Chapter Twenty-Two - Rostya
The estate is quieter now, but the silence sits wrong. Tension clings to the woodwork, heavier than the perfume of cigars or the velvet drapes still trembling with echoes of the men who left. I send the guards away with a word, sharp enough to clear the air, and pour wine myself.
She comes anyway.
Karmia moves through the doorway on silent feet, no chains, no guards at her back—nothing but that stubborn set to her jaw, the chin tipped just enough to telegraph her refusal to be small.
She’s shed the cell’s fear but not the calculation, a tension in her shoulders like a pulled wire.
When I nod to the chair across from mine, she slides in, hands folded, spine straight.
Not obedient. Not broken. Just… present.
A challenge written in silence.
The fire in the grate snaps. Light crawls over her face, catching the shadows under her eyes, painting her cheekbones sharp.
My own glass is cold against my palm, untouched.
Across the table, her gaze tracks the room, cataloging escape routes, the weight of the cutlery, every inch of territory that isn’t hers.
It’s the photograph that catches her. A black-and-white relic on the sideboard, tucked between crystal decanters and the cold gleam of a pistol.
The frame is battered, silver worn thin at the corners.
Four faces locked in time, two boys flanking a woman with eyes too tired to be young.
My father’s hand on my shoulder, heavy, claiming.
Her question is quiet, cutting through the hush like the first note in a cathedral. “Is that your family?”
For a moment, I want to lie. Deflect. The urge to shut her out is old, bone-deep. Instead, I shrug, the movement sharper than intended. “Was. Once.”
She looks at the photo, not at me. “You look different.”
My voice comes out flat, but it betrays me with a roughness I hate. “That was before. Childhood here is short.”
She turns back, eyes catching the firelight. I should end this, but the pressure in my chest won’t ease. My words scrape out, unplanned. “My mother died young. My father—” I gesture toward the photo, hand flexing. “He taught us the only lesson that mattered. Survive, whatever it costs.”
There’s a weight in the air now, too heavy for wine or fire to dissolve. I drink, finally, the burn slicing clean through the back of my throat. The silence stretches, close to suffocating.
She doesn’t ask for more. Doesn’t look away. I almost respect her for that.
Across the table, her hands tighten around the stem of her glass, knuckles white, the only sign of nerves she allows.
The old photo catches the light and glints, a memory reflected in miniature.
It feels dangerous, the way she’s here—willing, unbroken, sharp enough to cut—and I wonder, not for the first time, what it is in her that refuses to bend.
The stem of my glass creaks between my fingers. Karmia waits, silent, patient in a way that’s almost provoking. I should hate it, but something in me can’t resist the jagged edge of honesty.
“My father believed in pain,” I say, voice low, words rolling out like stones. “He ruled this house the way he ruled the streets. Fists, threats, broken promises. Obedience wasn’t earned; it was beaten into us. Every day was a test, every failure a debt owed in blood.”
Her gaze doesn’t flinch. She’s still, but I see the tension at her jaw, the way her breath shortens. I press on, too far in to stop.
“For him, sons were a burden. We weren’t children, we were projects. He wanted soldiers. He wanted heirs who could carve a kingdom out of bone.” My fingers flex around the glass, knuckles straining white. “He made sure we never forgot it. Not Miron, not me.”
The fire cracks. The room feels too small for what I’m saying. My chest aches with something bitter, ugly, a heat I can’t shake, the old rage crawling up my throat.
“Some nights I’d wake to shouting, his voice carrying through the halls, breaking sleep like glass. I learned to stay silent, to keep my back to the wall, to never give him a reason.” My jaw locks. “He taught us how to hurt, and how to be hurt. That was the Sharov legacy.”
Silence spills between us. The memory burns—years of it, unrelenting, still alive under my skin. I don’t look at her, don’t want to see what’s written on her face. Pity would be unforgivable. Judgment, intolerable.
She gives me neither.
When I finally glance up, she’s watching, steady as before, lips parted like she wants to interrupt but can’t. Her fingers curl around her own glass, but she doesn’t drink. She waits, breath shallow, something almost fragile in her eyes.
“No child deserves that,” she says, voice low and certain. No tremor, no condescension. “Not even here. Not anywhere.”
It’s not an apology. It isn’t the kind of comfort people offer when they want to fix things they can’t understand. It’s just truth, spoken with a quiet sorrow that’s sharper than any blade.
For a second, I can’t breathe. The pressure in my chest cracks, raw and too exposed. She’s not looking at me with fear; no recoil, no careful calculation. There’s a soft ache in her expression, a sorrow she doesn’t try to dress up as anything else.
It feels like a knife under my ribs—too real, too close. I want to look away, but I don’t. Her compassion unsettles me more than the memory itself. For a heartbeat, I’m not the Bratva’s wolf, not the monster at the end of a story. I’m only a man—seen, and unable to hide.
I reach for the wine, steady by habit, but her fingers are already there. The backs of our hands meet, skin to skin, a fleeting touch so slight it shouldn’t mean anything, but it stings like a current. Heat, bright and sudden, jumps the gap between us. I don’t pull away.
For a heartbeat, neither does she.
The fire’s light wavers, shadows shivering across her knuckles, the thin bones, the half-moon press of her nails against glass. My chest tightens with something I can’t name—need, anger, hunger, the tangled mess of all three. I want to snap the spell, but I can’t bring myself to let go.
I draw in closer, the air between us shrinking, heat rising in the space she refuses to surrender. My voice scrapes low, rougher than I intend. “Don’t pity me.”
She meets my gaze head-on, unafraid, her own voice a knife sliding between my ribs. “It isn’t pity.”
The words knock the wind from my lungs. Simple, absolute, not an inch of doubt. Her stare pins me, something fierce and alive burning behind her calm. I’m used to men breaking under this look. Used to silence, to retreat, to terror in the air.
She’s unmoved, anchored, defiant in the face of every darkness I’ve thrown her way.
My pulse hammers, hard enough to drown the crackle of the fire.
Her hand is still against mine—fingers warm, skin dry but trembling faintly, a shiver she doesn’t try to hide.
The urge to close my hand over hers burns, raw and insistent.
I want to feel her struggle, want to feel her yield.
But she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t pull back.
The silence presses in, thick as velvet, smothering. The only sound is the soft catch of her breath and the low hum of the flames. The world narrows to this: her eyes, the press of her palm, the reckless defiance that lives in the space between us.
I don’t know whether to seize her, to pull her into the hunger that pulses just beneath my skin, or to stand and walk out before she can see what she does to me. She isn’t afraid. She isn’t conquered. Every inch of her is a challenge, a refusal to be claimed or broken.
Still, neither of us moves. The weight of it hangs, electric, almost unbearable. For once, I’m the one caught, frozen in the gaze of a woman who should be cowering, who should be plotting escape, but instead sits steady in the circle of my shadow.
I want to say something brutal, something to shatter the spell, but the words choke off before they reach my mouth. For the first time in years, I find myself at a loss. The world tilts, precarious, waiting for a choice I haven’t made.
At the last possible moment, I break the contact. I push back from the table so quickly the chair legs scrape the floor, harsh and discordant in the hush. My hand drops from hers. The wine sloshes in my glass, forgotten.
I move to the window, body taut, every muscle screaming for a fight.
Outside, the estate is smothered in darkness, gardens sprawled under the weight of too many secrets.
The glass reflects my face—hard, impassive, nothing of the man I was a moment ago.
I rebuild the mask, piece by piece. Control.
Command. The armor that’s kept me alive.
Behind me, I hear her breathe, steady and certain. She hasn’t moved. She’s watching, and I know she’s cataloging every flicker, every retreat. I hate how keenly I feel her gaze, the echo of her touch lingering against my skin, the certainty in her voice like a fresh wound.
When I finally turn, my face is set, my voice clipped and cold. “You should rest. Tomorrow will be… different.”
She studies me for a beat, and I see the spark of understanding—she knows I’m running. She nods, pushing back from the table, silent as a shadow. She leaves without looking back, the soft click of the door a punctuation I can’t ignore.
I stay in the room long after she’s gone, the fire burned low, wine untouched. Her effect lingers. The scent of her, the memory of her eyes, the sting of her defiance. I tell myself it’s nothing, a minor nuisance, a test of will.
The truth festers. She’s under my skin now, a splinter I can’t dig out.
When I finally make my way to bed, sleep comes in fits.
My mind circles her face, her voice, the press of her hand.
I see her across the table, see her mouth parted in hesitation, feel her breath mingling with mine.
I imagine her here, not as a captive but as something else, an equal, a rival, a flame that doesn’t cower but burns back.
I see her beneath me, gasping my name with that same stubborn pride.
I see her beside me, eyes dark with challenge, lips softening against my shoulder.
I want to break her, but something inside me whispers that breaking her would ruin everything I want.
It’s not possession that haunts me. It’s something far more dangerous.
The possibility that she could remake me just by refusing to break.
I lie in the dark, jaw clenched, breath ragged, fighting the urge to call her back just to prove I can still command my own hunger. I whisper the lie I’ve always clung to, the only prayer I trust: “It’s control I want. Not her. Never her.”
Even as the words leave my mouth, the truth presses close, heavy as her gaze. Control was never enough. It isn’t enough now. She is.