Chapter 22 - Fyodor
The safe house smelled like antiseptic and old wood, and I instantly hated it.
It was too quiet and too clean and far too removed from the wreckage I had just walked out of.
Although I knew my biggest problem with it was that it was much too removed from Elisse, and being away from her was already making me lose my mind.
Viktor forced me into a chair near the narrow kitchen counter while one of the medics worked on my shoulder in silence.
The cut above my brow had already been stitched.
My ribs were tightly wrapped. There was blood on my knuckles that wasn’t entirely mine.
But I didn’t feel any of it. Not really. Pain required clarity, and my mind was anything but clear. Two days had passed since the attack, and I had still not allowed the paramedics to see me until today, when I knew all my men were treated as well.
“She stood with them,” I said aloud, though no one had asked, but Viktor didn’t respond. “She didn’t move. Not even once.”
“She stepped between you and Iosif when he pointed the gun at you, and she screamed at him to stop,” he corrected quietly.
I shot him a look sharp enough to cut.
“All she did was stand between guns because she hates bloodshed, death, and murder,” he clarified. “It’s not the same as stepping between loyalties and choosing a side. Because when it came to choosing sides, we can see exactly what she chose and where she decided to go in the end.”
I looked away, the memory replaying in my mind mercilessly.
All I could think about was Elisse standing there between us, untouched and unbound, barefoot and shining brightly in her yellow sundress.
I had only gotten it for her last week, and she had told me how much she loved it.
But there she had been in that sundress, standing between Iosif and Avgust. It was not as if her brothers hadn’t dragged her out there in chains.
They hadn’t restrained her. She had been standing and had walked out on her own two feet. Out of her own will.
And I had asked her if she had called them. She had said no, but everything else about her being there was screaming yes. And when I left, she had gone with them. I don’t think I would ever be able to forget.
The medic taped gauze over my ribs. “You’re done,” he said flatly.
Done. The word rang hollow, and I stood up, ignoring the tight pull in my side.
“What’s the status?” I turned and asked Viktor, who was being bandaged up just the same, but his other hand was hovering over an iPad.
“The penthouse had obviously been compromised,” Viktor said. “But we have extracted most of our men. The casualties are minimal, and the penthouse would require extensive repair. Everyone who was injured has gotten treatment, and most of them are now in recovery in our safe houses around the city.”
“Does Kliment know yet?”
“He knows, and he is furious to the point of killing someone, and to be honest, I think he wants that someone to be you right now. I am sure he will be here soon enough to tell you how he told you so and how you should have never walked away from him and how that is exactly what Elisse and the Chernykhs wanted.”
Of course he would do exactly that. Even I knew him that much.
He would see this as confirmation regarding everything he had predicted already.
It was proof for him that my “sentimentality” had invited disaster.
Proof that stepping away from operations had weakened us.
Proof that love was a liability after all.
I leaned against the counter, staring at the grain of the wood like it might offer clarity.
“She chose them,” I said again.
No one answered, because no one wanted to agree. But no one could disprove it either. The front door of the safe house opened without warning, and Viktor’s hand went to his weapon instantly. Mine followed out of instinct, but Ilana stepped inside.
Alone.
The door shut behind her with a deliberate click, and for a moment, no one spoke. It almost felt unreal to see her there, especially since it had been months since I had last seen her. She looked exactly the same. Composed and sharp-eyed and dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with weapons.
“You look terrible,” she said calmly.
I lowered my gun, and so did Viktor.
“What are you doing here, Ilana? How did your husband let you come here?”
“I am here to clean up your mess, of course.”
Viktor glanced between us.
“Leave us,” Ilana said, her tone filled with an authority she had not possessed before. The Chernykh household and name clearly suited her well. Viktor hesitated, so she turned towards him again. “Now.”
The room emptied reluctantly, with everyone, including the few soldiers scattering about, Viktor and the paramedics leaving at last, and the door closed behind them. Silence pressed in between us as Ilana took in the bandages, the blood, and the stiffness in my posture.
“You let them walk into your home and did nothing,” she said evenly.
“I dismantled the escalation earlier,” I said, knowing how it meant nothing and did not defend me at all. She was right to stand before me and question me.
“You dismantled your own brother, and you walked away from family, from what I have heard until now,” she corrected. “You did not dismantle the Chernykhs.”
“The man is your husband, and you are standing here asking me why I did not kill him? Have you lost your mind?” Her gaze sharpened, but she did not counter my attack.
“Tell me everything.”
I laughed once, humorless.
“You’re not in a position to demand anything out of me after I have just allowed your husband to walk out of my penthouse alive and take my wife with him.”
“I am not here for your anger, Fyodor. I am here to help, so it is best if you tell me because you, for one, are clearly not thinking straight right now. Now start speaking,” she repeated.
Something in her tone cut through the fog, and a part of me did want to tell her.
Before everything, when we were still in Russia, Ilana and I had always been close.
She had been the one person who understood my emotions and was always there to listen.
Even when she knew nothing about the business and our bratva involvement, she always knew just the right thing to say to comfort me. So I told her everything.
The masquerade. Kliment’s demands. The marriage.
The strategic beginning. The shift. Kliment’s plan.
My decision to walk away. The port. The confrontation.
The confession. The choice. The way Elisse had looked at me when I told her she was no longer leverage.
The way she had said she didn’t want to leave.
And finally, I told her about the ambush when everything she had said turned out to be a lie because she eventually chose her brothers over me and left with them.
“She was standing with them when I entered, and I could see they had been talking. And after everything was over, she walked out on me,” I finished.
Ilana didn’t interrupt once during my entire story.
“So that is your conclusion? That she chose Iosif and Avgust over you and left you to return home? That she walked out on you without fighting for you and did not want to stay? And that she called them there?”
“It’s the only one that fits.”
“Is it, though? You haven’t given her the benefit of the doubt even once then? That maybe she could be innocent in all of this and did nothing?” Ilana asked, staring at me with barely concealed anger. I did not know what to make of any of it.
“But she is not innocent in all of this. I am telling you what I saw with my own two eyes, and eyes do not lie, Ilana. You know this better than anyone else. I saw what she did, and I saw how she did it. The moment I told her I loved her and that I had walked away from Kliment and had chosen her over everyone and everything, she walked out of me.”
“You’re a strategist, Fyodor. Where the hell is your goddamn brain?”
I stared at her.
“They breached your building with surgical precision,” she continued. “And your intelligence didn’t detect any movements because they had gone dark in the past few days. And you assumed that meant that she had called them to the penthouse and given her your location?”
I clenched my jaw.
“Yes.”
“Fyodor, you do realize that the Chernykhs are smart and they have the Ungodly Brothers as their support. They know exactly how to find people who have disappeared, and they know exactly how to remain undetected. So why exactly would they need her cooperation,” Ilana asked quietly, “to attack you?”
The words landed heavily.
“They might not have needed her. But she helped them anyway.”
“No, Fyodor, this is where you are wrong. She did no such thing. They tracked you independently,” she continued. “Your movements were all being tracked, as were your supply lines. They also knew about your internal fracture with Kliment, even if the news was not certain. But they knew everything.
My silence stretched.
“They acted on instinct,” she said. “On pride and on blood, because they thought you had kidnapped their sister and they wanted her back.”
“Even if this is true, she was still standing with them rather than fighting with them. She still chose them and left with them rather than staying with me, and that says everything in itself.”
“She was unarmed, and they are her brothers. What did you expect her to do?”
I looked at her sharply. “You weren’t there. You would have understood exactly what I mean if you had been there and would have seen her make that choice in that moment. It was clearly visible to anyone.”
“No, I wasn’t there,” Ilana said calmly. “But I still have eyes.”
My pulse ticked up, “What do you mean?”
“She has done nothing,” Ilana said slowly, “since being brought back except fight everyone who has come near her.
The words hit like a blow.
“What?”