Chapter Six
Lauren
I thrash against the man’s grip, trying to twist free, but it’s useless.
I’m completely outmatched. He’s massive—easily three times my size—and he knows exactly how to immobilize someone. This isn’t some random burglar. This is a professional.
Did Ronan Aslanov send him?
Why?
There’s no time to think about that. Hannah’s screams pierce through me, her tiny hands clawing at my shirt as she buries her face against my chest. I can feel her whole body shaking.
“It’s okay, baby.” The lie burns my throat.
My phone—just a few feet away on the floor. Glass shards scattered between us and escape. I need to reach it. Need to call for help. But with Hannah clinging to me, I can barely move.
I try anyway. Elbow to his ribs. He barely flinches. I aim for his jaw, my knuckles connecting with something solid, and pain explodes through my hand.
Then his fist closes in my hair.
The scream that tears out of me is animal. Pure agony as he uses my hair like a handle, dragging me backward across the floor. Hannah’s cries intensify, her grip on me tightening until I can barely breathe.
“Please—” The word breaks apart. “Please, she’s just a baby—”
He doesn’t respond. Just keeps pulling, my scalp on fire, tears streaming down my face despite my efforts to stay quiet for Hannah’s sake.
This is it.
This is how we die.
New footsteps. Heavy. Fast.
The grip on my hair releases suddenly and I gasp, cradling Hannah closer as another figure in black crashes into my attacker.
They collide with brutal force, knocking the first man sideways. I scramble backward on my hands and knees, one arm locked around Hannah, the other reaching blindly for my phone.
My fingers close around it.
Call 911. That’s all I have to do. Call—
But I can’t look away.
The second man moves like violence incarnate. Larger than the first, faster, every punch landing with devastating precision. He wrenches the attacker’s arm back at an unnatural angle. The first man tries to fight back but he’s outmatched.
The second figure slams him against the wall so hard the impact shakes the floor. A framed photo crashes to the ground.
Hannah flinches in my arms, and I press my hand over her ear, trying to shield her from the sounds of bone meeting drywall.
They move into the lamplight. Both still masked. The second man’s hand closes around the attacker’s throat, cutting off his air supply. The choking sounds make my stomach turn.
“One move, and I’ll break your neck.”
Everything stops.
That voice.
Russian accent. Low and commanding and impossible.
No.
The room tilts. My vision blurs at the edges. I can’t breathe—can’t think past the roaring in my ears.
Is it—?
It can’t be him. I heard the gunshots. Heard his body hit the ground. I saw the news headline, read it until the words burned into my brain: Nikolai Rogov, billionaire with questionable reputation, found dead.
I stood by Sophia and Timur at his funeral. They held me while I shattered.
I buried him.
The second man’s eyes find mine across the chaos.
Deep blue. Unmistakable.
The world fractures.
Four years of grief, of rebuilding myself from nothing, of learning to breathe without him—all of it crumbles in an instant. My lungs seize. My heart stops and restarts and stops again.
Those eyes.
It’s him!
He’s alive.
He's alive, and he never told me.
The betrayal hits harder than any physical blow ever could. Tears blur my vision but I can still see him. Every impossible detail.
Nikolai Rogov.
Alive.
Those eyes—I’d know them anywhere. The same blue that haunted my dreams for four years. The same careful, guarded look he gave me in that shipping container when everything fell apart.
He’s bigger than I remembered. Broader through the shoulders, arms thicker with muscle beneath the black clothing. Four years have changed him, hardened him into something even more dangerous than before.
The attacker gurgles against the wall, fingers scrabbling uselessly at Nikolai’s grip. Nikolai doesn’t even flinch when the man tries to fight back—just pins him harder, cutting off his air with brutal efficiency.
Relief crashes through me first. We’re safe. Hannah’s safe.
Then comes everything else.
Betrayal. Rage. A grief so old it’s calcified into something sharp and permanent in my chest—and now I’m supposed to… what? Just accept that it was all a lie?
Four years.
Four years of mourning him. Of crying myself to sleep. Of watching our daughter grow up without her father.
He let me believe he was dead.
Hannah’s sobs cut through my spiral. I press my hand over her eyes, shielding her from the violence even as I can’t look away from him.
His gaze shifts to me. Still that same cautious intensity, like I’m a threat he’s calculating how to neutralize.
“Take Hannah to her room.” His voice cuts through the chaos like a command. “Now.”
Every instinct screams to refuse. To demand answers. To make him explain how he could do this to us.
But Hannah is trembling in my arms, and I’m already moving before my brain catches up to my body.
I hate that. Hate that after everything, some part of me still responds to his authority like it’s inevitable.
Hannah’s bedroom feels too small, too exposed. I sink onto her bed, pulling her into my lap as sounds erupt from the living room.
A crash.
Something breaking—glass or bone, I can’t tell.
The scrape of furniture being dragged across the floor. Grunts of pain. Russian words I don’t understand but recognize in my bones as threats.
“What’s happening, Mommy?” Hannah’s fingers twist in my shirt.
“I don’t know, baby.” The truth feels safer than another lie. “But you’re safe. I promise.”
If Nikolai is here, we’re safe. He proved that four years ago when he sacrificed—
Except he didn’t sacrifice anything. He survived. And he never told me.
Fresh tears spill down my cheeks. I try to blink them away for Hannah’s sake but I’ve passed the point of control. Too much has shattered tonight. My carefully rebuilt life. My grief. My understanding of the past four years.
What if he dies now?
What if this is real this time, and I lose him again before I can even process that I never actually lost him at all?
More violence. Glass shattering. Then Russian voices, rapid and angry, confirming what I already suspected—Aslanov sent that man.
Another impact. Then silence.
The silence is worse than the noise.
I hold Hannah tighter, barely breathing as a shadow appears in the doorway.
It grows. Takes shape.
Nikolai.
Blood drips from his knuckles in slow, steady drops, dark against the pale floor. He’s breathing hard, the black balaclava gone now—torn off in the fight.
I can see his whole face. The sharp angles of his cheekbones. The set of his jaw. Four years have carved new lines around his eyes, at the corners of his mouth.
He looks like Nikolai. Yet, he looks like a stranger.
“What—” My voice breaks. “How—”
He doesn’t answer. Just reaches for his phone, fingers moving across the screen with practiced efficiency.
He’s been dead for four years and now he can’t even look at me long enough to explain?
“We’ve been compromised.” He says it into the phone, voice clipped. “Da. We’re leaving.”
When I don’t move, his eyes snap to mine. Hard. Unyielding.
Hannah whimpers, burrowing deeper against my chest.
I stare at him from the edge of her bed, frozen.
“Come. Let’s go,”
“No.” The word comes out sharp. Defiant. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“We need to get out of here. All of us.” He gestures vaguely toward the living room. "Well. Except our friend out there."
There’s a body in my apartment. A dead man on my floor.
This is my life now. Again.
I look away from him because if I keep looking, I might break completely. Might start screaming and never stop.
But even with my eyes closed, I can feel him. His presence fills the room like a physical force, impossible to ignore.
How is he alive?
I heard the gunshots. Heard his body hit the ground.
How did he get here so fast? And why didn't he tell me?
Hannah’s crying intensifies. Nikolai shifts his weight, clearly uncomfortable with her distress. He doesn’t know how to handle this. Doesn’t know her.
He doesn’t know his own daughter!
“Lauren.” He steps closer, voice dropping. “We need to go. Now.”
I look up at him. My hand moves before I can think better of it.
The slap cracks through the room.
His head turns with the impact. He takes it without protest, eyes closing briefly before he looks at the floor.
“Bastard.” My voice shakes. “Explanation. Now.”
When he looks up again, something in his expression cracks. For just a brief moment, I see the man I fell in love with beneath all that cold control.
Pain.
He’s in pain.
“Aslanov knows I’m alive.” His voice is rough. “That puts you in danger. I'll explain everything, but we have to move.”
A thousand questions riot in my head. I want answers. I deserve answers.
But Hannah is still crying, and there’s a dead man in my living room, and Nikolai is asking me to trust him.
And despite everything—despite the lies and the grief and the betrayal—some traitorous part of me already knows what I’m going to do.
The same thing I’ve always done when it comes to Nikolai Rogov.
I follow.