Chapter 27 - Sofia
The leather seat beneath me might as well be made of broken glass for all the comfort it provides.
Ten minutes of driving in silence, Alexei’s bloody hands gripping the wheel while I stare at nothing through the tinted windows.
Chicago slides past in a blur of streetlights and shadows, and I can’t make myself speak.
Can’t look at him. Can’t do anything except exist.
The smell of gunpowder clings to him, mixing with that cologne that still makes my damn body respond. Even now, even drowning in guilt, heat coils low in my belly. I hate myself for still wanting him when I'm actively destroying everything between us.
He saved me. Killed his own men to get to me. And all I've given him in return is this suffocating silence.
An SUV cuts us off without warning.
Black, no plates, blocking the road completely. Alexei brakes hard, tires screaming against asphalt. My body lurches forward, the seatbelt cutting into my chest, but I barely feel it through the numbness.
Two figures step out of the SUV. Just silhouettes in the headlights at first, but I know them before I can see their faces. The way they move: one with military precision, the other with that quiet grace that speaks louder than words.
Nico. Dante.
Alexei's hand moves to his gun.
"Don't." My voice comes out hoarse, the first word I've spoken since the warehouse. "They're my brothers."
Alexei pulls out his gun anyway and gets out of the car in one fluid motion. The door slams with enough force to echo off the empty buildings around us. A perfect standoff, three men waiting for each other to make the first move.
How did they find us? The question floats through my mind but I can't grasp it, can't care.
Maybe they've been watching the warehouse district.
Maybe they have contacts who saw the firefight.
Maybe it doesn't matter. The Weapon notes automatically: twelve feet to Nico's gun, eight to Dante's.
Three seconds to disarm either. But the woman in me just wants to collapse.
Nico and Dante stand armed but not aiming, a perfect standoff where everyone's waiting for someone else to make the first move.
"How did they know where to find us?" Alexei's voice is flat, controlled, but I hear the edge underneath.
I don't answer because I don't know. Don't care.
Nico walks toward the car with his hands visible but ready, that careful balance between non-threatening and prepared for war.
The scent of his cinnamon gum reaches me even through the closed window.
He quit smoking years ago but never lost the oral fixation.
Dante hangs back, watching everything with those dark eyes that miss nothing.
Always watching, always understanding more than anyone wants him to.
Nico stops at my window and looks at me through the glass.
His hazel eyes scan my face, taking in the blood on my cheek from earlier, the blankness in my expression.
I see the moment he understands. Marco must have called him.
Told him what I confessed. The guilt sits like broken glass in my throat, cutting me with every swallow, every breath.
But there's no disgust in his face. Just sorrow so deep it makes my chest ache.
Alexei positions himself between his vehicle and Dante. Three killers on a dark street, and my heart breaks knowing I'm the reason they might destroy each other.
"We're taking her home," Nico says, his voice carrying that edge I remember from his military days. The tone that means negotiation is optional but compliance isn't.
"She IS home." Alexei's words come out like bullets. "She's with me."
Even destroyed, even covered in blood, my body responds to his claim. The possessive edge in his voice makes wetness gather between my thighs, and I hate myself for it. How can I still want him when I've already shattered what's between us?
Dante's hands move in swift, precise signs. Nico translates without taking his eyes off Alexei: "She doesn't look like she wants to be with you."
It's not an accusation. It's just truth, delivered with Dante's trademark ability to see through everyone's bullshit. Because I'm sitting in this car like a corpse, unable to look at anyone, unable to want anything except for this to end.
"You kidnapped her," Nico continues, taking a step closer. "Held her prisoner. Now you've dragged her into a war with your own family."
"I just saved her life." Alexei's voice drops to that register that makes my pussy clench. "Killed my own men to get her away from my cousin."
"Your cousin. Your mess." Nico's jaw tightens. "Your family's twisted games that keep pulling her in."
"And where was YOUR family when my cousin took her off the street?" The words crack like a whip. "Where were you when she needed protection? Where was Marco?"
Nico flinches. He knows something's wrong beyond just this. The silence that follows is heavy with everything we're not saying. Marco's words echo in my memory: Get out. Now I'm leaving another home, another man who won't want me once he knows the truth.
"Nine years of truth between us, Sof," Nico says quietly, and the personal hurt in his voice cuts deep. "Nine years. And you chose to break that for him?"
Dante steps forward with that quiet authority he carries, the kind that makes everyone stop and listen even though he never makes a sound. His presence alone shifts the dynamic, turns this from a standoff into something else.
He signs to me through the window, movements gentle but insistent. Nico doesn't translate this time. These words are just for me. What do you want, little sister? Do you want to go with him or come with us?
The question hangs in the air like a blade.
What do I want? I should want Alexei. Should want the man who just destroyed his own family for me.
But I can't look at him. Can't face what I've done, what I'm hiding.
The truth about Mikhail sits like poison in my throat, and I taste copper with every swallow.
And Nico, who trained me, who made me promise never to lie, who held me together when I was falling apart. He's here. Even knowing something terrible happened, he came.
I open the car door. The sound is too loud in the tense quiet, metal creaking.
My legs shake as I step out, my shoes dull against cold asphalt.
My feet are still bleeding from my flight through the forest, and each step sends pain up my legs.
The rough ground makes me unsteady, and I have to focus to keep my balance.
The wind hits my bare legs, and I remember his hands there just hours ago at the lakehouse. My body is a traitor, responding to memories when my heart is breaking. My skin aches for his touch even as I force myself to stand.
"Sofia." Alexei's voice cracks on my name, and his breathing changes. I can hear it, rough and uneven, like he's fighting for control.
I almost reach for him. My hand actually moves before I catch myself, fingers curling into a fist. The Weapon whispers that I could end this three different ways, but the woman in me can barely stand.
I still can't look at him. "I need to go with them."
"Why?" The single word holds so much: confusion, betrayal, desperate need for understanding.
"Because I can't explain it to you." The words taste like ash, and I'm holding back tears so hard my throat aches. "Not yet. Maybe not ever."
"That's not an answer."
"It's all I have."
I'm choosing my brothers. Last time, I chose the wrong love, the wrong side, the wrong loyalty. I can't do that again.
I expect rage. Expect him to grab me, to remind me that I'm his, that he owns me in ways that go deeper than possession. Instead, I get something so much worse.
Hurt. Raw, bleeding hurt that makes me finally look at him.
His face is still splattered with other men's blood, white shirt ruined beyond salvage. The gunpowder scent is stronger now, mixing with sweat and violence. But it's his eyes that destroy me. Pale and shattered, looking at me like I've ripped something essential out of his chest.
"You're leaving me." Not a question. A statement of fact that sounds like a death sentence.
"I'm giving you time to realize you shouldn't want me."
"I'll always…"
"Don't." My voice breaks. "Don't say something you can't take back."
Because if he says he'll always want me, always love me, I might not be strong enough to leave.
Might confess everything right here on this dark street and watch the last person who matters turn away in disgust. My body screams to run back to him, to let him hold me while I confess everything, but I force my feet to stay planted.
The silence stretches between us, heavy with everything we can't say. His hands clench and unclench at his sides, and I can see him fighting every instinct that tells him to keep me.
Dante moves forward, signing directly at Alexei now. The movements are simple, clear enough that even someone who doesn't know sign language can understand the meaning. Nico translates anyway, voice soft: "You love her."
It's not a question.
"That's why you'll let her go," Dante continues through Nico's translation.
"And if I don't?" Alexei's voice is barely controlled violence.
"Then we find out how many more people have to die tonight." Nico delivers Dante's words with perfect calm, but his hand rests on his weapon.
Tension coils through the buildings like electricity. One move from Alexei and this street becomes a bloodbath. The standoff holds for three heartbeats, four, five. I can hear Alexei's breathing, harsh and ragged, the sound of a man at war with himself.
Then Alexei steps back. One step. Then another.
"Go." The word comes out rough, destroyed. "Before I change my mind."
"Alexei…"
"GO."
I walk toward my brothers' SUV, each step feeling like dying.
Like leaving pieces of myself on the asphalt between us.
My shoes thud against the concrete, the sound too loud in the silence, marking my path away from him.
Nico's arm comes around me, holding me upright when my knees threaten to give out.
His familiar scent of cinnamon should be comforting, but it just reminds me of everything I've betrayed.
Dante opens the back door and I climb in, my body moving mechanically.
I look back once. Just once.
Alexei stands alone in the street, blood still on his face, on his hands.
Other men's blood, spilled for me. The streetlight casts him in harsh shadows, makes him look like something out of a nightmare or a dark fairy tale.
The prince who rescued the princess only to watch her choose to leave anyway.
He saved me and I'm abandoning him, just like I abandoned the truth about my father's death, just like I abandon everything that matters when it gets too hard to face.
The image burns itself into my memory. Him standing there, destroyed and alone, watching me leave. It joins all the other images I'll never be able to forget. My father's last smile. Mikhail teaching me Russian. Marco telling me to get out.
Now this. Alexei letting me go because he loves me too much to force me to stay.
The SUV pulls away, and I watch him disappear in the side mirror until the street swallows him completely. Nico sits beside me in the back while Dante drives, his presence solid and familiar even though everything else feels like it's dissolving.
The silence lasts exactly three blocks before Nico speaks.
"Marco told us what happened. What you confessed."
I close my eyes, tasting salt from tears I won't let fall. "And you came anyway."
"You're our sister."
"I don't deserve…"
"Stop." His voice goes hard, then immediately softens. "We'll figure it out. But not tonight. Tonight you just rest."
Dante's hands move, signing in the rearview mirror where I can see: “You were fifteen years old.”
"That doesn't excuse…"
More signs: "It doesn't excuse anything. But it explains everything."
Fifteen years old. A child in love with a boy who asked her to keep a secret. A girl who thought one day would make a difference. Who thought she could have both: keep her promise to Mikhail and save her father too. Who was wrong about everything.
I don't have the energy to argue. Don't have the strength to explain that being young doesn't make me less guilty. Good men died because I stayed silent. My father kissed me goodbye and I let him go. The guilt sits like shattered glass in my chest, cutting with every heartbeat.
Nico takes one hand off the steering wheel and reaches back to squeeze my knee. "We've got you, Sof."
I want to believe him. Want to believe there's something left to save, some piece of me that isn't poisoned by what I've done. But all I can think about is the trail of destruction I leave everywhere I go.
Mikhail, dead because I loved him enough to keep his secret.
Papa, dead because I kept that secret too well.
Marco, shattered because his baby sister chose a Russian boy over their own blood.
And now Alexei, standing alone on a dark street, covered in blood he spilled for someone who can't even tell him the truth. Even now, miles away, my body aches for him. The memory of his hands, his mouth, the way he looked at me like I was worth burning the world down for.
I break everyone I touch. Maybe Kaz was right. I am poison, destroying everything good that gets too close.
Chicago slides past the windows. Normal people living normal lives, completely unaware that some choices can't be undone. Some betrayals cut too deep to heal. Some truths are too terrible to speak out loud.
Behind us, somewhere in the night, Alexei is probably still standing there. Or maybe he's driving back to some safe house, washing my absence off his hands along with the blood. I can still smell him on my skin. Gunpowder and amber, violence and tenderness mixed together.
I wonder if he'll forgive me when he learns the truth.
I wonder if I'll ever forgive myself.
I already know the answer to both.