Chapter 019 Viktor
Isabella hides something from me.
I see it in the way she refuses to meet my gaze, in the deliberate calm of her movements as she stands before the mirror. She adjusts the collar of her blouse once, twice, a third time—small, precise gestures that rebuild the Moretti princess around her like plate armor. Her fingers tremble only slightly as they smooth a strand of hair into place, but I notice. I always notice.
“What did Kaz say to you?”
Her hands pause, barely a heartbeat, then resume. “I told you. I can handle it.”
“Isabella.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She turns from the mirror. The mask is complete now—cool, untouchable. “I should go. The car is waiting.”
I cross the room and catch her chin, tilting her face up until those dark eyes have nowhere left to hide. “He threatened you.”
“He offered his opinion.” Her voice stays level, but beneath my thumb her pulse flutters wild and frantic, a trapped thing beating against my skin. “I offered mine in return.”
She is protecting me from whatever poison he fed her. Or protecting herself from saying it aloud. Either way, my cousin stepped over a line drawn in Sokolov blood.
“The driver will wait,” I say, releasing her. “However long the dinner lasts. But you will be back by midnight.”
Something softens in her expression—gratitude, perhaps, or simple surprise. “Thank you. For letting me go.”
“You will return before midnight.” It is not a request. It is a fact I feel in my marrow.
Yet a cold thread of doubt coils in my gut. I finally have her collared, claimed, contained—and I open the door myself. Madness. Weakness.
“I’ll be back by midnight,” she says. She rises on her toes and kisses me once—soft, fleeting, but I taste something that feels perilously close to goodbye. My chest constricts.
I watch her walk out. Every line of her body is perfect control, even with Kaz’s words still weighing on her. The door closes. The car engine fades into the night.
Time to remind my cousin where the boundaries lie.
The east wing is silent as a crypt. These rooms once belonged to Dimitri.
I find Kaz in the old sitting room, vodka open on the side table, tablet in hand, as though he did not just corner my woman in my hallway. The casual arrogance of it sets my teeth on edge.
“Cousin.” He does not look up. “Drink?”
“What did you say to her?”
He lifts his gaze. That old smile spreads—the one that always meant blood was coming.
“The Moretti girl? We spoke. Nothing important.”
“She refuses to repeat it.”
“Then perhaps it is none of your concern.”
I sit across from him. Between us rests Dimitri’s chess table, the ivory and ebony pieces still arranged in the middle of a game none of us finished eleven years ago.
“Everything about her is my concern.”
Kaz pours two glasses, slides one toward me. The vodka does not tremble.
“Do you remember the summer we were twelve? The lake house?”
I leave the glass untouched. “Get to the point.”
“Dimitri taught us to swim.” His voice softens, almost genuine. “You refused to go past your waist. Terrified of the deep.”
The memory rises uninvited: Dimitri’s patient hands under my back, his quiet encouragement, the triumph in his eyes when I finally reached the dock.
You did it, Alyosha.
“Misha spent three days coaxing you,” Kaz continues. “When you swam out, he cheered like you’d won gold.”
“Why tell me this now?”
“Because that was Dimitri. Kind. Patient. The best of us.” Steel returns to his tone. “And she got him killed.”
“We don’t know—”
“We know he was at that meeting because of her. Eleven years, Viktor. Eleven years of planning revenge. And now you keep his killer’s sister in his house, in his bed.”
“This is my house.”
“It should have been his.” His fist strikes the table; pieces jump. “He should be pakhan. Instead he rots, and you let the Moretti whore warm the sheets meant for him.”
I rise slowly. “Choose your next words carefully.”
“You parade her at galas. Let her walk our halls alone. I could have slit her throat in thirty seconds.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” His stillness is worse than rage. “I wanted to see if blood still matters to you. And here you are—defending her.”
“Isabella is under my protection. Touch her, threaten her, look at her wrong, and I will end you. Family or not.”
“You’d kill me for her?”
My hand settles on the knife at my belt. “I would kill anyone for her.”
The words fall between us, heavy and final. I watch him understand exactly what I have become.
He laughs—soft, bitter. “She collects Sokolov men like trophies. First Misha. Now you.”
“Stay away from her.”
“I give you my word I will not touch her.” He lifts both hands. “But I will not protect her either. When the men decide she is a liability—and they will—I will not stand in their way.”
I leave without another word. My pulse thunders in my ears.
The hallway stretches long and shadowed. Men nod as I pass, but I catch the lingering glances, the conversations that die when I approach. They watch. They judge. They wonder if their pakhan has gone soft.
Kaz is not wrong about that.
I stop beneath Dimitri’s portrait. Seventeen years old, already marked for leadership. Those warm eyes that saw good even in our father.
Promise me you’ll take care of them, Alyosha.
My phone vibrates. A single text from the driver: Arrived safely. She is inside.
Isabella, surrounded by the family I swore to destroy, sitting at their table with my marks still on her skin.
I return to my quarters.
Her scent hits me like a physical blow—jasmine and warm skin and the faint musk of sex from this morning, when I took her twice before breakfast. It clings to the air, to the sheets, to everything.
I strip off my jacket, pour vodka, set it down untouched. The glass sweats in my hand while I stare at the bed. The pillow still bears the hollow of her head.
I cross the room and press my face into it, breathing her in like a starving man. Pathetic. My cock stirs at the mere memory of her scent. Utterly pathetic.
The compound is too quiet without her. Walls, weapons, ghosts—nothing else.
The truth I have been dodging finally tears free.
I love her.
Not want. Not obsession. Love—raw, ruinous, empire-burning love.
It feels like the worst betrayal. To Dimitri. To my dying mother. To every oath I swore over his grave.
But denying it would be cowardice.
When did it take root? When she stood unafraid before me in chains? When she deleted intel that could have saved her own blood because she could not bear to hurt me? When she kissed me this morning like I was worth saving?
Or was it always there, growing in silence, one careful cut at a time, until the shape was undeniable?
I lie on the bed fully clothed, breathing her in, counting minutes.
In a few hours she will walk back through that door.
Or she will not.
If she chooses them—if she remembers who she is supposed to hate—something savage rises in me, dark and absolute.
I will burn everything to ash. The compound. The bratva. Eleven years of careful plans. None of it matters without her.
Come back to me, kotyonok.
Because if you don’t, I will no longer be a wolf.
I will be a man without his heart.
And that is not a survivable wound.