it shut. Out of sight, but it’s burned into me now. The knowledge won’t leave.
The door creaks faintly down the hall. My whole body stiffens, instinct screaming he’s here again. I hold my breath, waiting, but no footsteps follow. Just the house settling, old wood groaning in the quiet.
Still, I feel him everywhere. His shadow clings to these walls, to me.
I whisper into the empty room, voice shaking despite my effort to steady it. “If it wasn’t you… then why does it still feel like you ruined my life?”
No answer comes, but my heart knows one thing: the story isn’t over. Not with him. Not with me. Not with the ghost of my father lying between us like a knife.
I sink back onto the bed and curl into myself, exhaustion dragging at my bones, but sleep doesn’t come. The pages of that file flash behind my eyelids. His father’s name. The dates. The stamp. The confirmation of everything and nothing at once.
For the first time since stepping into this empire of blood, I don’t know which way the path leads. Revenge feels hollow now, but letting go feels worse.
Somewhere in the dark, I know Alexei is awake too, replaying the same truths, the same ghosts.
The knock is soft, almost hesitant, yet the sound rolls through me like a gunshot. I sit up too fast, the blanket falling from my shoulders, heart hammering against my ribs. The drawer is still closed, the file hidden inside, but I feel its weight like a brand pressed to my skin.
For a moment I consider ignoring him, pretending I am asleep, pretending I have not seen the truth scratched in ink across government pages.
The door opens before I can make a decision. He steps inside, tall frame filling the doorway, the lamplight cutting sharp lines across his face.
Alexei Sharov looks carved from shadow and steel, but tonight there is something subdued in him.
He does not stride forward with command, does not deliver orders in that deep voice that can make even silence bow.
He stays by the door, one hand loose on the frame as if unsure whether to remain or retreat.
I rise from the bed, barefoot on the rug, arms wrapped around myself though the room is warm.
My throat aches with words I cannot contain.
“You think this changes anything?” The edge of my voice is sharp enough to wound, trembling with fury I wish were cleaner, less tangled with fear.
“Your father’s name is on those pages, not yours, but that doesn’t make you innocent. ”
His eyes lift to mine, steady, unflinching. “I know.”
The quiet of his agreement cuts deeper than denial ever could. I wanted him to argue, to spit fire, to bare his teeth so I could cling to my anger. Instead he gives me this: a truth that tastes too close to surrender.
I pace toward the desk, fingers brushing the drawer, though I do not open it.
“You let me believe it was you. For years. You let me carry that weight, let me sharpen every part of myself into a weapon against you.” My voice fractures, fury spilling into desperation.
“Do you have any idea what that did to me?”
“I didn’t know.” His answer comes rough, as if dragged from somewhere raw.
The words hang heavy in the air. I stare at him, throat tight. His face does not change, no flicker of triumph, no calculated smirk. Just those three words, hollowed out, stripped of armor.
Something inside me twists hard enough to make me stumble. I grip the back of the chair, nails biting into the wood. I should hate him more for this, for letting me burn in ignorance. Yet the crack in his voice burrows under my skin, settling deep in my chest where I cannot shake it.
“You expect me to believe you knew nothing?” I force steadiness back into my voice, but it wavers all the same. “That you never once suspected what your father did?”
His jaw tenses, shadow darkening his features. “I suspected many things. I never suspected that.”
The room feels smaller, the walls pushing closer around us. I want him to rage, to give me something fierce enough to strike against. Instead he stands there, broad shoulders bent slightly as if bearing a weight too heavy to hide.
“I don’t know how to live with this,” I whisper. It slips out before I can stop it. The admission coils between us, fragile and dangerous.
He takes one slow step into the room, then stops. “Neither do I.”
The air shifts, thick with everything unspoken.
My pulse thrums wild in my throat, my body screaming for distance even as something in me aches toward him.
I force myself to hold his gaze, even as heat climbs the back of my neck.
“Do not think this makes you less of a monster. You’ve killed, Alexei. You’ve destroyed lives.”
His eyes do not waver. “Yes.”
The simplicity of the word slices deeper than any argument. I almost wish he would lie, would polish himself into something less jagged. Yet he stands here offering nothing but stark honesty.
I shake my head, nails dragging down the chair until wood splinters under my grip. “I can’t forgive you.”
“I haven’t asked for forgiveness.” His tone is quiet, steady, though there is a shadow of something else beneath it, something fractured.
Silence stretches taut between us, brittle and aching. My breath comes shallow, each inhale trembling against the storm inside me. The file remains locked in the drawer, but it pulses in my memory, my father’s name scrawled beside the word terminated.