Chapter 28
Alina
The penthouse is never truly quiet, but tonight the silence feels heavier.
Even when the men lower their voices, there’s always a low, mechanical hum stitched through the walls.
Tonight, that hum is louder. Or maybe it’s just me and I’m missing Dominik, wondering what’s taking him so long to return.
But then, when I get up to go fix a cup of coffee, I hear a muffled voice I know better than my own, shouting my name.
I hurry out of the bedroom so suddenly my shoulder clips the doorframe.
For half a heartbeat I’m ten years old again, bare feet slapping the hall of our old building as Archer calls from two floors down because the elevator’s broken again and he’s racing me down.
Except his voice then was all light and braggy. This voice is frantic and scared.
In the hallway, two guards stand outside a door that’s usually locked. That’s where the shouting leaks through. They track me without moving anything but their eyes.
“Archer’s in there?” I ask for confirmation though I already know. His voice is muffled because he’s no doubt gagged and tied up. But he’s here, in Dominik’s penthouse.
The guard on the left lifts his chin the smallest degree.
Dominik came back with my brother but didn’t bother to tell me he had found him?
I stare at the door and hear Archer’s muffled cursing now, slamming something—a foot into a chair, or shoulder into a wall.
“Open it,” I say. It’s a simple request; one the men could easily refuse.
The guards hesitate, as I expected. And in that breath, I feel it: the line between me and them and him—whatever I am to Dominik now is enough to make them hesitate.
Grabbing the front of the closest one’s black tee to tighten the collar around his throat, I lift my knee up between his legs but don’t strike yet. “Open the door, or I’ll slam your balls up into your throat!”
Russian words pass between the two before the guard on the right finally reveals a key. He inserts it into the lock, turning it with a click.
“Thank you,” I say to him as I release the other man’s tee and lower my leg because I can be polite and violent at the same time.
Archer is in the middle of the room, with a cloth tied around his mouth, wrists cuffed, a chain between them, his hair matted with sweat or grease from not washing it in days.
He looks both bigger and smaller than he should.
He stares at me and for a split second the old Archer is there in his army green eyes, the brother who taught me how to skip rocks on the East River, who stole a bag of oranges when we were thirteen and then peeled every single one for me with careful hands.
The memory hits so hard my chest aches, and then the sour taste of everything he’s done lately washes over it like dirty water over a cut.
I remove the gag since that’s all I can do for him right now. There’s no amount of ball smashing that will convince the guards to remove the restraints. They probably don’t even have the key to the cuffs.
“Alina,” Archer says, and the relief in it nearly buckles my knees. He tries to stand until the chain stops him. “Christ. You’re still alive,” he breathes, like my survival is a miracle he doesn’t deserve and a burden he doesn’t want.
I want to hug him, to put my hands on his cheeks and say I’m here, I’m unharmed. But under the relief there’s a sour heat that climbs my throat and burns. It tastes like betrayal. It tastes like the fear I’ve been swallowing for days and finally can’t.
“You up and left me without a word,” I remind him. “Then your stupid decisions nearly got me killed. Over and over!”
For a second his face is a boy’s again—a flinch, an apology forming. Then his jaw hardens, his chin lifts to try and look brave. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I’m trying to fix it. You don’t know—”
“I know enough,” I snap. “I know that you stole guns from the Bratva and sold them to the bikers that tried to kill me. I know you disappeared and then left me to face down your crimes!”
He jerks as if I slapped him. “I didn’t know you would get involved. And I was going to come back for you,” he says, sharp. “I would’ve called when it was safe. I—”
“You called when I finally guilted you into getting off your sorry ass,” I say, because I was there for that too—the phone vibrating against the table, Dominik’s thumb on speaker, Archer’s voice thin and scraped and suddenly helpful when I lied about my life being threatened.
“And now you’re here, and you’re still making excuses and making everything about you. ”
“Everything is about me,” he spits, and for a second his honesty is almost merciful. “I’m the one in chains. They want my blood. And I know that you’re in this because of me. So let me get us out of it. We can leave town together.”
“To go where, Archer?” I ask. The words come out soft and mean. “Tell me where we can go that they won’t follow us.”
“Anywhere that isn’t here,” he says, and the chain jumps when he yanks his wrists. “You don’t understand what men like this do for sport. He’s just been using you, keeping you, to hurt me. The Bratva kill me, and then what do you think will happen to you, Alina?”
My mouth is dry and full of a hundred contradictory words. I don’t get to choose which one I say because the door opens again, and the chill of the room suddenly warms without the thermostat moving.
Dominik fills the door, and the guards straighten behind him. Archer pulls his shoulders back and tries to look taller than the man who looks at him like a problem that’s already solved. I’m not looking forward to hearing the conclusion he’s reached.
Gray eyes come to me first. Something loosens and sharpens in me at once before his gaze slides to Archer and the softness closes like a book being slammed closed.
“You’re right about one thing,” he says to Archer. His voice is low, almost polite. “The Bratva will never let you live.”
Archer laughs once, the sound of a shovel hitting a rock. “Then shoot me and stop pretending you have a conscience!”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t,” Dominik replies, mild as a man ordering coffee.
I look at him because I can’t not. He’s in black, like usual.
The shirt is crisp except where it meets the bandage under it; the fabric pulls a fraction wrong near his ribs, and I can almost feel the tug of his stitches from here.
He smells of clean soap, gun oil, and kept promises.
A heat that isn’t anger and isn’t fear warms my soul.
“Gavriil has set a final deadline,” Dominik says, still watching Archer. “Time is up. He wants me to kill you and find the rest of the money, now that he has most of the inventory. If I refuse, I have to deliver her to him.”
The words don’t sound hypothetical. They sound like a verdict that’s already been written.
My back finds the wall though my legs don’t remember moving. “What?”
“I gave you all the money I had.” Archer turns his gaze to me because he knows he owes me at least that much.
“What happens if you refuse?” I ask. My voice is only steady because it has to be.
“What do you think?” Dominik asks.
“No,” I say with a shake of my head. Gavriil wouldn’t kill his own brother for failing to follow orders. Would he?
“Yes.” Dominik doesn’t look away.
Archer is shaking his head so hard he looks dizzy.
“This is bullshit! He’s bluffing. You’re telling me that your brother—” He jerks half a laugh.
“Your brother is some kind of king and you’re here playing house with a hostage?
Give me my sister and let us walk out of here. You said you would give her a choice!”
Dominik’s mouth curves in something unfriendly. “You don’t walk anywhere without my say so. Or hers.”
“Then what the fuck are we doing?” Archer shouts. “What do you want? Me to get on my knees and beg her? You’ll kill me anyway.”
Dominik takes one step forward. “I told you I would let her choose. You should start doing whatever you think will convince her to choose you.”
The room goes very quiet and still. Even Archer stops scraping his cuffs against themselves.
“What?” I ask, because the word is the only thing left in my mouth.
“Choose, Alina,” Dominik says. He doesn’t dress it up. He doesn’t offer me a long, meaningful speech, just the choice. “If you go with him, I’ll give you a head start from Gavriil. Or, you stay with me, we leave town, and your brother fends for himself.”
Archer makes a raw noise in the back of his throat. “What kind of choice is that?”
“I’m letting her decide where she’s willing to stand if men are pointing guns at us,” Dominik says.
I feel like my lungs can’t hold any of the air I’m trying to breathe.
The decision he’s placed in front of me will decide not only the trajectory of my life but also his and Archer’s. He’s handing over all the cards to me, allowing me to play the next move. And I can barely even think straight.
For the first time in my life, I’m not just surviving someone else’s mess, I’m choosing whose blood might spill because of me.
Archer takes two quick steps, and the chain jerks his wrists and the sound is ugly.
“Alina. You’re my only family. We run and we disappear, and we make new names like we used to make stories for the landlord.
Remember? I would buy us bus tickets, and we would sit at the back and pretend we were on a flight to Paris. We can do it again.”
The memories hit with the strange gentleness of a bruise you thought had healed: the blue vinyl seat sticky under my thighs, how safe I felt with the lie because it was ours to share. It’s so achingly easy to want that simplicity again, even if it was mostly sad and awful.
“I was sixteen,” I say. “We were children then. This isn’t another landlord. This is a man who started out calling me a hostage for your mistake, then stood in front of bullets to protect me and bled out on my hands.”