Chapter 17 - Elisse
I wasn’t meant to hear it. That much was obvious from the way their voices dropped the moment I stepped into the hallway.
I had been on my way to the kitchen, barefoot, restless, and unable to sleep after Fyodor had walked away to take that call, which had only gone on for too long until Viktor had shown up eventually.
The penthouse was quiet at this hour, the city below humming in a distant, indifferent rhythm.
His study door was half open, and light spilled across the marble floor.
Viktor’s voice carried outside first, low and clipped.
“—third interception this month.”
My steps slowed down as I tried to hear as best I could, all other thoughts escaping me as I heard him talk about an interception.
“There won’t be a fourth,” Fyodor replied evenly.
“You can’t keep dismantling them without Kliment lashing out the way he is. You know as well as I do that tonight was too much.”
“I’m aware.” It was followed by silence and then a faint rustle of paper.
“He was already suspicious before,” Mikhail added.
“And he knows now that tonight’s warehouse was not an isolated incident.
I know he was moving arms toward Brickell again, deliberately within Chernykh surveillance, and I know that we did the right thing, but you cannot forget that he is still your elder brother and the head of this family, and most control lies with him. ”
My breath caught. Brickell. Chernykh territory. That only meant I had been right earlier, even if Fyodor had not confirmed my suspicions. Kliment’s operation had been against the Chernykh’s after all.
“And just last week you went ahead and pulled back the shipment,” Viktor finished.
Pulled. My fingers curled against the wall. That wasn’t the first time, apparently.
“Kliment believes escalation forces negotiation, and no matter how much you try, you cannot explain things to Kliment. He will always believe what he wants to believe, and there is no reasoning with him,” Mikhail said.
“He’s wrong,” Fyodor replied.
“All I am saying is, you’ve redirected three operations in the last five weeks. Two shipments. One raid. And now you have also told Kliment that you are the one who did this all, so we need to stop now.”
Five weeks. My mind stumbled over the number. He had been preventing escalations for so long?
“I don’t want this to turn into a civil war between you and Kliment. He already thinks you’re shielding the Chernykhs.”
There was a faint, almost imperceptible shift in the room that I felt even through the doorway.
“I’m shielding stability,” Fyodor said.
“For her,” Mikhail added quietly.
My heartbeat roared in my ears.
“She is not the only reason,” Fyodor said finally.
“But she is a reason.”
“I’ll handle it. It won’t happen again.”
The room fell quiet, and then the chairs shifted.
Footsteps echoed from inside, and I stepped back just in time, turning down the hallway and slipping into the shadow near the living room before the study door opened.
Viktor and Mikhail exited first, voices lowered now, moving toward the elevator.
Fyodor remained behind for a moment while I stood very still.
My mind refused to settle as I absorbed everything I had just heard.
He had silently dismantled three operations in the past five weeks and had stopped two shipments.
He had done all of this to protect the Chernykhs.
My family. His enemy. The war I had been bracing for, counting down toward, had not arrived.
It was not because my brothers weren’t searching.
But because he had been quietly dismantling every spark that could ignite it.
The certainty I had built around him began to crack.
He was the enemy. The captor. The man who had married me without permission. The strategist who had turned me into leverage. But the evidence didn’t align with the role I had assigned him.
If Kliment had his way, there would have been blood by now. Chernykh blood. Romanov blood. Retaliation spiraling into something unstoppable.
Instead, there was tension and surveillance, and movement. But no open war had started yet. Because he had pulled the weapons and redirected the raids. He had interfered for weeks. My chest felt tight, so I moved to the balcony doors and pressed my palm against the cool glass.
Safe.
The word crept in uninvited. I was not free by any definition of the word because the doors that could take me out were still locked.
The elevator still required clearance, but I had not heard gunfire because he had not allowed chaos.
I had not received news of bodies lining the streets because he had stopped it.
If I had made that call the night he handed me his phone, it would not have resulted in a rescue but in an ignition instead, and he had known that.
Yet he had given me the choice anyway.
My reflection stared back at me in the glass, and I hated that my pulse didn’t spike at the thought of him anymore.
I hated that his footsteps in the hallway didn’t automatically tighten my spine.
I hated that when he moved through the penthouse, it no longer felt like something closing in on me. It felt steady instead.
The study door closed softly behind him, but I didn’t turn around even when I felt him approach.
“You are still awake,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You should sleep.”
“I heard you.”
Silence. Not denial.
“Which part?” he asked calmly.
“All of it.”
He didn’t react outwardly, but something shifted in the air, and I finally turned around slowly to look at him.
“You’ve been stopping Kliment from escalation against the Chernykhs for weeks,” I said.
“Yes.” My throat felt dry.
“Why?”
He studied me carefully.
“Because escalation would have forced a response and war, which would have put you in the middle of it.”
“I’m already in the middle.”
“Not like that.” Silence stretched between us.
“So you have been doing it all for me,” I said.
“No, I have been doing it all for stability and for the future.”
“Whose future?”
His gaze didn’t waver. “Ours.”
“Why? You don’t even know if I’ll stay or choose you,” I whispered.
“I know.”
He stepped closer, but not enough to crowd me.
“You think this makes you noble?”
“No.”
I looked away first as the city lights blurred slightly around us.
“I feel safe here,” I admitted before I could stop myself.
The words hung in the air like betrayal, but his expression didn’t change, even if something else in his eyes did.
I could see a sort of satisfaction fill them because I knew he was the one who had made sure of it.
Every time Kliment tried to light the match, he quietly extinguished it.
Every time tension rose too high, he redirected it.
He had chosen damage control over pride and restraint over blood.
And I had assigned him the role of villain so neatly. It had been easier that way.
“You should hate me,” I said.
“Do you?”
“I did.”
“And now?”
I hesitated. Now felt like standing at the edge of something irreversible.
“If I call Iosif now,” I said slowly, “it won’t be a rescue anymore but a call to destruction, and they will come straight for you and tear this city apart.
My hands trembled slightly. “I thought I was waiting for them, but I am not sure anymore,” I whispered.
“Do you finally care about me?” he asked quietly.
I didn’t answer because both of us already knew what the answer really was.
I did care. It was still not enough to forgive or forget, but it was enough to make me hesitate before answering.
It was enough to weigh out the consequences and see beyond pride.
He didn’t move any closer or try to touch me but simply stood there, steady as ever.
“I left our conversation mid-way earlier. The masquerade tomorrow, would you like to go with me?” he asked, breaking the silence.
The shift in topic should have felt jarring, but it didn’t.
“Yes,” I said.
His expression shifted, subtle and restrained.
“Why?” he asked.
Because I want to see who we are outside of this cage. Because I want to know if the pull I felt that night was real. Because I want to stand beside you in public and see what that feels like. Because I’m not as certain of my hatred anymore. But I didn’t say any of that.
“I want to see the room,” I replied instead. “Without war in it.”
His gaze held mine.
“Then we’ll go.”
“And this isn’t a strategy?”
“It can be.”
“And if it is?”
“It won’t be only that.”
The honesty in that unsettled me more than fear ever had.
“I’ll have the dress prepared,” he said.
“I’ll choose it.”
A faint, almost smile touched his mouth.
“Of course.”
He turned to leave, pausing only briefly in the hallway.
“Elisse.”
“Yes?”
“If you ever decide to call them,” he said evenly, “I won’t stop you.”
I knew that now.
And somehow, that made the choice heavier than ever. The war hadn’t come. Not because it couldn’t. But because he had held it back. And for the first time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to unleash it.