Chapter 2 Konstantin
KONSTANTIN
The study is too quiet.
We left the old house behind days after the massacre.
Now we live in an apartment high above the city, nothing like the place we called home.
The rooms are wide and bare, the walls painted the same lifeless white as every rental in this part of town, and the only view is a grid of distant lights beyond the windows.
There’s no clutter, nothing personal—a handful of clothes in the closet, a pair of Mila’s shoes near the door, the faint trace of Nadya’s perfume on the air after her showers.
We’ve kept it empty by choice, as if having less to lose might protect us from another kind of loss.
I spend my nights in what passes for a study, though it could just as easily be mistaken for a storeroom—a battered old desk, a mismatched chair, and a single photograph taped to the wall.
If I close my eyes, I can almost see Lev sitting opposite to me.
His wry smile as he quietly observed me, his dry commentary on everyone’s stupidity, the relentless scrape of his chair—gone, leaving nothing but silence pressed up against the bookshelves and the dust that settles too fast in this half-lit room.
I stare at the photograph on my desk. Mila’s cheeks are smeared with cake, her grin wide and wild, arms around Nikolai, who’s only just stopped squirming long enough to look at the camera.
The picture is slightly bent, the glass smudged with fingerprints I never bothered to clean.
I pick it up, run my thumb along the edge, as if I can reach through it and pull him back.
We’ve checked everywhere. Every safe house, every trusted contact.
Every warehouse, every car on every camera in a fifty-mile radius.
We’ve shaken down informants and bribed men who owe me more than their lives.
Still nothing. It’s like Nikolai slipped through a crack in the world and took the air with him.
Every minute I spend looking feels like another admission of failure, and every minute I don’t feels worse.
I sit back, close my eyes, and let my head drop into my hands for a moment longer than I want. There’s a tightness in my chest that never goes away—not grief, not quite, just an ache that keeps mutating, growing heavier the more I ignore it.
The door creaks softly. I don’t need to look up to know it’s Nadya. Her footsteps are quiet, cautious, but she never hesitates. She stands on the threshold for a moment before stepping inside, closing the door behind her with a click that sounds much too final.
She moves to stand beside me, not saying anything right away. For a while, there’s only the sound of her breathing, slow and even, a counterpoint to the storm inside my own chest.
“Any news?” she asks, her voice gentle but edged with the same exhaustion I feel. The hope in her words is paper-thin, nearly gone.
I shake my head, setting the photo down carefully. “Nothing. No ransom. No sightings. It’s like he vanished.” I can hear the strain in my own voice, the guilt that makes everything else taste bitter.
She sinks into the chair across from me, arms wrapped around her torso like she’s holding herself together by sheer will. For a second, I want to reach for her, to find something to say that isn’t empty, but I can’t find anything that won’t make it worse.
“We’ll keep looking,” she says quietly, almost a whisper. “We don’t stop. That’s all we can do.”
I nod, forcing myself to meet her eyes. She looks older than she did weeks ago—lines I don’t remember, a tiredness I put there. I don’t know if she blames me, or if she’s just trying to survive.
“Lev would’ve known what to do,” I say, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “He would’ve found some clue I missed.”
She closes her eyes, just for a moment, then reaches across the desk, her fingers brushing mine. “You’re not alone in this. Even when it feels like it.”
I want to believe her. I want to be the man who can fix things, who can protect the people he loves. But right now, all I have are the ghosts in this room and a photograph I can’t look away from.
Nadya’s hand rests on mine, her touch almost hesitant at first, but soon her fingers curl around mine with a quiet insistence that I can’t ignore.
For a long moment I avoid her eyes, ashamed of how lost I am, how close I am to breaking, but then I look up.
The room is dim, shadows stretching across the bookshelves, but her gaze is clear—dark with pain, but full of a heat that I haven’t felt in days.
The space between us hums with tension, the kind that has nothing to do with anger and everything to do with longing.
Her thumb moves along the back of my hand, a small, deliberate motion that makes my chest ache.
I realize how much I’ve missed her, not just in the shared grief, but in the way her presence always cuts through my self-doubt and rage.
I push back my chair and rise, unsure what to say, but she’s already coming around the desk, closing the distance, her breath just a little uneven.
She lifts her hands to my face, tracing the lines drawn deeper by loss and exhaustion, and I let myself fall into her touch.
For the first time in days, the emptiness in my chest seems to crack open, letting in something warmer, something alive.
Then her mouth finds mine, and all the anger and fear, all the things we can’t say out loud, come pouring out in a kiss.
She clings to me, fingers tangled in my shirt, her body pressed hard against mine, and I hold her tight, desperate to keep her from slipping away like everything else.
The kiss turns rough, then searching, then frantic, as if we can outrun the pain and silence by losing ourselves in each other.
I feel the edge of her teeth, the softness of her lips, the way her breath stutters against my jaw.
My hands move to her waist, then her back, pulling her closer, wanting to memorize the feel of her, to ground myself in the one thing that still feels real.
Her hair slips through my fingers and she moans softly into my mouth, the sound going straight through me.
When we finally pull apart, both of us are breathing hard, our foreheads touching, her hands still tangled in my hair. For a moment, I almost forget why the world hurts so much. There’s only Nadya, her pulse wild beneath my hands, her eyes locked on mine.
When I kiss her again, she tastes like grief and fire and longing, her mouth wild against mine, and as I drag her closer, every thread of restraint I’ve clung to since that night finally snaps.
My hands roam over her hips, up her back, crushing her to me as she claws at my shirt, desperate and wordless.
Nadya’s fingers tug my shirt loose, frantic, impatient, and I pull it over my head, not caring where it lands.
She peels her own sweater off, letting it fall to the floor, her skin glowing in the low light, the swell of her breasts rising and falling with every shallow breath.
I can’t look away. She’s trembling, but her eyes never leave mine, daring me to take everything I need.
My hands cup her breasts, thumbs brushing over soft skin, and she gasps as my mouth moves down, kissing her throat, her collarbone, my teeth scraping along her pulse.
I suck a mark into her skin, just above her heart—a dark, perfect bruise that will last for days—because I need proof that I was here, that she’s still mine.
She arches into me, fingers winding in my hair, urging me lower.
I trail my mouth down, kissing the swell of her breast, circling her nipple with my tongue until she shudders, a moan catching in her throat.
I take her nipple between my lips and suck, hard, and she lets her head fall back, a broken sound spilling out of her.
Her hands rake over my shoulders, nails digging in, and the sharp pain grounds me, reminds me that we’re still alive, still flesh and need and memory.
“Konstantin,” she breathes, her voice wrecked, desperate.
I slide my hands down to her jeans, unbuttoning them with a roughness I can’t hide.
She helps me, working the zipper down, pushing the fabric past her hips until she’s bare in front of me.
I strip away what’s left of my own clothes, not breaking the kiss, not giving either of us a chance to hesitate.
We crash back together, skin to skin, her body hot and soft beneath my hands.
I kiss her again, deeper, tasting everything she’s held back, everything we both need.
My mouth finds her neck, biting another mark just below her jaw, and she groans, clutching at me like I’m the only thing keeping her from falling apart.
There’s nothing gentle left in us, nothing slow. Only need and heat, the taste of her skin, the sound of her gasps echoing through the empty study as I pull her down to the rug.
We hit the rug, tangled together, mouths crashing, hands everywhere, desperation spilling out with every rough kiss and frantic tug. Nadya pulls me down on top of her, her thighs parting for me, and I press myself between them, the heat of her skin against mine sending a jolt straight through me.
She’s already wet, her breath ragged as I slide my hand down, finding her and stroking her, just to feel her hips buck up into my palm. Her nails trace my back, urging me on, wordless, greedy for every bit of closeness she can get.
I line myself up, and thrust into her in one deep, hard stroke. The sound she makes is half sob, half moan, and her arms lock tight around my shoulders as I start to move.