10. Sophia
SOPHIA
Ian puts the kettle on with the automatic gesture of a man who needs something to do with his hands but then grabs two beers from the fridge.
Andrei takes the beer and sits at the kitchen table.
I sit across from him, and Ian glances my way, gives me a look, then grabs another beer, pops the cap, and places it in front of me.
Nobody speaks. The silence is suffocating, thick with everything unsaid, every terrible possibility I’ve been trying not to imagine for twenty-five days.
Finally, as he rolls his shoulders, Ian says, “Tell us, Andrei. All of it.”
Andrei's eyes find mine briefly. Hold.
I don't look away.
He nods once. Something that might, in another man, be the beginning of respect.
"Last confirmed contact was twenty-six days ago," he says. His accent is exactly as I remember it—flat, clipped, stripped of anything decorative. "He checked in. Said he was going to the estate." A pause. "To confront her."
Ian's hand on the counter tightens until the wood creaks. "Alone?"
"We offered a team. He refused." The residue of a lost argument in his voice. "Said it had always been him and her. Said bringing bodies in would tip her off before he could—" He stops. "He refused the team."
“Of course he did.” Ian stretches his arms, leaning his head down between them before cranking his neck, like he’s expecting the worst. “And after?”
"Nothing." Andrei's hands are flat and still. "We haven’t been able to contact him since.”
“Fuck,” Ian mutters, and my heart tries to claw up my throat, a wild, desperate thing battering against my ribs.
“We've been monitoring her channels, her people, the estate. No movement that suggests he got out." Andrei says it plainly, without softening. "If he'd gotten out, there would have been contact."
The kettle boils. Ian doesn't move to take it off. It screams quietly for a moment then clicks off on its own. The sound cuts through me like a knife, sharp and final.
“Something’s wrong,” Ian says, voice low. “He never goes this long without contacting at least one person on the team.”
Andrei nods, and I notice the way his expression falls. “There’s more.”
Ian stills, meets his gaze. “What?”
Andrei looks at the table. One beat. Then up. "Mary's dead."
The words are simple, and they land like something physical, like a change in air pressure, like the moment before a storm when everything goes very still. My stomach drops. The room spins. A cold, crushing weight slams into my chest, stealing the breath from my lungs.
“Reth’s sister,” I murmur, my pulse a drumbeat between my ears, frantic and deafening.
Ian’s frozen as he stares at Andrei. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“I wish I was.”
“Motherfucker!” Ian slams his fist into the counter, and I jolt, my hand flying to my mouth, tears already burning my eyes.
Mary. His little sister. The reason he survived for so long, the reason he let Valeria destroy him little by little.
My chest caves in with a grief that isn’t even fully mine.
I can feel his pain like it’s carved into my own bones, the way this will gut him, the way it will make him believe he failed the one person he never wanted to fail.
The terror of what this will do to the man I love is so sharp it feels like knives twisting under my skin.
If Reth is still alive—and he has to be alive—this will shatter whatever pieces of him are still whole.
“This will destroy him,” I say softly to no one in particular, my voice trembling.
“Jesus Christ.” Ian’s face has gone bone-white, and he drags a hand down his face, eyes wild, and for one terrifying second I think he might put his fist through the wall. “What the fuck happened?”
"We’re not sure."
“You’re not sure?” Ian blurts. “What the fuck, man?”
Andrei throws his hands in the air. “Listen, all we know is Mary’s dead. We don’t know how or what happened.”
“Do you know who?”
Andrei’s demeanor shifts. The flat, efficient soldier who walked through the gate moments ago is gone.
He leans back slightly in his chair, shoulders tightening, eyes dropping to the table like the wood grains suddenly hold answers he doesn’t want to give.
His jaw works once, twice. The reluctance is palpable—this is a man who has delivered bad news before, but this particular piece tastes like poison even to him.
“We, ah…we know the story that’s been circling,” he says finally, the word dragged out like it costs him. His voice is lower now, almost reluctant. “But we haven’t been able to confirm it.” He rubs a hand over his mouth, exhaling hard through his nose. “Valeria’s people… they’re—”
“Spit it out, goddammit.”
“They’re claiming it was Reth.”
The silence that drops over the kitchen is absolute.
Ian goes completely still, the kind of stillness that feels like the moment before a detonation. My stomach plummets, a sick, twisting freefall that leaves me dizzy, my vision narrowing at the edges as panic surges hot and choking through my veins.
“They’re saying he came in high, out of his mind,” Andrei continues, forcing the words out like each one burns. “That Mary tried to talk him down and he… lost it. They’ve got witnesses. Dead security guards. Security footage. A whole fucking narrative.”
“No.” The word rips out of Ian, low and broken. “No. That’s bullshit.”
“I know,” Andrei cuts in quietly, but his eyes are haunted. He doesn’t want to believe it either. “But it’s a clean story, Ian. Too clean. And right now, it’s the only one anyone outside this room is hearing.”
“Reth would never…” The words tear out of me, fierce and certain, no hesitation, no crack of doubt. “He would never do that. He would never kill his own sister.”
The denial is iron in my chest, absolute.
I know him. I know him—the man who carried the weight of protecting Mary for years, who walked back into hell again and again so she could live free of it.
He might be a killer, but he’s not a monster who would murder the little girl he promised to protect.
My belief in him is the only steady thing left in this storm.
Ian’s pacing now, shoulders rigid, spitting out profanities that shave the air.
“What about Reth?” I ask, my voice cracking with the weight of everything I’m trying not to scream. “Do you have any idea where he might be? If he’s still—”
“Don’t fucking say it.” Ian points at me, eyes wild with rage. “Do not fucking say it. He’s alive, okay?” His jaw clenches so hard it looks painful. “He’s fucking alive.” He looks at Andrei. “Right?”
The pause before Andrei answers is the worst thing I’ve experienced in my entire life. My breath catches. My hands are shaking in my lap. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff and the ground is already crumbling.
Every second stretches into an eternity of pure, soul-crushing terror—the fear that the man I love more than anything is gone, or worse, trapped and suffering in ways I can’t even imagine. My heart is a wild, frantic thing trying to claw its way out of my chest. Please. Please let him be alive.
"We think she has him," Andrei states. "Inside the estate. There hasn’t been movement that suggests otherwise.”
The room tips violently. I put my hand flat on the kitchen counter, and I breathe. But it’s not enough.
The panic rises anyway, hot and choking, flooding every inch of me until I feel like I’m drowning.
Valeria has him. She’s had him all this time.
Three weeks of me on a bench by a moat watching swans and counting days and telling myself the flowers not coming was logistics, was Japan, was nothing to read into—and the whole time she has had him in that estate.
She killed Mary and she kept him and she built a story around his disappearance that gives everyone a reason not to look.
I look at Ian, tears silently running down my face, my whole body trembling with the force of it all.
His hands are on the counter closed into fists and his knuckles are white and he is doing the thing I have watched him do for twenty-five days—holding it together, compressing it, keeping it behind glass—but the glass has a crack in it now that wasn't there before, running edge to edge.
His eyes are wet. His jaw is locked so tight it looks painful.
"Ian," I say, my voice breaking on his name like fragile glass under too much pressure.
He looks at me, and I choke on a sob because his expression is one I’ve never seen before.
It’s not the controlled mask he’s so good at wearing.
This is raw, exposed, devastating—the face of a man who has just watched his entire world fracture and is trying, with everything left in him, not to shatter along with it.
There’s fury there in his eyes—cold, lethal, barely leashed—but underneath it is something far worse.
The knowing that something fundamentally destructive had just taken shape.
That he no longer holds on to the certainty that Reth is okay.
"We're going to get him," he says.
But the words don’t land. They can’t. Because suddenly the full weight of it crashes over me like a tidal wave—Valeria has him. My mind spirals, dark and vicious, flashing images I can’t stop: Reth, broken, paint cracking on his face, blood on his hands, Valeria whispering in his ear.
Has she finally done it?
Has she finally broken the last good piece of him? Is the man who held me like I was his salvation gone forever, replaced by the painted killer she always wanted him to be?
A broken sound tears out of my throat—half sob, half scream—and my legs give out. The room spins. I’m falling, clutching at the table, at anything, because the terror is too big, too sharp, ripping through me like claws.
“She has him,” I gasp, voice cracking into something wild and unhinged. “She has him, and she’s breaking him, Ian. She’s breaking him for good this time. He’s gone. He’s gone. I’ve lost him. Oh, God, I’ve lost him—”
My chest is caving in, breath coming in short, panicked gasps that won’t fill my lungs. The panic is madness now, pure and blinding. I can’t see straight. I can’t think past the image of Reth’s winter-blue eyes going flat and empty, just like my nightmares. My goddamn nightmares. It’s coming true.
“Oh, God.” My hands are shaking so violently I can’t even hold on to the counter. A raw, animal sound rips out of me as I start to slide to the floor.
Strong arms catch me before I hit the ground.
Ian. His grip is iron around my waist, pulling me against his chest, one hand cupping the back of my head as he holds me upright. “Sophia. Breathe. Breathe with me. In… out. Come on, Crazy. In… out.”
I can’t. I’m shaking too hard, sobs tearing through me, the terror so overwhelming it feels like I’m being torn apart from the inside. “He’s gone, Ian. She has him and she’s destroying him and I wasn’t there—I wasn’t there—”
“You are here,” he says fiercely, his voice rough but steady, grounding me.
He presses my face into his shoulder, holding me so tight it almost hurts.
“You’re right here. And he’s still fighting.
He’s still fighting for you, okay? So you better do the same, Crazy.
You better fucking fight for him. Now breathe. ”
I try.
I clutch at his shirt, fingers digging in like he’s the only real thing left, forcing air into my burning lungs. The sobs keep coming, but slower. Still raw. Ian doesn’t let go. He keeps breathing with me, one hand rubbing firm circles on my back until the worst of the spiral eases.
When I finally pull back enough to look at him, his eyes are wet but burning with something fierce and unbreakable.
“I’m going to find him,” he says, voice low and absolute, every word carved from pure determination.
“I swear to you, Sophia. I will tear that fucking estate apart stone by stone if I have to. I will drag him out of there—no matter what she’s done to him, no matter how broken he is—and I will bring him back to you. Alive. That’s a promise. You hear me?”
I nod, tears still streaming down my face, but something steadies inside me at the raw conviction in his voice. He means it. With every piece of him, he means it.
While still holding me, Ian looks at Andrei. “Tell us everything. Every detail. Leave nothing out.”