Chapter 13 Nadya
NADYA
The estate is silent. The lights in the foyer have been dimmed to a soft golden haze, casting long shadows over the marble floor. My dress is torn in two places, and I’m so bone-deep tired I can barely think straight.
Nikolai is stable.
Mila is safe.
But I’m still unraveling.
I close the door behind me as quietly as I can and move through the house like a ghost.
It’s well past midnight. Closer to one, maybe later.
I didn’t check. My mind has been underwater since the hospital.
I let the driver go a block before the gate.
Walked the rest of the way barefoot, feet blistered and raw.
The dress is ruined. Hair wild. Makeup smeared from tears I didn’t let anyone see.
I just want to make it to my room. Just want five hours of sleep and no questions.
I push the door open as quietly as I can, slip inside, relieved.
A voice cuts through the dark. “You’re late.”
I stop breathing.
He’s not on the bed. He’s in the corner—half in shadow, one shoulder pressed against the wall, arms crossed, gaze locked on me like he’s been waiting for hours. Which he probably has.
“Jesus Christ!” I gasp, my hand flying to my chest. “Why do you move like a goddamn cat?”
Konstantin doesn’t move. Doesn’t smile. Just watches me from the dark like he’s trying to decide whether to touch me or kill me.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I mutter, heart racing.
He uncrosses his arms, steps into the low spill of moonlight from the window. Then he steps closer, slow and deliberate, like a man who knows he owns the floor beneath your feet.
I don’t back away, but my fingers tighten around the edge of my ruined dress, holding it together like it’s armor. I can still feel the dried sweat at my temples, the stickiness of hospital air on my skin. My body aches. My heart is still in pieces somewhere in a sterile pediatric room.
But Konstantin doesn’t know that.
He stops just in front of me, close enough that I feel the heat of him.
“You left without a word,” he says, voice low. Too calm. “While I was on the phone.”
“I had to go,” I say quietly.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting tonight.”
His eyes narrow. Slowly, he begins to circle me, steps soundless on the wood floor. Like a storm studying its prey. “You ran.”
“I left.”
He doesn’t move away from me. Doesn’t give me room to breathe.
Instead, he stays right there, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body at my back, and I hate the way it makes my skin prickle—not from fear, but something far more dangerous.
His voice is quiet, almost lethal. “Tell me how you got out.”
I blink, recovering just enough to answer. “I walked out through the front doors.”
A beat of silence.
Then—
“I don’t believe that.”
I turn slowly, facing him now, forcing my expression to stay neutral. “Believe what you want.”
He’s watching me like I’m a puzzle that refuses to solve itself. His eyes flick over my face, down to my bare feet, the torn hem of my dress, the faint bruises blooming at my knees.
“I found your shoe,” he says. “By the garden wall.”
“Maybe I kicked it off.”
“Maybe you’re full of shit.”
His voice doesn’t rise. It doesn’t need to. It cuts anyway.
We stare at each other, and I feel the weight of every unspoken word pressing between us like a held breath. The moment stretches—taut, breathless—until Konstantin moves.
Not away.
Toward me.
His arms come around me fast, pulling me against his chest with a force that makes my breath catch. I gasp, not in fear—never fear—but in shock. In heat. My palms flatten against his chest, but I don’t push.
His mouth crashes into mine—punishing, claiming—and my defenses shatter.
He spins me in his grip and walks me backward toward the bed, his hands roaming over the torn fabric of my dress, catching on the seams, until I hear the rip—loud and final.
Fabric peels from my skin. I shiver.
He lays me down on the bed with a growl in his throat and drops to his knees between mine, dragging his mouth down my neck, my chest, until my back arches off the sheets. His fingers find me—hot, slick, pulsing—and I cry out, my hips jerking against him.
“Konstantin—”
But then he stops. His hands slide to my hips, and I feel him hook his fingers into my underwear.
“I needed to know,” he says, voice rough, “if you smell of another man.”
I stiffen, breath locking in my throat.
He leans over me again, slow, heavy, pressing me into the mattress with the full weight of his body. Our noses almost touch. His eyes bore into mine.
His voice drops to a whisper. “But you don’t,” he says. “You smell like me, zayka.”
The endearment coils through me like fire.
Little bunny.
A name meant to soothe. To own. To remind me exactly who I belong to. And right now—God help me—I belong to him.
I shove him back with both hands, breath ragged, heart slamming against my ribs.
He doesn’t resist. Just stills, watching me with those burning eyes as I scramble upright and tug at what’s left of my dress.
My hands fumble at the torn fabric, trying to make myself decent, trying to cover the skin he just had his mouth on. But the damage is done—seams shredded, shoulder slipping down, the hem torn too high to salvage.
“There’s nothing left to adjust,” he says quietly. His voice is low, unreadable.
I straighten slowly, refusing to meet his eyes. “If you think I’m spoiled goods…” I pause, swallowing the bile in my throat. “Then send me away.”
The silence after that is suffocating.
The words hang between us like a challenge. My chest rises and falls too fast. I hold my breath, waiting for the verdict. Waiting to see how disposable I really am.
He watches me in silence.
His eyes aren’t cold. They’re burning.
And that’s worse.
When he speaks, his voice is low. Measured. But I can hear the strain behind it. The crack beneath the surface.
“If I wanted someone perfect,” he says, “I wouldn’t have bought you.”
I blink. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No,” he says, stepping closer again, slowly this time. “It’s supposed to make you understand.”
His gaze sweeps over me—my flushed cheeks, the torn fabric slipping down my arm, the defiance in my eyes I don’t bother hiding.
“I knew you weren’t untouched,” he says. “Not really. I knew from the first moment you opened your mouth and didn’t cower.” He stops in front of me, lifts a hand, touches the edge of my jaw with the barest graze of his knuckles. “And I didn’t care then. I don’t care now.”
His knuckles graze my cheek, soft as breath. It’s the gentlest he’s touched me all night, and somehow that makes it worse. More dangerous.
I can feel the words forming in my throat like a bruise—too deep to ignore, too painful to say. I swallow them down, then taste blood and betrayal and every lie I’ve told to survive this place.
He’s so close. His body radiates heat. His voice is still low, still calm. Still pretending like he knows me. But he doesn’t.
He never did.
“You really don’t remember, do you?” I whisper.
The words slip out before I can stop them—soft, bitter, laced with something that tastes too much like heartbreak.
His hand stills against my jaw. He frowns. “What?”
I shake my head slightly, eyes falling to his chest, because I can’t bear to look at him. “Nothing,” I lie, but the silence has already stretched too long.
His fingers drop from my skin, slow and searching, as if trying to trace the meaning of what I just said.
But he won’t find it.
The irony carves itself deep into my ribs.
Because the man standing in front of me, breathing hard and claiming he doesn’t care if I am “untouched,” is the very same man who touched me first.
And then forgot me.
I can’t look at him this morning.
Not because I’m angry—though I am. Not because I’m ashamed—though I feel that too.
But because if I do, I know I’ll break.
The quiet tension from last night still clings to my skin like sweat. His touch. His voice. The way he stared at me, confused and hungry, asking questions with his hands that he couldn’t answer with his memory.
He doesn’t remember me. Not even a flicker.
And somehow, that’s the most humiliating part of all.
I sit by the window in my room, knees pulled to my chest, staring out over the estate grounds. The curtains are open, the sky a bleached gray, and the world outside feels just as heavy as the one inside me.
My phone lies beside me on the armrest. I haven’t touched it since last night.
But my mind can’t stop replaying it—the moment I pushed through the hospital doors, breathless, my heels abandoned, my lungs aching from the sprint.
I lean back against the wall.
The hospital was quiet but cold in that particular way children’s hospitals always are—too bright, too clean, trying too hard to be cheerful. I ran past the front desk, straight toward the pediatric ICU. And when I finally saw Nikolai, I collapsed.
Nikolai, my brave little boy, hooked up to wires and tubes, so small on the massive hospital bed. His chest rose too fast, his face too pale, and for a terrifying second, I couldn’t breathe.
I staggered forward, then sank into the chair beside him, curling over the edge of the mattress as if I could shield him with my body.
His lips were pale. One arm was taped with an IV, and his chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths.
Something in me cracked open.
I sank to my knees beside the bed, reaching for his hand. It was warm, too warm. My fingers closed around his tiny ones, and I lowered my head, pressing a kiss to the soft skin of his wrist.
“Mommy’s here,” I whispered. “I’m here, baby.”
That’s when I heard footsteps.
Irina entered quietly, her face drawn and pale. She didn’t speak, just walked over and placed her hand on my shoulder, grounding me. I leaned into it like it might hold me together.
Then the doctors came in.