CHAPTER 14
The Cost of Choosing Her
The bruises on her throat look like fingerprints pressed into wet clay.
I can't stop staring at them. Purple and black, spreading across her skin like ink bleeding through paper.
My hands did that. My fingers wrapped around her windpipe and squeezed until her pulse stuttered and her eyes rolled back and for three seconds—three endless, horrifying seconds—I thought I'd killed her.
The safe house is forty minutes outside Moscow, a property Dmitri purchased under a shell company three years ago for exactly this kind of emergency.
I've never been here before. Never needed to know it existed.
But now it's the only place in the world where Nadia can be dead and alive at the same time.
She's unconscious in the passenger seat, her head lolled against the window, her breathing shallow but steady.
The doctor Dmitri called met us at a rendezvous point and did what he could—stitched the deeper cuts, cleaned the burns, pumped her full of antibiotics and painkillers that will keep her under for another few hours.
He looked at me with something between professional detachment and barely concealed horror when he saw what I'd done to her.
I wanted to tell him it was necessary. I wanted to explain that every wound was calculated, every injury designed to convince witnesses who were looking for deception. I wanted to say that I stopped before it went too far.
But the bruises on her throat tell a different story.
My hands are shaking. They haven't stopped since I carried her out of the warehouse, since I felt her pulse flutter back to life under my fingertips and realized how close I'd come to ending it forever.
I grip the steering wheel harder, trying to force the tremors to stop, but my body refuses to obey.
This is what happens when you love someone enough to destroy them. This is the cost of choosing her over everything else.
The road curves through dense forest, the trees pressing close on either side like witnesses to my damnation. I check the rearview mirror for the hundredth time—no headlights, no pursuit, no indication that the Armenians suspect anything. The performance worked. Nadia is officially dead.
And I am officially the man who nearly killed her.
A sound from the passenger seat makes me flinch. Nadia shifts, her face contorting with pain even in unconsciousness. I want to reach over and smooth the lines from her forehead, but I can't make myself touch her. Not when my hands still remember the feeling of her pulse fading beneath them.
"Ilya."
Her voice is barely a whisper, rough and broken from the damage I did to her throat. I keep my eyes on the road.
"Don't talk. Your vocal cords need time to heal."
"Ilya." She reaches for me, her hand landing on my thigh. I flinch like she's burned me.
"We're almost at the safe house. You should rest."
"Look at me."
I can't. If I look at her—at the bruises, at the cuts, at the evidence of what I'm capable of when I love someone too much—I'll shatter into pieces that can never be reassembled.
"Please."
The word breaks something inside me. I pull the car to the side of the road, gravel crunching under the tires, and force myself to turn and face her.
She looks destroyed. The makeup and prosthetics are gone, washed away by the doctor's ministrations, leaving only the real damage beneath. Her left eye is swollen nearly shut. Her lip is split in two places. And her throat—
I look away.
"Hey." Her hand finds my face, her fingers trembling as they trace my jaw. "You stopped."
"I almost didn't."
"But you did."
"Three seconds, Nadia." My voice cracks on her name. "Three seconds longer and you would have been dead. For real. Because I couldn't—because I lost—"
"But you found your way back." She cups my face in both hands, forcing me to meet her eyes—one swollen, one clear, both filled with something that looks terrifyingly like love. "You found your way back to me."
"I don't know how." The confession tears out of me like a wound reopening.
"I don't know how I stopped. Everything I was trained to be, everything my father raised me to become—it was screaming at me to finish what I started.
And for those three seconds, I wanted to.
I wanted to complete the kill because that's what I am. That's what I've always been."
"That's not what you are." Her thumb traces the tears I didn't realize were falling. "That's what they tried to make you. But you chose something different. You chose me."
"I chose to nearly kill you."
"You chose to stop." Her voice is fierce despite its roughness. "You chose love over conditioning. That's not weakness, Ilya. That's the strongest thing you've ever done."
I want to believe her. I want to accept the forgiveness she's offering and let it wash away the horror of what I did in that warehouse. But every time I close my eyes, I see her face going slack, her body going limp, her life draining away under my hands.
My phone buzzes. Dmitri.
I answer without looking at Nadia. "We're twenty minutes out."
"The Armenians have dispersed." Dmitri's voice is calm, controlled—the voice of a man who just watched his son nearly murder a woman and is treating it like any other operational debrief. "They're satisfied the Petrova bloodline is ended. Viktor received confirmation an hour ago."
"Good."
"There's something else you should know." A pause. "Viktor designed the warehouse test."
"What?"
"The Armenian leak, the compressed timeline, the witnesses demanding closer verification—all of it was orchestrated. Father wanted to see if you would break when it mattered most. If you would choose the empire or choose her."
The words hit me like a physical blow. "He set us up."
"He tested you. And you failed." Dmitri's voice holds no judgment, no emotion. "The moment you stopped—the moment you chose her life over the performance—you proved you're no longer fit to inherit. Viktor knew you would. He's known for weeks. This was just confirmation."
"So the exile—"
"Was always coming. The only question was whether you would accept it or fight it." A pause. "You accepted it the moment your hands loosened around her throat."
I stare at the dashboard, trying to process what Dmitri is telling me. Viktor orchestrated the entire thing. Not to save Nadia or to eliminate enemies, but to prove that his eldest son had become compromised. To demonstrate that love had made me weak.
And I proved him right.
"What happens now?"
"Now you disappear. The safe house is stocked for six months. New identities are being prepared. You'll have seventy-two hours to decide where you want to go before the family cuts all ties permanently."
"And if I want to come back?"
"You don't." Dmitri's voice softens, just slightly. "You don't want to come back, Ilya. Not to what Viktor has planned for the organization. Not to what he'll demand of you if you try to reclaim your position."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you made the right choice. Even if it doesn't feel like it right now." A pause. "Take care of her. She's the only thing you have left."
The line goes dead.
I sit in silence, staring at the phone in my hand, trying to understand what just happened.
My father orchestrated my exile. He tested me, knowing I would fail, knowing I would choose Nadia over the empire.
And now I'm supposed to disappear into a new life with a woman I nearly killed, carrying nothing but the wreckage of everything I used to be.
"Ilya." Nadia's voice pulls me back. "What did Dmitri say?"
I can't look at her. "Viktor planned the whole thing. The test, the witnesses, the timeline—all of it was designed to prove I would choose you over the family."
"And you did."
"And I did." I start the car again, pulling back onto the road. "Which means I'm no longer a Morozov heir. I'm just... nothing."
"You're not nothing." Her hand finds mine on the gear shift. "You're the man who saved my life."
"I'm the man who nearly ended it."
"Those are the same person." She squeezes my fingers. "And I love both of them."
I don't respond. I can't. Because the man she loves is a monster who left bruises on her throat that will take weeks to fade, and I don't know how to reconcile that with the man who wants to spend the rest of his life making sure she never has to be afraid again.
The safe house appears through the trees—a modest cabin that looks nothing like the penthouse where I kept her captive. No security systems, no reinforced doors, no evidence of the empire I was raised to inherit. Just four walls and a roof and the promise of a life I never planned for.
I help Nadia inside, my hands careful to avoid the injuries I inflicted. She leans against me, trusting me with her weight despite everything I've done, and the trust feels like a knife between my ribs.
The cabin is sparse but functional. A bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen stocked with supplies. Dmitri was thorough. He always is.
I settle Nadia on the bed, arranging pillows behind her back, making sure she has water and painkillers within reach. She watches me with those mismatched eyes—one swollen, one clear—and I can feel her waiting for something I don't know how to give.
"Stay with me." Her voice is barely a whisper. "Please."
"You need to rest."
"I need you." She reaches for my hand. "I need you to be here when I wake up. I need to know that we survived this together."
"We did survive." I pull my hand away, and the hurt that flashes across her face makes me want to tear my own heart out. "But I can't—I can't be what you need right now. I can't look at you without seeing what I did. I can't touch you without remembering how close I came to—"
"Ilya—"
"I need time." The words come out strangled. "I need time to figure out who I am now. Who I'm supposed to be without the family, without the empire, without the identity I've had since birth."
"You're supposed to be with me." Her voice cracks. "That's who you are now. The man who chose me."
"The man who chose you nearly killed you." I back toward the door, putting distance between us because proximity is unbearable. "And until I can figure out how to live with that, I can't be the partner you deserve."
"I don't need you to deserve me." Tears are streaming down her face now, cutting tracks through the bruises and dried blood. "I just need you to stay."
"I can't."
I turn and walk out before she can say anything else. Before she can forgive me again with words I don't deserve. Before her acceptance can make me hate myself even more than I already do.
The car is still running. I slide behind the wheel and sit there, staring at the cabin where the woman I love is crying because I'm too broken to comfort her.
My phone buzzes. Dmitri again.
"The traitor survived."
The words don't register at first. "What?"
"Kozlov. The man who sold our plan to the Armenians. He wasn't at the warehouse. He's in the wind, and he's selling proof that Nadia is still alive to the highest bidder."
My blood runs cold. "How much time do we have?"
"Seventy-two hours. Maybe less." Dmitri's voice is grim. "The Armenians will know she's breathing before the week is out. And when they do, they'll come for both of you."
I look at the cabin. At the woman inside who trusted me with her life and is now alone because I couldn't face what I'd done to her.
"I'll handle it."
"You're not a Morozov soldier anymore, Ilya. You don't have resources, backup, or family protection. You're just a man with a price on his head and a woman who's supposed to be dead."
"Then I'll handle it as just a man." I end the call and stare at the steering wheel.
Seventy-two hours.
Seventy-two hours before everything we sacrificed becomes worthless. Before Nadia's staged death is exposed and every faction that wanted her eliminated comes hunting for the woman I nearly killed to save.
I should go back inside. I should hold her and tell her we'll figure this out together. I should be the partner she deserves instead of the monster who can't stop seeing his fingerprints on her throat.
But I can't.
Not yet.
I put the car in gear and drive into the darkness, leaving Nadia alone with her injuries and her forgiveness and the countdown to catastrophe that's already begun.