Chapter 22 - Fyodor #2
“She has refused to speak to anyone, especially Iosif and Avgust. She is not eating, sleeping, or being complacent. She keeps demanding to return to you and keeps asking everyone for news of you and if you are doing alright. She has accused all her brothers of destroying the one place she chose to stay and of taking away the one person she wanted to stay with.”
“She has not been eating?” I asked, my mind stuck to that one sentence. It was already difficult to make her eat, but this sounded even more serious.
“No, because all she does is scream at them,” Ilana continued. “For hours.”
My hands curled into fists.
“She didn’t call them,” Ilana said quietly. “They tracked you through Viktor’s courier line three weeks ago. Viktor might have accidentally left the line unblocked at one instance when he made an invitation delivery to you, and they found out your address through it.”
Viktor.
Damn it.
“They waited,” Ilana said. “Until your guard shifted. Until you fractured from Kliment. They moved because they believed you were weakened and extracting Elisse would be easier at a time like this.”
I leaned back against the counter slowly.
“She told you she loved you.”
It wasn’t a question. I could see she already knew. Elisse might have told her. So I remained silent and didn’t answer.
“She told them the same thing,” Ilana said.
“Again and again. She keeps telling all of us that she loves you and that she just wants to go back to you. That she is a Romanov now. Iosif and Avgust are being very heartless right now and are refusing to listen to her, but Clara and Zehnya begged me to come talk to you because we cannot see her like this anymore. She is losing herself.”
My head snapped up, and the room seemed to tilt.
“She said it was her choice,” Ilana added.
The memory replayed in brutal clarity. Her voice in the living room. I’m choosing him. The look in her eyes. The way she had stepped between guns. Between pride and escalation. And I had been so blinded that I had asked her if she had called them. I had doubted her. In the worst possible moment.
“She saw your face when you left,” Ilana said quietly. “She knows what you think. She knows that you believe that she betrayed you, and that is what pains her even more. The fact that you might hate her. She keeps saying how she will never be able to live with herself if you hate her.”
“But she didn’t betray me, and I can never hate her.”
“No.”
I ran a hand through my hair as guilt hit slowly before hitting me all at once. I had built an entire defense in my head in less than an hour. I had assumed and concluded and had retreated.
“So she has been fighting everyone at home?” I asked. Ilana’s gaze softened slightly.
“Yes.”
“How.”
“Exactly like a Chernykh.”
A broken laugh left me.
“She threw a glass at Avgust when he tried to reason with her.” Despite everything, something in me almost smiled knowing that, even though I didn’t hate Avgust. He was Ilana’s husband, and the man had saved my life once, even when I had tried to kill him.
“She keeps demanding they bring her back to you or bring you back to her. One or the other. She just wants you.” The words felt like oxygen and fire at the same time.
“How could you have even let them take her? Why didn’t you fight for her to stay with you?” Ilana asked pointedly.
“I didn’t have a choice. Not when I thought she herself wanted to go back.”
“You always have a choice. But instead you chose to assume.” I closed my eyes briefly, knowing she was right. In war, hesitation killed, and in love, assumption destroyed.
“She believed you,” Ilana said quietly. “When you told her she was no longer leverage. And you didn’t believe her when she told you she didn’t call them and she didn’t want to go back.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
“I thought—” I began.
“You thought strategically.”
“Yes.”
“And forgot that this wasn’t a strategy anymore. It was love.”
My ribs ached when I inhaled. Not from the bruising but from something much deeper. Something that bordered on regret and longing.
“I love her,” I said finally.
Ilana nodded once. “I know.”
“And I walked away thinking she chose them.”
“You walked away because you thought you had lost her.”
“I had.”
“No,” Ilana said. “You almost did, but you can never lose someone when they love you as much as Elisse loves you.”
The distinction mattered.
“You can still fix this,” she added.
“How?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you want to fight for her the way she is fighting for you.”
I stared at the floor. The broken penthouse. The fractured look in her eyes when I left. The way she had screamed no. The way she had stepped between us, and I had only seen betrayal. What I had missed was desperation. The desperation to stay and to make me stay.
“She doesn’t know where you are, and she doesn’t think you will ever come back for her,” Ilana said.
The thought burned.
“I don’t want to start a war,” I said.
“No one is asking you to.”
“But if I go to them—”
“You don’t go to them.”
“Then what?”
“You make it clear,” Ilana said calmly, “that this was never about leverage.”
My mind began to recalibrate. Not in terms of retaliation. Not escalation. But precision and choice.
“She has to choose again,” Ilana said.
“Yes.”
“And this time,” she added, “don’t doubt her.”
I exhaled slowly, and for the first time since the penthouse fell, the spiral steadied.
“She fought to return, and she loves me,” I repeated, as if still trying to make myself believe it.
“Yes.”
“She didn’t betray me.”
“No.”
The relief was violent. Almost disorienting and was followed immediately by something heavier. Something like responsibility.
“I assumed the worst,” I said quietly.
“You are a Romanov after all.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No,” Ilana agreed. “It isn’t.”
Silence settled again, but it felt different now. Less suffocating and more focused.
“You’re going to move carefully now and think before you act,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And when you see her—”
“I won’t ask that question again.”
Ilana studied me for a long moment, then she nodded.
“Good.”
She moved toward the door.
“Ilana.”
She paused.
“If they refuse.”
“They won’t.”
“And if they do.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“Then you remind them,” she said quietly, “that she is not a possession.”
Neither was I. The door closed behind her, and the safe house suddenly felt smaller.
I looked down at my bandaged ribs and the dried blood.
The cuts. Everything that would eventually heal.
The only wound that mattered was the pain that she was going through right now, and I needed to get to her to end that.
I had been so certain and so sure about her betrayal that I had almost lost her because I couldn’t imagine she would choose me when it mattered most. But she had. And I had walked away. But I would never do that again. She was mine, and she was coming back home.