Chapter 25
VIKTOR
By the time I get back to the mansion, I’m holding myself together by habit alone.
I should still be at the hospital. Every part of me knows that. I should be beside Sienna’s bed, waiting for her to wake properly, ready to tell her anything she asks, ready to walk her back to the NICU the second the doctors allow it.
I should be there because that’s where my mind still is, despite the drive back, despite the lawn, despite the wreckage waiting for me here.
But Yuri called, and whatever was in his voice left no room to ignore him.
So I came.
The grounds are almost unrecognizable now.
A few hours ago they were dressed for vows and photographs.
Now the wedding has collapsed into a scattering of broken details: chairs overturned and then righted badly, flowers trampled into the grass, staff moving with that strained, overcareful energy people have after a disaster when they still don’t know whether they’re cleaning up a mess or disturbing evidence.
It all feels obscene to me.
Not because a wedding failed. Weddings fail. People humiliate one another every day and then blame the flowers. What happened here was something else. Something uglier. Something that reached beyond embarrassment and into violence.
I find Yuri in the study. He’s waiting for me, standing beside the desk with a file open in front of him, and the look on his face tells me before he speaks that whatever he has is worse than I’m expecting. That is not easy to achieve today.
I close the door behind me and say, “What happened?”
Yuri is already at the desk, one hand on the mouse, the monitor turned half toward the room. He doesn’t answer right away. That alone tells me this is bad.
I shut the door behind me and look at him. “Yuri.”
His face is tight in a way I don’t like. “You need to see this.”
He presses play.
For a second all I can make out is the back garden path, the image washed flat by the security camera.
The shot is from behind the side wing, angled toward the hedges and the old service gate.
The timestamp puts it in the middle of the chaos, after the shots, when everyone was running and shouting and trying to make sense of the lawn.
Then two figures come into view.
A man in a dark suit.
A woman moving quickly toward him.
They stop in the shelter of the trees. He turns. She goes to him.
And he pulls her into his arms.
The air goes out of me all at once.
No.
No.
I step closer to the screen, as if distance is the problem. As if the image will change if I look hard enough. The woman lifts her face for half a second and the angle catches it clearly.
Anna.
I stare at the screen.
Then I look at Yuri. “What the fuck?”
He says nothing.
He doesn’t need to. The footage is still running in a silent loop between us, my sister disappearing into the arms of Mikhail Voronin.
I drag a hand over my mouth and feel my temper starting to come up from somewhere cold and deep.
“Bring her here.”
Yuri nods once and steps out.
I don’t sit. I stay where I am, one hand braced on the desk, staring at the last still frame on the monitor.
My mind is moving too fast and not fast enough at the same time.
The image keeps breaking apart and reforming inside it.
By the time the door opens again, shock has burned through and left something much worse behind.
Anna walks in on her own. Yuri closes the door behind her and stays by it.
She looks from me to the monitor and knows immediately.
Not what I suspect. What I know.
I ask, “How long?”
She closes her eyes for one brief second. “Viktor—”
“How long?”
Her gaze comes back to mine. “Almost a year.”
A year of dinners, calls, ordinary family conversations. A year of her standing in front of me and saying nothing while she gave herself to the one man I have spent years keeping at a distance from everything that matters to me.
I laugh once, but there is no humor in it. “You’ve been seeing Voronin for a year.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of it is almost insulting. I look at my sister and feel betrayal settle properly now, heavy and unmistakable.
“You’re in love with him.”
Her face changes then. Not much. Enough.
“Yes,” she says quietly.
There it is. Not strategy. Not convenience. Not one stupid mistake. Something deeper and, in some ways, even harder to forgive.
I turn away from her because if I keep looking at her right then, I’m going to say something I won’t take back.
Behind me, she says, “We didn’t do this to you.”
I turn back immediately. “What?”
Her voice is steadier now, as if this part is what she came prepared to say. “Mikhail didn’t orchestrate the shooting.”
I hold her gaze and say nothing.
“But he does know something.”
“What?” I ask
“He was approached,” she says. “Someone wanted him to arrange it.”
That gets my attention, though not in the way she wants.
“Arrange what?”
Anna swallows. “They wanted you killed.”
The room goes quiet.
I don’t move. I don’t even blink. I just look at her and wait for the rest, because if I speak now, I’m going to say something I can’t take back.
She keeps her eyes on me. “They came to him first because he has the right contacts. He knows people who can make something like this happen without noise. That’s why they asked him.”
“And I’m supposed to believe he said no.”
“Yes,” she says. “He did.”
I let out a short breath and turn away from her for a second because I genuinely don’t know whether I’m angrier at her for saying it or at myself for understanding that this is exactly the sort of role Voronin would be offered in the first place.
When I turn back, I say, “Anna, do you hear yourself?”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t think you do. You’re standing in my study telling me that the man I’ve been fighting for years was offered a contract on my life, turned it down out of the goodness of his heart, and somehow still ended up at my son’s wedding while shots were fired on my lawn.”
Her face tightens. “I didn’t say it was the goodness of his heart.”
“Then why did he refuse?”
Finally she says, “Because of me.”
There it is.
I stare at her. I laugh once, and there’s nothing amused in it. “Unbelievable.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think of that right now.”
“It matters a great deal what I think of it right now.”
She flinches slightly, but she doesn’t back down. “I’m trying to tell you the truth.”
“After a year.”
Her mouth closes.
I keep going because now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop. “A year, Anna. A year of you keeping this from me. A year of you seeing him behind my back. A year of deciding for yourself what I needed to know and what I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“No,” I say. “You know it sounds bad. That’s not the same thing.”
Yuri is still standing near the door, listening and saying nothing, which is wise of him.
Anna takes a breath. “He didn’t want this.”
“You invited him to the wedding, didn’t you? It wasn’t Camille who did, it was you.”
“I wanted him here,” she says. “At my nephew’s wedding. Ethan and I practically grew up together. All I wanted—”
“Don’t complete that sentence,” I warn her.
She sighs. “I’m telling you the truth, he was here to warn you.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the answer I have.”
I shake my head and walk back to the desk because standing still in front of her is making it harder to keep my temper under control.
She follows me with her eyes but stays where she is.
“He came because he knew whoever put the money out wasn’t going to let it go,” she says.
“He wanted to know whether it had already been set in motion. He wanted to know who was moving around the wedding and whether the offer had reached someone else.”
“And he told you this when?”
“This morning.”
“Before the shooting?”
“Yes.”
That makes me look at her again. “And you said nothing.”
Her voice gets quieter. “I didn’t know if it was real yet.”
I stare at her in disbelief. “You thought there was a chance someone was trying to have me killed, and you decided to wait until you had more certainty.”
“I was trying to get more information before I brought you something that could have been nothing.”
“It was never nothing. Don’t you realize what happened yesterday?”
She says nothing to that because she can’t.
I rub a hand over my face and try to keep my thoughts in order. Sienna in the hospital. Her warning me about Anna.
“Did he give you a name?”
“No.”
“Did he give you anything useful?”
“He said it wasn’t personal.”
That gets a bitter laugh out of me. “That’s meant to reassure me?”
“No,” she says. “I think it was meant to tell me the person behind it had money and a reason beyond anger.”
Yuri finally speaks. “Or it was meant to make a fool out of you, making you believe he was looking out for you.”
Anna turns to him. “I’m not naive.”
“No,” Yuri says. “You’re compromised.”
Anna turns to me. “Say something, brother.”
I look at Anna. “What do you want me to say? You’re not being completely honest here, not to me or yourself. Sienna told me you arrived earlier than you claimed.”
Her face changes.
“She also said you were involved with the champagne order.”
Yuri turns his head toward her. Anna doesn’t deny it.
My voice drops. “So?”
Anna’s mouth tightens. “So now you believe her over me?”
I stare at her.
“She’s a stranger, Viktor.”
“No,” I say, and the word comes out harder than I intend. “She is not.”
The room goes still.
I don’t take it back.
“She is not a stranger,” I say again. “Not to me.”
Anna’s lips quiver. “She’s bad for you. I knew it the first time I saw you with her. She eclipses everything and everyone else around you.”
I frown, not understanding what she’s getting at before I come to another realization. “That’s why you were on the plane.”
She says nothing.
“You were in Spain to see him.”
Her silence is answer enough.
She looks away.
I laugh once, without humor. “Jesus Christ.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that. How long have you been lying to me, sister?”