Chapter 17 Alexi
ALEXI
Iwake to moonlight cutting across white sheets, Iris’s platinum hair spilled across my pillow like liquid silver. She’s curled against me, one hand tucked under her cheek, the other resting on my chest.
Beautiful doesn’t cover it.
My fingers trace the code fragment tattooed behind her ear—some encryption algorithm I haven’t identified yet. Her face relaxes in sleep, all that razor-sharp focus softened into something vulnerable.
Then she whimpers.
Her body jerks, muscles going rigid. A strangled sound tears from her throat.
“No—” The word comes out broken. “Dad, the brakes—”
Her hands claw at nothing, fighting invisible restraints.
“Iris.” I shake her shoulder gently. “Wake up.”
“Mom!” She screams it, thrashing hard enough to nearly throw herself off the bed.
I grab her, pulling her against my chest. “Detka, you’re dreaming. Wake up.”
Her eyes snap open, wild and unfocused. For a second she doesn’t recognize me, every muscle coiled to fight.
“It’s me.” I keep my voice low, steady. “You’re safe.”
The fight drains out of her in a rush. She collapses against me, breathing like she’s just run a marathon.
“Fuck.” Her whole body trembles. “I’m sorry, I—”
“What were you dreaming about?”
She goes completely still in my arms. I feel the exact moment she considers lying.
“My parents.” The words come out flat, hollow. “The accident.”
I stroke her hair, waiting. She’ll tell me or she won’t, but I won’t push.
“It wasn’t you.” Her voice cracks. “I found out yesterday. Spent months thinking you were involved, that your family—” She breaks off with a bitter laugh. “It was the government. Project Nightshade. My parents were threats that needed neutralizing.”
Something cold settles in my chest. “You witnessed it.”
Not a question. I can feel the truth in how rigidly she holds herself.
“I was sixteen.” She doesn’t look at me, just stares at some point beyond my shoulder. “In the back seat. They were arguing about something classified, something my mom wanted to expose. Then the brakes failed on Route 95. We hit the median at seventy miles an hour.”
Her breathing turns shallow, quick.
“The car flipped. Three times. I remember counting.” A shudder runs through her. “I was pinned in the wreckage for two hours listening to my mother drown in her own blood.”
I tighten my grip on her, processing the horror of what she’s describing. “How did you survive?”
She shrugs, the movement jerky and wrong. “Dumb luck. Back seat crumpled differently. I walked away with a broken arm and a fractured rib.”
“While your parents—”
“Dad died on impact. Steering column through his chest.” Her voice stays eerily detached, clinical. “Mom lasted longer. Hemorrhaging internally, punctured lung. She was conscious the whole time, choking on blood while we waited for help that took too fucking long.”
I hear the rage beneath the flatness now, buried deep but still burning.
“She told me.” Iris’s fingers curl into my chest, nails digging in. “Used her last breaths to warn me it was a setup. That I needed to be careful, to not go digging into what happened.”
A bitter laugh escapes her.
“Which naturally made me want to dig. Spent years in government databases trying to piece together why they’d kill two intelligence analysts with twenty years of service between them.
” She finally looks at me, those ice-blue eyes burning with something dark and savage.
“Found nothing. Every file sanitized, every witness statement perfectly aligned with mechanical failure. I was sixteen and traumatized—who’d believe me anyway? ”
“So you buried yourself in code instead.”
“Built walls.” She pulls back slightly, putting distance between us even while still in my arms. “Got good enough that no one could touch me, that I could touch anyone. Became Phantom because ghosts can’t be killed.”
The pieces slot together—her obsession with control, her need to be untouchable, the way she hacks like she’s fighting for her life.
Because once upon a time, she was.
“You thought we did it.” I keep my voice neutral, non-accusatory. “That’s why you targeted us.”
“Your family has connections everywhere. Government contracts, intelligence ties.” She meets my gaze steadily. “And the Ivanov name kept appearing in the margins of files I shouldn’t have accessed. I assumed—”
“That we were complicit.”
“Yes.” No hesitation, no apology. “I wanted it to be you. Needed someone to blame who I could actually reach.”
The government’s an amorphous enemy—faceless bureaucrats hiding behind plausible deniability. But the Ivanovs? We’re flesh and blood, right here in Boston.
“And now you know it wasn’t us.”
“Now I know Kiril Volkov’s connected somehow. That Project Nightshade is still active. That Morrison, the agent who took over the investigation, has CIA black ops experience.” Her jaw tightens. “And that I’ve been chasing the wrong fucking target for years.”
I cup her face, forcing her to look at me. “So we pivot. Find Morrison, trace his connections, dig into Nightshade until we know exactly who gave the order.”
She blinks. “We?”
“You think I’m letting you hunt government assassins alone?” I stroke my thumb across her cheekbone. “I’ll help you get to the bottom of this. Make them pay for what they did.”
Something breaks in her expression—hope and despair warring for dominance.
“Alexi.” She covers my hand with hers, that sad smile twisting her lips.
“No one can take on the government. They have unlimited resources, classified tech, legal immunity for operations deemed necessary for national security. Morrison’s probably protected by a dozen layers of bureaucratic insulation.
Nightshade’s buried under classification levels that don’t officially exist.”
“You underestimate me, detka.”
Her eyes widen slightly.
“The Ivanov family didn’t build an empire by respecting boundaries.” I lean in closer, my voice dropping. “We have our own resources. Our own tech. Our own ways of making people disappear when necessary.”
“This isn’t some rival organization or corrupt politician—”
“I don’t care if it’s the fucking president himself.” The words come out sharp, final. “They murdered your parents. Left you trapped in a car listening to your mother die. They made you into Phantom because you were too terrified to exist as yourself.”
Her breath catches.
“So yes, we’re going after them. Every agent involved, every bureaucrat who signed off, everyone who covered it up.” I press my forehead to hers. “And when we’re done, they’ll wish mechanical failure was all they had to worry about.”
Tears spill down her cheeks, silent and devastating.
“Why?” Her voice breaks on the word. “Why would you do that for me? Risk your family, your empire, everything you’ve built—for what? Revenge that isn’t even yours?”
I kiss her.
Hard enough to silence the questions, gentle enough to answer them.
When I pull back, I keep her face cradled between my palms, thumbs brushing away the wetness on her cheeks.
“You know why,” I whisper against her lips.
“Alexi—”
“Because you’re the only person I’ve ever wanted.
” The admission tears out of me, raw and honest in a way I’ve never been with anyone.
“Not just physically, though fuck, detka, I want you so badly it hurts. But intellectually. Emotionally. Every part of you challenges me, excites me, makes me feel alive in ways I didn’t know I was dead. ”
More tears fall, faster now.
“I’ve spent twenty-nine years looking for something that would make me feel less empty. Built systems, conquered networks, proved myself a thousand times over.” I press my forehead to hers again, needing the contact. “None of it mattered. None of it filled the void.”
Her hands come up to grip my wrists, holding on like I’m the only solid thing in her world.
“Then you breached my firewalls with code so elegant it made me want to weep. Left your signature like a taunt, like you knew I’d be obsessed.” A rough laugh escapes me. “And I was. Am. Completely fucking obsessed with you.”
“This is insane,” she whispers, but she’s not pulling away.
“You’re it for me, Iris.” I say each word clearly, deliberately. “The end game. The variable I can’t control and don’t want to. You’re the only equation I want to spend the rest of my life solving.”
She breaks completely then, collapsing against my chest with sobs that shake her entire body. I hold her through it, stroking her hair and murmuring words in Russian I haven’t spoken since my mother died.
Words about love and devotion and forever.
Words I mean with every corrupted piece of my soul.