Nikolai (Underworld Daddies #4)

Chapter 15

Sophie

Nikolai paced. Three steps to the desk, pivot, four steps to the bookshelf, turn. The phone pressed against his ear like he could force answers through cellular towers and satellites by sheer will. His free hand kept going to his hair, messing it up in ways that would have been endearing if my chest wasn't currently trying to collapse in on itself.

"I need to speak with Alexei Volkov," he said into the phone, his voice carrying that flat Pakhan authority that made people listen. "Tell him it's Nikolai Besharov. Tell him it's about his cousin’s daughter."

His cousin's daughter. That was me. The daughter of the exiled Volkov, the man they'd cast out twenty-five years ago for stealing to save his dying wife. My father, who'd loved me despite everything falling apart around him. Who'd called me his little ballerina even when medical bills were drowning us both.

My bad knee was starting to ache from standing too still. The familiar throb that meant I'd pushed it too hard yesterday at the beach, building sandcastles while Little Sophie had been safe and happy and completely unaware that someone was photographing every vulnerable moment. That those moments would become weapons. That my regression—my joy, my healing—would be the thing that got Mikhail kidnapped.

"I don't care if he's busy," Nikolai was saying, and something sharp had entered his tone. "Tell him the Belyaevs have my grandfather. Tell him they want his first cousin in exchange. Tell him we need to talk. Now."

The Volkovs had exiled us when I was barely born, and we'd stayed exiled—moving from city to city, my father's gambling debts following us like shadows, until Brooklyn finally became the place where everything ended.

This morning I'd been Little. Actually, properly Little in ways I hadn't been since Sergei died. I'd played with Mr. Hoppy and Rosie, had painted with my hands, had let Nikolai read me stories while I sucked my thumb without shame. The Garden Room at Littlespace NYC had felt like a sanctuary. Like proof that I could be small and safe simultaneously, that being vulnerable didn't equal being destroyed.

And now Nikolai’s grandfather was in a Belyaev warehouse somewhere, probably hurt, definitely scared, because I'd been too visible. Too needy. Too much.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the cool glass of the window, watching Brooklyn spread out below—buildings and streets and lives being lived by people who didn't have to choose between the man who'd saved them and the grandfather who'd taught that man everything he knew.

Nikolai ended the call, immediately started another. "Maks. I need everything you can find on Mikhail's movements Saturday morning. Security footage, traffic cameras, anything. They took him in broad daylight—someone saw something."

His voice cracked on "took him," just slightly, but I heard it. Nikolai, who controlled everything, who planned seventeen moves ahead, who'd built his entire identity around being the strategist who never got caught by surprise—he was fracturing. And it was my fault.

The door opened without ceremony. Kostya filled the frame—massive, scowling, radiating the kind of violence that sat just under his skin waiting for permission. His eyes found me first, something that might have been sympathy flickering across his brutal features before settling back into professional assessment.

"Got a location," he said. "The Volkovs will meet us. I just spoke to Ivan. Warehouse in Red Hook, two hours. Alexei, Dmitry, and Ivan will be there."

All three brothers. The full Volkov leadership, gathering to discuss what to do about the cousin they'd never wanted and the mess she'd dragged into everyone's lives.

"Neutral ground?" Nikolai asked, though his expression suggested he already knew the answer.

"Technically." Kostya's jaw worked. "But it's their territory, their building, their security protocols. If this goes bad—"

"It won't." Nikolai cut him off, but I could see the lie in the tension across his shoulders. Everything could go bad. Everything was already bad. We were walking into a meeting with men who'd exiled my father, who had no reason to help and plenty of reasons to let the Belyaevs take me.

Nikolai finally looked at me directly, and the guilt in his grey eyes was devastating. Like he was the one who'd failed, who'd made the wrong choice, who deserved to be punished for this situation.

"We tell them everything," he said, crossing the study to take my hands in his. "About your father. About the Belyaev connection we still don't understand. Maybe they know something we don't."

His hands were warm around my cold ones, steady where I was shaking. I nodded because what else could I do? But my photographic memory was already pulling up fragments without my permission—images I'd filed away years ago because they hurt too much to examine.

My mother's face in the weeks before she died. Not just sick, but sad. Looking at my father with something that might have been guilt mixed with the morphine haze. The way she'd stroke my hair and whisper words in Russian I was too young to understand.

My father going silent whenever I asked about my mother's family. "They're gone, printsessa," he'd say, using the same endearment Nikolai used now. "It's just us. That's all that matters."

But he'd been lying. I could see it now, looking back with older eyes. The way he'd watch me sometimes like he was searching for something in my features. The way he'd flinch when strangers said I had my mother's eyes—not blue-green like mine were now, but the shape, the way they tilted slightly at the corners.

Who had my mother been before she was his wife? Before the cancer, before the medical bills, before everything fell apart? The memories were there, filed perfectly in my photographic recall, but I'd never examined them. Never wanted to see what they might reveal.

"Sophie?" Nikolai's voice pulled me back. "Are you with me?"

I blinked, focused on his face. The concern there, the fear barely masked, the love that had grown despite all his careful planning, all his strategic thinking that said caring was weakness.

"I'm here," I said, and forced my voice steady. "I'm with you. Whatever we need to do."

Little Sophie was crying somewhere deep inside me, begging Daddy to make this stop, to keep her safe, to choose her over everything else. But adult Sophie was the one who stood in Nikolai's study, squared her shoulders, and prepared to face the family who'd abandoned her father to gambling debts and early death.

Because Mikhail had been kind to me. Had looked at me with gentle eyes and called me granddaughter-in-law like I belonged in this family. Had taught me chess moves while Nikolai watched with pride. And I owed him this—owed him the truth, whatever it was, even if uncovering it destroyed what was left of my carefully constructed understanding of who I'd been before the auction.

"Two hours," Kostya said from the doorway. "I'll prep the car. Full security detail."

When he left, Nikolai pulled me against his chest, his heartbeat fast under my ear. For just a moment, I let myself be held. Let Little Sophie surface enough to press closer, to breathe in sandalwood and safety, to pretend that Daddy could fix this with careful planning and strategic thinking.

But the fragments kept pulling at me. My mother's face. My father's silence. The feeling that I was standing on the edge of understanding something that would change everything I thought I knew about where I'd come from.

About who I actually was.

The warehouse smelled like motor oil and decades of Brooklyn rain seeping through concrete. I followed Nikolai through the cavernous space, trying not to limp, trying to look like someone worth meeting instead of damaged goods held together with surgical screws and borrowed courage. The single hanging light ahead created a spotlight—three men waiting at a metal table like judges at an audition, except this time I wasn't dancing for approval. This time I was here because my existence had become a problem multiple crime families wanted to solve.

Alexei Volkov sat in the center, and looking at him was like seeing my father through a funhouse mirror—same bone structure, same sharp cheekbones, but where my father had been worn down by debt and loss, Alexei was honed. Powerful. His ice-blue eyes tracked my approach with an intensity that made me want to hide behind Nikolai, and I hated myself for the impulse. I was twenty-four years old, had survived my father's death and an auction that sold me like furniture. I could survive meeting the uncle who'd cast us out.

The man to Alexei's right was massive—had to be Dmitry based on Maks's briefing in the car. Six-five easy, built like he'd been constructed to break things, with a face that would have been handsome if it wasn't currently arranged into an expression that suggested he was calculating how many ways he could kill everyone in this warehouse. His eyes were darker than Alexei's, almost black in the poor lighting, and when they found me they didn't soften. Just assessed. Cataloged. Decided whether I was threat or asset.

Ivan was on Alexei's left—younger, leaner, with the same Volkov features but arranged into something that looked almost scholarly. Wire-rim glasses caught the overhead light, and his expression was harder to read. Not cold like Alexei, not violently calculating like Dmitry, but distant. Like he was watching this meeting from somewhere outside his body, analyzing rather than participating.

My father's cousins. Family, in the genetic sense, even if every other definition of the word had been forfeit the day they exiled him.

Nikolai's hand found my lower back—grounding, protective, reminding me I wasn't alone even if I was surrounded by men who shared my DNA but not my history.

"You claimed she's family." Alexei's voice cut through the warehouse silence like a blade through silk, his Russian accent thicker than Nikolai's, carrying weight that came from decades of command. "Dmitri Volkov's daughter. The bastard who we exiled twenty-five years ago."

The word hit me like a physical blow. Bastard. Not thief, not exile, but bastard—the kind of insult that said my father had been worthless, disposable, less than nothing. My hands curled into fists at my sides, nails biting into palms hard enough to ground me when everything else wanted to fracture.

"Sophie Katerina Volkov." Nikolai's voice stayed level, formal, but I could feel the tension in his hand on my back. "Legitimate daughter of Dmitri Volkov. The exile was unjust. You know it was."

Something flickered in Alexei's expression—there and gone before I could fully catalog it. Not quite guilt, but close. Recognition maybe. Or shame that had been buried for twenty-five years under justifications and strategic necessity.

"He stole from family operations." Alexei's jaw worked. "We had no choice."

"He stole medicine." Nikolai's words landed with enough force to reorganize the molecular structure of the air between us. "For his dying wife."

The warehouse went silent except for water dripping somewhere in the shadows. A rhythmic plop plop plop that counted seconds nobody seemed capable of filling with words.

I watched Alexei absorb the information. Watched his ice-blue eyes—my father's eyes, my eyes—go from cold assessment to something more complicated. His hands were flat on the metal table, fingers spread like he needed the contact to stay grounded.

"We knew your mother was dying." His voice had gone rough, edges fraying on consonants that should have been sharp. "The cancer. We knew Dmitri was desperate. But he stole from operations that kept fifty families fed. We had no choice."

The justification sat between us like smoke. Like the kind of lie people told themselves until it became true through repetition. And something in me—something that had been quiet and obedient and carefully controlled my entire life—cracked open.

"You had a choice." My voice came out shakier than I wanted, but it came. "You chose business over family."

Alexei's jaw clenched. “We chose not to kill him.”

Dmitry shifted his weight, hands moving away from his sides—not threatening exactly, but preparing for violence that might become necessary. Ivan just watched me with those distant eyes, cataloging my defiance like data to be analyzed later.

But I wasn't done. My father had died believing himself a failure, believing the exile had been justified, believing he deserved the gambling debts and the isolation and the slow destruction of everything he'd tried to build. And these men—these strangers who shared my blood—had let him believe it.

"He was desperate." I was shaking now, but the words kept coming. "My mother was dying and you—you cast him out instead of helping. You let him spiral into debt and gambling and eventually into selling his own daughter to settle what he owed. So don't stand there and tell me you had no choice. You had every choice. You just made the one that was easier."

Silence. The kind that pressed against eardrums and made breathing feel difficult.

Then Dmitry moved—not toward me but forward, stepping into the light with predator grace that made Kostya shift positions near the door. When he spoke, his voice was pure Brooklyn, Russian accent barely detectable under decades of American streets.

"The Belyaevs want you." Not a question. A statement that demanded explanation. "Why?"

The shift in topic was tactical—moving away from uncomfortable history toward immediate threat. I should have felt grateful for the redirect. Instead I felt cheated, like the confrontation I'd needed had been stolen before reaching any kind of resolution.

But Nikolai was already responding, his Pakhan mask fully in place. "Mikhail was taken Saturday morning. They're holding him hostage in exchange for Sophie. Twenty-four hour deadline."

"Why her?" Ivan spoke for the first time, his voice quieter than his brothers' but carrying its own kind of authority. The scholar's precision, each word chosen deliberately. "Sophie's photographic memory and family connection has value, but not enough to justify this level of risk. Kidnapping a rival Pakhan's grandfather? That's a declaration of war."

"That's what we're trying to understand." Nikolai's hand pressed firmer against my back. "Anton Belyaev said this isn't about information. He said it's about something old. Something Mikhail knows but didn't tell me. He seemed to think—" Nikolai paused, choosing words carefully. "He seemed to think you might know. Something about Sophie's mother."

I felt the change in atmosphere immediately. The way all three Volkov brothers exchanged looks that carried weight, history, secrets that had been buried for exactly this long.

Alexei's ice-blue eyes found mine again, and this time there was something else in them. Not just assessment, but recognition. Like he was seeing something in my features he'd missed before, or maybe something he'd deliberately avoided seeing.

"We heard rumors," he said carefully, his voice dropping lower. "Before the exile. Your mother—Katerina—there was talk she'd had an affair. With someone connected."

My stomach dropped. The fragments my photographic memory had been pulling all morning suddenly snapped into sharper focus—my mother's guilty eyes, my father's silences, the way people would sometimes look at me like they were seeing someone else.

"Connected to who?" Nikolai's voice had gone deadly quiet, the kind of quiet that preceded violence.

Alexei's gaze held mine. And when he spoke, each word landed with enough force to restructure my entire understanding of who I was.

"To Konstantin Belyaev. Anton's father."

The revelation hit me like someone had reached into my chest and rearranged my organs.

Konstantin Belyaev.

Anton's father. Having an affair with my mother before I was born.

My eyes widened. This was why I was here—in America. My mother had told me that we’d fled Moscow to escape something bad, but had never explained what it was. They’d run to stop Konstantin from discovering me.

The warehouse tilted sideways. Or maybe I was tilting. Hard to tell when your entire understanding of identity was being restructured in real-time under fluorescent lighting that made everything look sickly and wrong.

My bad knee buckled—the surgically repaired joint that had ended my ballet career deciding this was an excellent time to remind me about structural weakness. About how bodies failed when you pushed them beyond their tolerances.

Nikolai caught me before I hit concrete, his hands finding my waist, guiding me into a chair someone—Dmitry maybe—pulled over. The metal was cold against my thighs through my jeans. Solid. Real. Something to anchor to while my brain tried to process information it categorically did not want to process.

"Breathe, printsessa." Nikolai's voice in my ear, low and grounding. His hand on the back of my neck, warm and steady. "Just breathe."

But breathing felt impossible when my entire existence had just been recontextualized. Every memory was suddenly suspect. Every moment with my father now carried this terrible question mark—had he known? Had he raised me knowing I might not be his? Had he looked at me and seen another man's child, another man's betrayal, another man's claim on the woman he'd loved?

"The dates align." Alexei's voice cut through my thoughts with clinical precision. "Your mother, Katerina, was married to Dmitri but the marriage was—complicated. She'd been promised to someone else before your father. A Belyaev connection that fell through when Konstantin chose a different alliance. But they maintained—" He paused, choosing words carefully. "Contact."

Contact. The polite word for an affair that resulted in me.

"In bratva terms," Ivan added, his scholar's voice making brutal facts sound academic, "if Sophie is Konstantin Belyaev's biological daughter, she's legitimate Belyaev blood regardless of her mother's marital status at the time of her birth. Bloodline matters more than documentation in our world. It's why families track genetics so carefully. Why certain marriages are arranged to consolidate power."

My photographic memory was pulling files without mercy now. Every strange interaction, every comment that had never quite made sense, suddenly developing context I'd never wanted it to have.

The lawyer who'd handled my father's estate, the one who'd seemed unsurprised when debts totaling millions appeared. "Your father was always paying for old sins," he'd said. I'd assumed he meant the gambling. But maybe the sins were older. Maybe they were my mother's. Maybe they were mine, just by existing.

The way the Settling had documentation on me before the auction. Not just my father's debts, but other information. Medical records that went back to my birth. Like someone had been tracking me, cataloging me, preparing for exactly this moment when I'd become valuable.

"If this is true—" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "If I'm actually Konstantin Belyaev's daughter, then Anton isn't just some pakhan who wants me for leverage. He's—"

I couldn't say it. The word stuck in my throat like broken glass.

"Your half-brother." Dmitry finished for me, his brutal honesty cutting through pretense. "Yeah. Makes the fact that he’s probably going to try to marry you a lot more fucked up."

The warehouse spun. Not from physical instability this time, but from the sheer horror of what I was processing. Anton Belyaev wanted to marry me.

"Bratva families have done worse for power." Ivan's clinical assessment made bile rise in my throat. "Marriages between half-siblings aren't unheard of in our history, particularly when bloodline consolidation matters more than—" He stopped, probably reading the expression on my face. "But it's not common. Not in modern operations."

Not common but not impossible. The implication sat between us like something toxic that would kill us all if we breathed too deeply.

"He can't possibly think—" I started, then stopped. Because of course Anton could think it. Could justify it through whatever brutal calculus these men used to make decisions. Could frame it as strategic necessity, as bloodline purity, as the kind of sacrifice powerful families made for continuation of power.

My hands were shaking again. I pressed them flat against my thighs, trying to ground myself, trying to find some anchor in a reality that kept restructuring itself into configurations more horrific than the last.

"Your mother—" Alexei's voice had gentled slightly, which somehow made it worse. "Katerina made choices that put you in this position. I don't know if she understood the full implications. Don't know if Konstantin acknowledged you before he died, if there's documentation somewhere making your claim official. But the fact that the Belyaevs are moving this aggressively suggests they know something we don't."

My mother. Who'd died apologizing. Who'd stroked my hair and whispered sorry in between morphine doses. Who'd loved my father—I believed that, had to believe that—but maybe not enough. Or maybe too much, in complicated ways that destroyed both of them.

Anger flared in my chest, hot and sudden. At my mother for making choices that determined my fate decades later. At my father for keeping secrets that might have protected me if he'd just explained. At Konstantin Belyaev for existing, for touching my mother, for creating me through an affair that was now being weaponized by his son.

At Anton for being the kind of monster who'd consider marrying his own half-sister if it consolidated his claim to power.

"This doesn't change anything." Nikolai's voice cut through my spiral, firm and grounding. His hand found my face, tilting my chin up until I was looking at him. "Your genetics don't change who you are. Don't change what you mean to me. Don't change that I claimed you, that you're mine, that I'll protect you from whatever the fuck Anton Belyaev thinks he has a right to."

His grey eyes were fierce, almost violent in their intensity. "You could be Belyaev blood, Volkov blood, descended from Russian royalty or completely unconnected to any of this—it doesn't matter. You're Sophie. You're the woman I chose. And nothing about your biology changes that."

The words hit somewhere deep, in the place where Little Sophie was hiding, where the part of me that needed protecting and claiming and unconditional acceptance lived. My throat was too tight to respond, but I nodded against his palm.

"We need proof." Maks's voice, practical as always. "If Sophie's paternity is actually in question, there will be documentation somewhere. Birth certificates, medical records, maybe something in Dmitri's possessions after he died. Hospital records from when Sophie was born."

"I have his papers." The admission came out small. "Everything from his apartment. I couldn't—I didn't have the heart to go through it all after he died. It's in storage."

Storage unit in Queens, packed with the remains of my father's life. His books and clothes and the photographs I couldn't look at without breaking. Documentation of debts and gambling losses and the slow destruction of everything he'd tried to build.

And maybe—maybe—proof of what he'd known about my mother's affair. About my genetics. About the terrible legacy she'd left me.

"We'll get it." Nikolai stood, pulling me up with him. My knee protested the movement, but I locked it, refusing to show weakness in front of these men who were my family but also weren't. "Maks can have a team there within the hour. Pull anything relevant."

"And Mikhail?" Kostya's question from the doorway. "We've got eighteen hours left on Anton's deadline."

The reminder landed like a weight. Mikhail, kidnapped because of me. Because Nikolai had claimed me, protected me, made me valuable enough that taking me would hurt him.

Alexei stood too, the movement carrying authority that made everyone pay attention. "We'll help track him. Our operations overlap with Belyaev territory—we might have information your people don't. But—" His ice-blue eyes found mine again. "If we do this, if we help retrieve Mikhail and eliminate Anton, you're acknowledging the Volkov connection. You're family, whether or not we handled your father's exile correctly. That means obligations. Expectations. Protection, yes, but also loyalty."

Family. The word felt foreign, dangerous, heavy with implications I wasn't ready to process. But I'd stood here and told Alexei he'd chosen business over family. If I rejected this offer—this tentative rebuilding of connection—I'd be doing exactly what I'd accused him of.

"Okay." My voice came out stronger than before. "I'm in. We're family. I'll—I'll accept what that means."

The agreement hung in the warehouse like a contract signed in invisible ink. Not forgiveness for what had been done to my father. Not absolution for the exile that had destroyed him. But acknowledgment that moving forward mattered more than dwelling in past mistakes.

Alexei nodded once, sharp and final. "Then let's get your grandfather back and end this."

The compound felt different when we got back. Same marble floors, same security protocols, same expensive furniture that cost more than most people's cars. But somehow, it didn’t feel safe anymore. Not since Anton had stormed it.

Nikolai led me straight to his bedroom, his hand never leaving my lower back. Protective. Possessive. The kind of touch that said mine even when everything else was chaos and uncertainty.

The door closed behind us with a soft click that somehow felt final.

"Sit." Not Daddy voice, but close. The gentle command of someone who needed me stationary so he could think, could plan, could calculate the seventeen moves that would keep everyone alive.

I sat on the edge of his bed—California king with sheets that smelled like sandalwood and safety. My bad knee was screaming now after standing in that warehouse for over an hour, but the pain felt distant. Like it was happening to someone else's body.

Nikolai paced. Three steps to the window, turn, four steps to the closet, pivot. The same pattern he'd used this morning in his study, except now his movements carried more weight. More desperation.

"I'm going to the warehouse." His voice came out flat, controlled, but I could hear the edges fraying. "I'll tell them I'm offering myself in exchange for Mikhail. That I'm the valuable one, not you. That whatever leverage they think they have with you is meaningless compared to having the Besharov Pakhan."

The words hit like ice water. He was going to trade himself. Going to walk into a Belyaev stronghold and offer himself up like a sacrifice, like that would solve anything, like Anton would just accept the swap and let everyone go.

"That's—" I started, but my throat closed around objections I couldn't articulate. Because part of me—the scared part, the Little part that was still hovering at my edges despite being forcibly suppressed all day—wanted to agree. Wanted Daddy to handle this. Wanted to hide in this bedroom while he made the terrible choices so I didn't have to.

"It's the only option." He stopped pacing, kneeling in front of me so we were eye level. His hands found my knees, gentle despite the tension radiating through his entire body. "Anton wants leverage. Wants to control the Besharov organization. Having the Pakhan is better leverage than having—"

"Your half-sister?" The words came out bitter. "The illegitimate Belyaev heir who he wants to marry or murder?"

Nikolai's jaw clenched. "You are not going near him. I don't care what blood might be in your veins. I don't care what claims he thinks he has. You are mine, and I will burn everything to ash before I let him touch you."

The declaration should have been romantic. Probably was romantic, in the brutal way bratva men showed love—through threats of violence and possessive pronouns and the willingness to destroy everything for the person they'd claimed.

But it was also stupid.

"If you go—" My voice shook. "If you offer yourself instead of me, he'll just take you and still demand me. You know that. You're too smart not to know that."

I watched the truth land in his grey eyes. The recognition that I was right, that his plan had holes big enough to drive trucks through, that strategic thinking was being overridden by the desperate need to protect me.

"Then we both stay here." His hands tightened on my knees. "We fortify the compound. We let the Volkovs and Kostya and Maks handle negotiations. We—"

"Let Mikhail die because you were too busy protecting me to save your grandfather?"

The accusation hung between us like smoke. Cruel, maybe. Definitely unfair. But true enough that Nikolai flinched like I'd struck him.

Little Sophie was crying somewhere deep inside me. Begging Daddy to make this stop. To keep her safe. To choose her over everything else because that's what Daddies did—they protected their little girls from the monsters.

But another part of me—the part that had survived my father's death and the auction and learning my entire genetic history was a lie—was doing different math.

Anton wanted me specifically. Not as leverage but as the thing itself. As proof of his claim, or as competition to eliminate, or as the half-sister he could force into marriage to consolidate power. The Volkovs had confirmed it. Ivan's analysis had confirmed it. Everyone in that warehouse had confirmed what I already knew in my bones.

This was about me. And hiding behind Nikolai wouldn't solve it. Would just get him killed while Anton found another way to take what he wanted.

I looked at Nikolai—at his grey eyes that had watched me with such careful attention since the auction, at the hands that had held me while I was Little, at the face that had become synonymous with safety. With home. With the kind of love I'd thought died with Sergei.

And Little Sophie—scared, crying Little Sophie who just wanted Daddy to fix everything—made a grown-up decision.

"You're right." I forced the lie through lips that didn't want to form it. "We should stay here. Let the others handle it. Keep me safe."

Relief flooded his expression, so profound it hurt to witness. "Thank you. God, Sophie, thank you. I know it's not—I know you want to help, but—"

"I trust you." Another lie. Or maybe a truth twisted into something tactical. I did trust him. Just not with this. Not when his love for me would get him killed.

He pulled me into his arms, holding me like I was something infinitely precious. "We'll get him back. I promise. Kostya and the Volkovs will handle negotiations. We'll find a way that doesn't put you in danger."

I pressed my face into his neck, breathing in sandalwood and safety, memorizing the feeling of his arms around me. Because this might be the last time for a while. The last time before I did something that would make him furious and terrified and possibly—probably—get me killed.

But it was the right choice. The only choice that actually solved the problem instead of just rearranging casualties.

Anton wanted Sophie Volkov. Wanted Konstantin Belyaev's daughter. Wanted the illegitimate heir who threatened his claim.

So I'd give him exactly what he wanted. Just not the way he expected.

"I love you." The words came out muffled against Nikolai's skin, but clear enough. True enough.

"I love you too, printsessa." He kissed the top of my head, still holding me like letting go would break us both. "We'll figure this out. Together."

Together. Except I was already figuring it out alone, calculating the moves Nikolai couldn't see because his love made him blind.

Little Sophie had made a Big decision.

And tomorrow morning, before he could stop me, I was going to the Belyaevs.