Chapter 32 #2
Only now, her teacup rests on her knee instead of a silenced pistol.
She speaks first, voice low but steady. “Tell me, devushka, what do you think of my son?”
Valentina laughs softly. She’s nervous. My chest tightens as she presses her lips together, eyes flicking down as she gathers her words.
“When I woke up with no memory and first got to know him…I thought he was intense.” She glances up with a quick flash of a grin. “Then I thought he was insane.”
Mamma doesn’t react. Just tips her head slightly, brows lifted, measuring my wife. Her finger taps once, rhythmically, against the porcelain, appraising. Valentina notices, blushing. A sweet smile tugs at her mouth.
“He’s still intense. Still insane. But…” She tilts her head, eyes distant, softening. “But like you said—he’s a storm with honor. One you want on your side.” Her voice falters for a beat. “And I’m lucky. Because he’s not just on my side. He is my side.”
My heart leaps in my chest. Across the screen, Mamma finally leans back, her lips curling, not in approval. In victory. I lean back in my seat, stroking my jaw, warring between emotions of pride, of awe, of the unholy relief that she sees me for what I am.
Not just the blade my mother forged.
Not just the son my father tried to leash.
But the man who burned down kingdoms and rewrote alliances in blood and smoke—just to build an empire in the Bering Strait, where no one could touch her.
I made this island. This future. I paid for it with oceans of blood so I could crown her without opposition. Valentina Makarova.
Mamma’s gaze sharpens, but sadder and wiser. She studies Valentina as someone who once made men confess their sins just by pouring their tea. She’s still testing.
“So,” she begins, “you know what Roman is?”
Valentina nods once. Calm. Certain.
I see the twitch in Mamma’s fingers. A small tell—curiosity, maybe concern—but Valentina lifts a hand before she can press further. “I know,” my wife says firmly. “And not only do I accept it, I think it’s brought us closer.”
Mamma stills, the air between them tightening. She wasn’t expecting that.
Valentina shifts in her seat, her voice softer now.
“A month ago, we had an intruder on the island. He came for me. I didn’t freeze.
I didn’t run.” She pauses, lifting her chin with quiet pride.
“I killed him. I stabbed him. More than once. I remember the blood. It was hot. It ran down my arms, my face. Roman got there just as it was dripping from my jaw.”
I remember it too. I remember the look in her eyes. Not broken. Not traumatized. Lit with something wild, awake, and alive.
Mamma sets down her cup slowly, regarding Valentina with respect. Maybe even awe.
“I trained Roman,” she says at last, folding her hands neatly in her lap. “Everything he knows, he learned first from me.”
Valentina’s eyes widen. She leans forward with elated eagerness. I grin and sip my vodka. She’s hungry for this, for everything.
“Can you tell me more?” Valentina asks, almost breathless.
Mamma’s smile is small, amused. But there’s pride. She lifts a brow, not at Valentina, but at the nearest security camera. “I will. But…Roman, you can come in now.”
Valentina releases a little moan as I rise, her face falling into her hands.
As I cross the short hallway to them, I smirk, overhearing my mother assuring her, “Ochen’ horoshaya, milaya moya.”
When I enter, Mamma is patting the back of my wife’s hand. “You should see the way he watches you when you’re not looking.”
Valentina groans again, dragging her hands down her face. I linger outside the salon to watch.
Mamma chuckles softly and adds, “He listens when you speak, even when you whisper. He guards you with his whole body. And when he left the room, milaya moya, he took your heart with him. So, my sweet girl, don’t feel shame for loving someone who’s already undone by you.”
She leans in closer and says in a lower voice, “A man like Roman doesn’t need soft declarations—he needs truth. And you gave him just that.”
Once Valentina straightens, returning to her sovereign identity, my mother pushes her chair back slightly. “To give you the history you desire, I believe we’ll need something a little stronger than wine.”
Valentina laughs in delight, returning to her usual self, and waves a hand. “Good thing I know the Spirit King.” Ah. Levka.
Mamma blinks, then actually chuckles. “That mushroom-loving lunatic still alive?”
“Alive and thriving,” Valentina says proudly. “Roman swears by his cherry vodka. It burns like sin but tastes like salvation.”
Valentina’s eyes hunt mine even before I walk inside to say, my voice low and amused. “Because it is sin. That’s why it tastes so good.”
They both laugh, and the sound—God, it’s good. Two women with knives for tongues, who could both kill a man ten different ways and still make him thank them. Bonded not by blood, but in understanding.
Valentina is no longer the outsider. Not the bride with secrets she hasn’t earned. She’s one of us.
Mostly an observer, I watch them, heat curling in my chest, as they bond more over Levka’s brews, and my mother shares my history. This is how kingdoms are born—not from war, but from women like these.
After an hour or two, I drain my drink, my voice quiet, thoughtful. “I should interrupt before you tell her all my secrets.”
Mamma lifts her glass without looking at me. “Please. You don’t have any secrets left. She already knows where you keep the knives.”
Valentina and I share a smile. Because I’ll teach her how to use every single one.
They drag him in half-dead.
Frostbitten hands. Lips split and blue. His mass-market knockoff coat crunches like ice-drenched cardboard as he’s dropped to the floor of my war room. The stink of salt, engine oil, and old blood clings to him.
I don’t speak. I let the silence wrap tight around the man’s throat. He’s shivering violently, spasming as if his body is trying to shake itself out of existence. One of my men kicks a small heater closer to him. Kindness upon my order. Only so he may live long enough to tell his secrets.
The man looks up at me, wild-eyed. One pupil blown wide from fear. Maybe drugs. Maybe trauma. His lips move like he’s trying to form a name.
I step forward, crouch low to meet his eye. “Say it clearly.”
He doesn’t. He just shakes harder. His jacket bears no insignia. Civilian-made. Fisherman’s gear, if you squint hard enough. But the wrong kind. New fabric, high-end stitching. No wear marks from actual labor. Just theater. Like everything my father sends.
The “fishermen” were a clever ploy—until the storm crushed their boats and scattered the wreckage across the southern ice shelf. Only this one made it out alive.
And I plan to ensure he doesn’t leave that way.
I nod once. A silent order. One of my guards produces a slim metal injector from a padded case and moves beside me.
The man jerks. “Wait—wait, I—”
“Too late.”
The needle sinks into his neck. Truth serum—our own variant. No hallucinations. Just chemical precision. It won’t be long now.
I rise and circle behind him, my voice low. “You came looking. Not to fish. Not to trespass. You came for her.”
He groans, shaking his head. “No, no, I didn’t know. I didn’t know she was here—”
“But you knew someone was.”
The silence folds again, sharp-edged.
Then he says it. Not a scream. Just a whisper. “Anton said the brother might make contact. We didn’t think…We didn’t think she’d still be alive.”
I freeze. A glacier inside my chest begins to crack. “Say that again,” I command.
The man’s voice is trembling now, erratic. “He—Anton—he said the brother might come. Said the girl would want answers. And he would lead us right to her.”
My breath hisses through clenched teeth. The words loop through my mind, slow and poisonous. They used Sasha. They gambled on the bond between siblings—on their love. And I let him in. My favoritism, my sympathy for my wife, has led to this.
I exhale and step back, the heat in my blood rising like lava, slow and consuming. “So,” I murmur, more to myself than the man, “it’s begun.”
I turn to my men. “Dispose of him.”
They nod. One drags him away, still twitching.
I don’t watch. I leave.
My wife requires that lesson more than ever.