28. April 3, Sunday Night #3
Thankfully, half the team was already headed back to the parking garage or it would have been even more damning.
Mitch let out a hollow laugh. “Amazing. Whole fucking team knew I was the last idiot at the table.”
“Watch it,” Jason warned, jaw tight.
“What, you gonna hit me in a vet ER?” Mitch shot back.
Ilya let Zoey stand between them too long. “No,” he said quietly.
The single word cut through enough that Mitch paused.
“No, I did not ‘wait around’ for your marriage to fail,” Ilya bit out. “No, I did not touch her while she was with you. And no, she is not something I took from you.”
Zoey’s breath caught softly beside him.
Mitch’s face went stony.
“I fell in love with her the first time I saw her,” Ilya said, because if everything was ash now, at least one thing could be honest. “And I buried it because you were my friend. My brother. Because she chose you. When she came here, I still tried to stay away.”
His throat worked.
“I wasn’t strong enough. That part is on me.”
The room went even quieter.
Mitch stared at him.
For one moment, all the anger seemed to drain away, leaving only the injury underneath.
Then it came back uglier.
“You stood in my wedding party,” he said. “You called me family.”
“And I meant it.”
“Bullshit.”
The word cracked across the room.
“Enough.” Zoey’s voice sliced through all of them. “Both of you.”
Her eyes were bright, her hands shaking, but her voice was steel.
“Yes, Ilya and I should have told you sooner,” she said to Mitch. “That part is fair. But I am not going to stand here and let you act like he stole me. Like I was some object. I left. I chose. You and I were over long before this began.”
She turned toward Ilya, and somehow that hurt more.
“And you,” she said, voice unsteady but clear, “do not get to stand there and let him weaponize every fear you have like they’re objective truth. You don’t get to act like loving me is some moral failure.”
Pain flashed through him so sharply he almost flinched.
“Mitch,” she said, turning back, “you don’t own my history. And Ilya, you don’t get to erase my agency to make yourself feel noble.” She dragged in a breath. “Both of you need to stop talking about me like I’m some sort of prize to be won.”
No one spoke.
Zoey swiped at her face with the heel of her hand.
“We are not doing this here,” she said, exhausted now. “Not tonight.”
Mitch stared at her, jaw working.
“At least now I know why you’ve been so ready to cut me out,” he said finally.
“That’s not—”
He held up a hand. “Just don’t.”
The anger had gone thin again.
What showed underneath looked too much like actual hurt.
He looked at Ilya one last time.
“She’s finally close to getting the life she always wanted,” he said quietly.
“A family. Stability. Someone who’ll actually be there.
You really think you’re built for that?” His gaze hardened.
“You, the guy who tries to be everything for everybody? Eventually. something gets dropped, Ilya.” His eyes flicked toward Zoey.
“And people like her are the ones who get hurt when it does. You and Kira know that firsthand.”
Zoey flinched.
Ilya went cold.
“When you spook and run,” Mitch continued, voice rough, “she’ll be the one explaining why Captain Sergechev couldn’t hack being anything more than everyone’s part-time hero.”
Then he turned and walked out, the automatic doors sighing shut behind him.
The room exhaled around the hole he left.
Zoey stood very still. For one terrible second, Ilya thought she might fold in on herself.
Instead, she straightened, picked up the blanket from the floor, and walked back to her corner without looking at him.
The distance across the waiting room felt like an ocean.
Around him, the remaining guys shifted uneasily. No one said what they were all thinking, but he could feel it anyway.
The captain was now the problem.
A vet tech appeared through the double doors, taking in the tension with one quick glance and professionally pretended not to notice.
“We can take two back to see Fido now.”
Every head turned.
Zoey hesitated.
Bobby stepped forward, gentle and matter-of-fact. “I’ll go with you, if you want.”
For a second, Zoey’s gaze flicked toward Ilya. It barely touched him. Then moved away.
“Okay,” she agreed quietly.
The doors swung shut behind them with a soft thump.
Ilya stayed where he was.
The guys looked at him, maybe expecting him to follow, maybe expecting him to say something captainly and impossible that would somehow stitch the room back together.
He didn’t move.
He’d thought choosing the team over Zoey would protect everyone in the long run.
Now Mitch had walked out, the team was split open, Zoey disappeared into the back without a glance, and all he could see was wreckage.
Not because he’d chosen her. Not because he’d chosen the team. Because he’d chosen fear and called it virtue.
Ilya sank back into the hard plastic chair, stared at his empty hands, and wondered if maybe his father had been right all along.
Maybe the cruelest thing a man like him could do was let people start depending on him.