35. Sofia
SOFIA
I take one step back.
Grigori’s eyes follow the movement at once, and the gun in his hand shifts with him, not raised fully, not pointed at my face yet, but ready enough that my body understands the threat before my mind finishes catching up.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He smiles a little, but there’s nothing warm in it.
His hair is disordered, his shirt untucked on one side, and the man standing in front of me no longer looks like the easygoing cousin who teased Damir at dinner and carried Maksim half-asleep through the house.
He looks like someone who has been waiting for the house to empty and has finally run out of reasons to pretend.
“The important question,” he says, taking one slow step closer, “is why.”
I look past him toward the stairs. He sees that too.
The staircase is behind him. The main floor is below.
If I can get there, if I can reach the entrance hall or the service corridor or even one of the remaining guards, I might live long enough for Damir to come back.
There are only two or three men downstairs, maybe fewer after everyone rushed out with Maksim, but men with guns are still better than a locked room and Grigori blocking the way with one in his hand.
I only need to get past him. That’s all.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, keeping my voice as steady as I can.
Grigori tilts his head. “Gone where they were supposed to go.”
“Maksim?”
Something ugly moves across his face when I say his son’s name, and for one second the mask slips enough that I see real anger beneath it. “Don’t use his name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you care.”
My stomach tightens, but I keep my hand away from it. I can’t let him look there too much. I can’t let him remember the baby every second, because whatever he has come here to do, my child is part of the reason.
“I do care,” I say.
He laughs under his breath. “That’s what you are good at, isn’t it? You make them believe you care, and then suddenly everyone rearranges their life around you.”
I take another small step to the side, not toward the stairs yet, just enough to make him adjust. He does.
“You still haven’t told me where everyone is,” I say.
“Damir’s life is in danger, or at least that’s what everyone believes now, so his men are where they always are when something smells wrong.
Around him.” Grigori tuts softly, like a man correcting a careless child.
“Very touching, really. All that loyalty gathered around one man who doesn’t give a shit about them. ”
My mouth goes dry. “What did you do?”
“I made sure the servants were sent where they were useful. The kitchen had an issue. The east wing needed clearing. The guards who should have stayed here were reassigned because my son is sick and everyone in this family runs when Maksim is involved.” His gaze drops briefly to my stomach, and this time I can’t stop myself from covering it.
“There are two men downstairs now, maybe three if Nikolai’s replacement has not left yet, but they will not hear you from this corridor. ”
I force myself not to look at the study door behind me.
The words go cold through me.
I take another step back, but the hallway gives me nothing. A wall on one side, Damir’s study behind me, the terrace corridor farther down, and Grigori standing between me and the stairs with a gun he holds too comfortably.
I need time. Time for Damir to realize something is wrong. Time for someone downstairs to come up. Time for Grigori to make a mistake.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “You have Maksim. You have Irina. You have Damir’s trust. Why would you risk all of that?”
His face changes at the mention of trust. “There it is,” he says. “Trust.”
He takes another step toward me, and I retreat the same distance. Slow. Careful. If I run too soon, he will catch me before I reach the stairs. If I wait too long, he may decide he is finished talking.
“You think Damir trusted me because I am family,” he says.
“He trusted me because I survived. After the fire, after the funerals, after everyone who mattered was buried or burned, I was still here. Kirill was here. A few cousins were left. A few men. Enough to patch together a family and call it loyalty.”
His voice stays calm, which makes it worse.
“But it was never the same,” he continues. “You would not understand that. You came into this house and saw power. Rooms. Guards. Money. Men waiting for orders. You didn’t see the empty chairs.”
I think of Damir standing in the hallway after telling me about Elena. I think of his hand covering mine, his voice flat when he said he had not been there. I think of the family he lost before I ever met him, and for one horrible second I understand exactly why Grigori knows where to hurt him.
“I didn’t ruin that,” I say.
“No,” Grigori answers. “You ruined what came after.”
His hand tightens around the gun.
“Maksim became dear to him,” he says, and this time his voice changes.
“Not immediately, not in the pretty way people talk about babies, but slowly. Damir held him because Irina was exhausted. Then he started asking whether Maksim had eaten. Then he gave orders about his tutors, his security, his doctors. He pretended it was responsibility, like he pretends everything is responsibility, but I saw it. My son became the closest thing Damir had to an heir.”
My heart beats hard enough that I can feel it in my throat.
“Grigori,” I say carefully.
“No.” His eyes flash. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“I am trying to understand.”
“You are trying to stay alive.”
“Yes,” I say, because lying would be stupid now. “I am.”
For some reason, that makes him smile again.
“Good. Honesty at last.”
He moves closer, and I take another step back. The corridor to the terrace is nearer now. I know that’s not better. The terrace is worse. The terrace is a dead end unless I can reach the side stairs, and I’m not even sure where they lead.
But the study door is too close behind me, and the main stairs are blocked.
I need him to keep talking.
“You made Maksim sick,” I say. His expression hardens. “You poisoned your own son.”
“I made him ill enough to empty the house,” he says. “Not enough to kill him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know exactly what he was given.”
“You held him down?”
He’s picturing it right now as I speak. His mouth tightens. “I did what I had to do.”
“To a child.”
“To my child,” he snaps, and for the first time his control breaks enough that the gun lifts slightly. “Mine. Not Damir’s. Mine.”
I freeze.
He breathes once, then steadies himself.
“I gave Damir a son in every way that mattered,” he says.
“Maksim would have carried the family forward. Damir would have protected him, trained him, made him his legacy. Then you arrived, and suddenly Damir gets a wife, a child of his own, and a future that cuts my son out of the place he was meant to have. I knew I had to get rid of you sooner or later. However, the timeline kind of accelerated.” He points at my stomach and I instinctively cover it.
The words are so ugly, so selfish, that I stop being afraid for half a second and become angry instead. “You were jealous of an unborn baby?”
He laughs, the sound sending chills down my spine. “I didn’t know Damir was even capable of that. So imagine my shock when I overheard you telling him the other day. Now tell me, pretty, is that even his? How did you even stomach to fuck a person who’s old enough to be your father?”
I look away, my mouth filling with disgust. “You can never be the man that Damir is,” I say.
His eyes turn flat.
I shouldn’t have said that. I know it at once.
But the anger keeps moving through me because I can still see Maksim’s flushed face against Damir’s chest, even though I only saw him from the window. I can still see Irina running behind them. I can still hear the lock turning on the music room door.
“You fed Damir lies about me,” I say.
Grigori smiles again, but it’s thinner now. “I fed your husband facts arranged properly. Men like Damir do the rest themselves when fear is involved. Everything fell into place the moment you decided to run away. Stupid, stupid girl. Made my job that much easier, though.”
My hand tightens over my stomach. “You poisoned him too,” I say.
Grigori’s brows draw together.
“Not with whatever you gave Maksim,” I continue, my voice shaking now but not breaking. “You poisoned Damir with doubt because you knew exactly where to put it.”
For a second, something like satisfaction crosses his face. “Yes,” he says. “And he swallowed it.”
That does it. Something in me becomes very still.
I stop retreating.
Grigori notices. “What?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“No, not nothing. You just thought of something.”
I look at the floor near his left shoe. The runner in the hallway has shifted under the edge of the side table.
There is a brass lamp on that table, heavy enough to hurt if it falls, but too far for me to grab before he reaches me.
Behind me, Damir’s study door is closed, but not locked.
To my right, the corridor bends toward the terrace.
To my left, the wall has a mirror tall enough to show Grigori’s hand when he moves.
I look at his reflection, not at him. He’s standing closer than he thinks.
“I’ve made sure my plan is foolproof. If Damir even slightly suspects foul play, he’ll go straight for your uncle’s throat. Sergei has been after him for so long, you know? He tried to ambush him, tried to have you killed.”
“I’m sure Damir saw through all of that,” I say confidently. “Your flimsy lies aren’t going to hold up for much long.”
He scoffs.
I lift my eyes. “Do you know what your problem is?”
His mouth curves. “Enlighten me.”
“You think you’re so intelligent. You think you’ll get away with killing the Pakhan’s wife? You’re nothing but a pathetic little shit.”
His expression hardens. “Careful.”
“Why? Are you going to shoot me in the hallway and explain that too?”
He steps forward.