Chapter 29 Polina
Polina
I keep reorganizing the same list because it gives my hands something to do while my mind tries to eat itself alive.
That’s the truth of it.
I’m not on duty. No one asked me to inventory the medical supplies in this house. Dmitri definitely didn’t appoint me quartermaster of his family compound.
I’m sitting at the desk in my room with a yellow legal pad, a pen, and a stack of notes from the downstairs infirmary because checking expiration dates and counting gauze feels better than sitting still with my own thoughts.
It also keeps me from thinking too hard about the pregnancy test in the bathroom trash.
I tell myself I’m only planning for the obvious.
There’s a war coming. Houses like this always need more trauma supplies than anyone wants to admit.
Men who claim they’re prepared for everything still forget chest tubes, broad-spectrum antibiotics, and blood pressure cuffs that actually work. That part is true. The rest is nerves.
I circle saline, write chest seal kits in the margin, then cross it out because I already wrote it fifteen minutes ago.
A knock sounds at the door, startling me. My hand flies to my chest, and I suck in a gasp before I call out, “Come in.”
The handle turns. I glance over, expecting Katya or one of Dmitri’s men checking on me, but the sight of Tony in the doorway stops me cold.
He has a file folder in one hand.
His face tells me the rest.
My pen slips from my fingers onto the desk.
“Who got shot?” I ask. “What’s happened?”
Tony shuts the door behind him. “No one’s been shot.”
That should help, but given the look on his face, it somehow doesn’t.
I sit back in the chair and look from him to the folder. “Then why do you look like a man about to ruin my life?”
“Can I come in?” he asks.
That gets my attention. Tony is not polite by nature. If he is asking permission, it means he wants me to have the chance to say no before he says whatever he came here to say.
He takes my silence for the invitation it is and shuffles a few feet closer. “We finished decrypting more of the Morozov archive tonight. There was a folder in the recovered files tied to a car accident from sixteen years ago.”
The room narrows to the space between his mouth and the folder in his hand.
“My parents,” I surmise.
He gives a quick, sorrowful nod and replies, “Yes.”
I don’t trust my voice yet, so I look at the folder instead of speaking. Plain cream cardstock. No label. No name on the tab. After all these years, the answer to the only question that has ever mattered to me might be sitting in Tony’s hand looking like tax paperwork.
“Who else has seen it?” I ask.
“Just me so far. I thought you deserved to read it first, before anyone decided what to do with it.”
“What is it exactly?” I ask almost timidly. “An internal report? Some half-buried rumor your analysts dressed up to impress themselves?”
Tony shakes his head once. “Do you want to read it?”
I swallow hard, trying to force the word out. “Yes.”
Tony walks to the desk and sets the folder beside my legal pad. My handwritten list of antibiotics and sutures looks absurd next to it. One of these pages is about preparing for disaster. The other is disaster.
“If you want me to stay, I will,” he offers.
“I don’t. But thank you.”
He nods a third time, avoiding eye contact as he leaves me alone with it.
I sit there for a second with my hands flat on the desk, staring at the file like it might get up and walk away if I wait too long.
When I finally do reach for the folder, my hands don’t shake at all. That part almost makes me laugh. I’ve spent so many years preparing for this that my body has apparently decided it can handle anything if there’s paperwork involved.
The first pages are familiar in structure if not in wording.
Traffic report. Police summary. Weather conditions.
Road conditions. Vehicle damage. Official language layered over a story I have known so long I could recite it from memory.
I turn each page faster than the last until I hit the first document that doesn’t belong in any legitimate crash file.
Payment authorization.
The shell company means nothing to me at first, but the line items do.
The next document is an internal memo from the Morozov side.
It doesn’t use my father’s name. Men like these prefer distance.
They write target male instead of husband, liability instead of father, exposure risk instead of wife.
Still, the meaning is plain. My father discovered a joint Kozlov-Morozov transport channel.
He intended to expose it, and as a result, immediate intervention was approved.
By Vadim fucking Morozov.
My mother is listed under spouse included due to exposure risk.
I stop there for a second. Not because I don’t understand it. Because I do.
That is what my mother becomes in the hands of men like Lev’s father. Not a woman. Not a wife. Not the person who kissed the top of my head every morning before school. Just an exposure risk.
There’s a cleanup ledger, a note confirming the brake tampering, and a tow report. Internal confirmation that both targets were deceased and the matter was closed.
The proof leaves no room for doubt. My parents did not die in an accident. Lev’s father ordered the hit. The crash was staged to bury a secret my father was prepared to drag into the open.
I sit back in the chair because if I don’t, I’m going to put my fist through the desk.
This is what I wanted. The truth. The answer. Vindication after years of being told to let it go, let it rest, stop digging, stop asking, stop making yourself sick over a tragedy that can’t be changed. I should feel relief. I should feel sane.
Instead, I feel totally numb.
Then I reach the back of the folder and find the part that finishes the job.
The final section is metadata, including the access logs. At first, I only see the dates. Then I see the user credential attached to an internal Morozov terminal.
Then I see Lev’s name.
I read the line once. Then I read it again because my brain refuses to accept what my eyes have already understood.
Two years ago.
Two.
For one terrible second, I can’t seem to blink.
He knew. He knew before he touched me for the first time. Before he kissed me. Before he watched me grieve and rage and keep chasing ghosts.
All this time, he sat across from me holding the one answer I have spent half my life trying to find, and he said nothing.
I clench the paper in my palm, wrinkling it into half a ball.
Every memory I have of him changes shape all at once.
The surveillance he admitted to in my apartment.
The way he made sure his men dumped him in my ER that first night.
The impossible sense I had, from the beginning, that he was studying me even when he smiled.
I told myself he did it because he wanted me.
Now I know better.
His father destroyed my family. Lev found the proof. Then he came looking for me.
The thought lands so hard I have to stand.
I stalk across the room once, stop by the dresser, and brace both hands on the wood. My stomach turns. For one ugly second, I don’t know whether the nausea belongs to the baby or the betrayal.
I look back at the folder on the desk.
He didn’t follow me because he was fascinated. He didn’t watch me because he couldn’t stay away. He tracked me because his family murdered mine, and he wanted to find out what I knew.
I snatch up the crumpled file and walk out of my room.
One of Dmitri’s guards glances up when I step into the hall. He takes one look at my face and moves aside without a word. Smart man.
I make my way to Lev’s quarters, and I don’t bother knocking. I open the door and go straight in.
He’s at the table with a laptop open in front of him, and a half-empty glass sits by his elbow. His head snaps up the second he hears me, and the moment he sees the folder in my hand, every bit of blood drains from his face.
That tells me everything before he says a word.
I cross the room and slap the file onto the table.
Lev looks at the folder. Then he looks at me. “Polina…”
“Don’t.” I raise my hand, cutting him off. “Don’t you fucking start with lies.”
He rises slowly from the chair. “I was going to tell you.”
“The fuck you were.”
He takes the hit without arguing, which only makes me angrier.
“You knew who I was,” I rage.
“Yes.”
“You knew what they did.”
“Yes.”
“And then you followed me.”
His jaw ticks once. “Polina—”
“No. You do not get to say my name like that.”
Pain lances across his face. Good. Let him keep it.
“I started watching you because I needed to understand what kind of risk you were,” he explains. “To my family. To the secret. To what would happen if the truth got out.”
There it is. Not desire. Not obsession. Not the dark, twisted version of romance I was so close to letting myself believe in because I wanted him badly enough to excuse what should have sent me running.
“But then it changed,” he insists. “I became enamored with you, and before I even realized it was happening, I had this inescapable need to keep you safe.”
I burst out an ugly, wet laugh. “From who, Lev? Your father? Or from you?”
“All of it.”
I look at him and realize there is no answer he can give me that won’t make this worse.
“You let me trust you,” I tell him, jabbing a finger his direction. “You let me sleep with you. You sat in my apartment and listened to me talk about my parents while you held the truth in your hands.”
“I was trying to find a way to tell you that wouldn’t destroy what we had.”
“What we had was a lie! There is no version of this where you were protecting me. Don’t insult me by trying to convince me otherwise.”
He drags a hand over his mouth. “I know what this looks like.”
“It looks like you knew your father murdered my parents, and instead of telling me, you watched me. You followed me. You slept with me. You built this entire relationship on top of a grave and waited to see how long it would take before I found out.”
He says nothing, and that silence enrages me more than any lie could have.
I should throw the glass at the wall. I should hit him. I should do any one of the dramatic, satisfying things my body is begging for. Instead I stand there and look at him with every ounce of hatred I have, and that seems to do the job just fine.
“Say something,” he pleads at last.
“You want words?” I scoff.
“Yes.”
“Fine.” I brace myself on his desk and lean forward, making certain I have every bit of his attention. “Stay the fuck away from me. You don’t come to my room. You don’t touch me. You don’t use Tony, Boris, or anyone else in this house to get to me.”
“Polina—”
“I’m not done. I will never forgive this. Not next week. Not when the war is over. Not when you decide you finally have a better explanation. You made your choice, and now you get to live with what it cost you.”
“No, Polina, you don’t understand. I loved you.”
I blink at the past tense.
Maybe he hears it too, because his eyes go wide as he catches himself. “I love you.”
“Don’t,” I snap, turning away from him and back toward the door. “I’m taking this file to Dmitri myself. He can decide what to do with the Morozov side, the Kozlov side, and you.”
He comes around the table then, not close enough to touch me, but enough to make me stop and turn back.
“Please.”
Once upon a time, hearing Lev Morozov say please excited me. It satisfied me to my core. This time, it doesn’t move me an inch.
“You should have begged two years ago,” I bite back.
His mouth opens, but I don’t stay to hear the rest.
I tighten my grip on the folder and walk toward Dmitri’s office without slowing down. My stomach rolls once on the way, and I steady the file against my middle until it passes.
The file goes to Dmitri.
The pregnancy stays with me.