Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Vittoria
Amanda's apartment feels as familiar as my own bedroom. Maybe more familiar, actually. I've spent countless nights here since college, curled up on her ridiculous velvet couch, eating takeout and pretending the outside world doesn't exist.
Tonight, I need that pretense more than usual.
"He just... cancelled?" Amanda hands me a glass of wine. "No explanation?"
"Something came up." I take a long sip, the Pinot Grigio cool against my tongue. "That's literally all he said."
I sink into her couch—deep purple velvet, because Amanda doesn't do anything subtle—and tuck my feet under me.
Her living room is a shrine to maximalism.
Gold-framed mirrors, throw pillows in jewel tones piled so high you could drown in them.
The complete opposite of my tech-filled, minimalist space at the compound.
That's probably why I love it here.
"Something came up," Amanda repeats, settling beside me. She's in silk pajamas, her platinum hair piled in a messy bun that somehow looks editorial. "That's so... vague. Suspiciously vague."
Tell me about it.
Something came up. Rain check.
No explanation. No apology. No indication of when we'd reschedule.
"Maybe someone died," I mutter.
"Vittoria!"
"What? He's Bratva. People die around them all the time."
Amanda swats my arm. "That's dark even for you."
She's not wrong. But something in his message felt... off. Dmitri Baganov doesn't cancel. He manipulates, orchestrates, controls every variable until the outcome matches his vision. The man literally sabotaged my dinner with James Rogers just to take his spot.
So why cancel tonight?
"Anyway." Amanda refills her glass, even though she's barely touched it. Classic nervous habit. "Enough about your mysterious Russian. I have news."
"News news or 'I bought another pair of Louboutins' news?"
"News news." She bites her lip, and suddenly she looks less like a glamorous socialite and more like the girl I met freshman year—bright-eyed and desperate for connection. "I met someone."
I sit up straighter. "When? Where? Why am I just hearing about this?"
"His name is Dylan. He's a photographer—like, actual art photography, not Instagram stuff.
We met at that gallery opening last week.
" She's talking fast now, words tumbling over each other.
"He's smart, V. Like, actually smart. And he listens when I talk, which is apparently rare in men these days—"
"Amanda."
She stops. Takes a breath.
"He sounds great," I say carefully. "So why do you look terrified?"
Her smile falters. Just for a second, but I catch it. I always catch it.
"Because he wants to take things slow." She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Can you imagine? A guy who doesn't want to rush into bed? What's wrong with him?"
Nothing, I think. What's wrong is that slow means you might actually have to be alone with your thoughts.
I don't say it. I don't have to. We've known each other too long for that.
Amanda grew up in a penthouse three times this size, raised by a rotating cast of nannies while her parents chased their careers across continents.
Her mother is a fashion executive who speaks four languages and can't remember Amanda's birthday without a calendar reminder.
Her father runs some hedge fund in Singapore and sends checks instead of Christmas cards.
She learned early that empty rooms are the enemy.
"He texted me goodnight last night," she continues, swirling her wine. "Just... goodnight. With a little moon emoji. And I almost called him to come over anyway because the silence in this apartment was so loud I couldn't—" She stops. Swallows. "God, I sound pathetic."
"You sound human."
"Same thing, isn't it?"
I reach over and squeeze her hand. Her fingers are cold despite the warm apartment.
"Maybe slow is good," I offer. "Maybe it means he actually wants to know you, not just—"
"Sleep with me and disappear?" She snorts. "Novel concept."
My phone buzzes. I ignore it.
"You should check that," Amanda says. "Could be your mysterious cancellation with an explanation."
I want to say I don't care. That Dmitri Baganov can wait until hell freezes over for all I care about his explanations.
But my fingers are already reaching for the phone.
The screen glows with a single message: I'm sorry. Family emergency. I'll explain when I can.
Something loosens in my chest. Something I didn't realize had been tight.
"Well?" Amanda leans over my shoulder. "What'd he say?"
"Family emergency." I stare at the words. "He apologized."
"Dmitri Baganov apologized?" She whistles low. "Must be serious."
Must be.
I type back before I can overthink it: I hope everything's okay.
It will be. Goodnight, solnyshko.
"You're smiling," Amanda accuses. "You're smiling at your phone like an in love woman!"
"I am not."
"You absolutely are." She grins, and for a moment, she looks lighter. Less haunted by empty rooms and absent parents. "Oh my God, you actually like him."
I throw a pillow at her head.
She catches it, laughing, and suddenly we're both laughing, and the wine is spilling, and Amanda's apartment doesn't feel so empty anymore.
Neither does my chest.
Dmitri
The door to my office opens without a knock.
Karolina walks in. Her dark hair is pulled back, and her eyes carry exhaustion she's trying to hide. She settles into the leather chair across from my desk.
My sister. The psychiatrist. The one who escaped this world only to keep getting pulled back in.
"How are you handling it?" she asks.
I pour two glasses of vodka. Slide one across the desk. "Fine."
"Dmitri."
"I said fine."
She takes the glass but doesn't drink. Just watches me with that look she probably gives her patients. The one that says I see through your bullshit.
"You've been in this office for three hours," she says. "Everyone else is with him."
"Someone has to manage things."
"Manage what? It's two in the morning."
I don't answer. Karolina sets her untouched glass on the desk. "Why do you do this?"
"Do what?"
"Pull back into yourself. Every time something hurts, you disappear. You become..." She gestures at me. "This. The pakhan. The weapon. Like the rest of you doesn't exist."
My jaw tightens. "There's work to be done."
"There's always work to be done. That's not an answer." She leans forward. "Talk to me. Not as your sister trying to fix you. Just... talk. When's the last time you told anyone how you actually feel?"
The question lands somewhere uncomfortable.
"I don't know," I admit.
Karolina nods slowly. "I do."
"Karolina—"
"Father loved Mother," she says, and her voice is steady in that clinical way she's perfected. "Loved her more than anything in this world. More than the Bratva. More than power. Definitely more than us."
I go still.
"When she died, he didn't know what to do with that love. So he poured it into making you into something. A weapon. A legacy. Something to be proud of." She pauses. "He forgot he was supposed to love his children too. Not just shape them."
"He did what he had to do."
"He asked more and more from you. Every time you succeeded, the bar moved higher.
Every time you proved yourself, he found another test." Her eyes hold mine.
"You were never enough, Dmitri. Not because you failed.
Because he couldn't let you be enough. If you were enough, he'd have to stop.
He'd have to actually see you instead of her ghost."
My hand tightens around the empty glass. "I don't need therapy sessions."
"No, you need someone to tell you the truth." Karolina stands, smoothing her dress. "You're terrified that without the weapon, without the pakhan, there's nothing left. That Father was right to keep pushing because maybe there really isn't more to you than what he built."
"Karolina."
"But there is." She walks around the desk, stops beside my chair.
Her hand rests on my shoulder—a rare touch in a family that shows affection through loyalty, not contact.
"I've seen it. Aleksander's seen it. Even Natalia, who worships the ground you walk on, knows there's a man under all that armor. "
I don't move. Don't breathe.
"Father is dying," she says softly. "And when he's gone, you get to decide who you become. You can keep being the weapon he forged. Or you can figure out who Dmitri Baganov actually is."
She squeezes my shoulder once, then releases.
"I'll be with the others. When you're ready."
The door clicks shut behind her.
Karolina is right.
I know she's right.
The leather chair creaks as I lean back, staring at the ceiling. Shadows stretch across the plaster, moving with the flicker of the desk lamp. Somewhere down the hall, my family gathers around our dying father. And I'm here. Alone. Doing exactly what she accused me of.
Pulling back. Disappearing into the weapon.
The vodka burns going down. I pour another.
Here's what Karolina doesn't understand—what none of them understand. I know what I am. I've always known. The coldness isn't armor I put on. It's not a defense mechanism I developed to survive our father's impossible standards.
It's just... me.
Some people are warm. They feel things easily, express them freely. They cry at funerals and laugh at weddings and their emotions flow like water, natural and uncomplicated. Aleksander is like that. Natalia too.
I'm not.
I never have been.
When Mother died, I was eighteen. Old enough to understand death. Old enough to watch my father crumble into something unrecognizable. My siblings wept. They held each other. They needed comfort.
I stood apart. Not because I didn't love her. I did. But the grief didn't come out in tears. It settled somewhere deeper. It became something I carried rather than something I released.
Father noticed. Of course he noticed.
"You're strong," he told me that night, while my brothers slept and my sisters cried themselves into exhaustion. "The others feel too much. But you're like me. You'll be pakhan someday."
He meant it as praise.
Maybe it was.
Karolina thinks I can change. That once Father dies, I'll have some choice about who to become. Like I've been playing a role all these years, waiting for permission to be someone different.
But people don't change. Not really.
They just get better at pretending.
I've watched it happen. Men who claim they've "found God" in prison, only to return to the streets the moment they're released. My own father, who claimed he'd be different after Mother's death then spent years turning me into his perfect weapon.
The world is full of liars who've convinced themselves their lies are transformation.
I prefer honesty.
I am what I am.
Monster.
The word doesn't bother me. It's accurate.
What bothers me is the idea that I should pretend to be something else. That I should wrap my nature in pretty language and psychological explanations. That I should claim I'm "working on myself" or "trying to be better" when we both know it's performance.
At least I'm honest about the darkness.
At least I don't make promises I can't keep.