Chapter 14
Elena
After the call ended, I just stared at my phone, the screen dark except for my own reflection.
Kiryan did not come back to the manor all night. I had called him over and over before dawn. He had not picked up once. Every single time, I had handed him an excuse like a shield.
Maybe his phone had been on silent. Maybe he had not seen it. Maybe he had finished talking to Isabella and had gone straight into dealing with business. Maybe he had needed time to sort through whatever the past had dragged back into his life.
I had talked myself into it. He would not have spent the night with Isabella. He would not have seen my calls and ignored them on purpose.
But now every excuse looked cheap and fake. My stomach sank, like I had swallowed a block of ice.
"He still didn't answer?" Olga set a plate of toast in front of me, her brow tight.
"Maybe he is busy," I said, brushing it off.
"So busy he ditched his wife all night the second Isabella came back?" Olga pulled out a chair and sat beside me. Her tone was not aimed at me, but her palm came down hard on the table. "Not coming home, fine. But he could have called. You are his wife."
"He probably has a reason."
Olga sighed, her eyes softening. She nudged a glass of milk toward me and patted my shoulder.
"Eat something first. Stop torturing yourself over that little bastard," she said. "When he gets back, you ask him straight. I am here. He doesn't get to wave it off with 'busy.'"
I picked up the toast. My fingers felt useless. My stomach was empty enough to ache, but the smell of food only turned it.
Then the phone on the table buzzed.
My heart slammed. Kiryan?
I snatched it up, hope rising in me—shameless, desperate. I thought, Finally. He was going to explain. Maybe it had all been some stupid accident. Maybe he hadn't forgotten what he had promised me—being an actual husband.
But the name on the screen was Isabella.
She had sent a photo.
I opened it.
Kiryan had lain on a bed, eyes closed, his shirt collar open, dark brown hair slightly mussed. Isabella had curled against his chest, her bare shoulder marked with red.
Morning light had spilled over them, making them look intimate—like they had never been apart.
Pain ripped through my chest so hard I almost dropped the phone.
Isabella hadn't typed a single word. Of course she hadn't. She didn't have to. Nobody could have misunderstood what that photo said.
Last night, Kiryan had said he would handle everything. I had been stupid enough to believe that once he cleaned up the past, he would come back to me. But she cried once, and he stayed. She reached out, and he forgot I was waiting.
"Elena?"
Olga's voice yanked me out of the picture. I killed the screen and flipped the phone face-down.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"That was my question." She watched me. "You look like a ghost. What happened?"
"Nothing." My throat caught. "The gallery messaged. There is a problem with a painting I sold."
The lie scraped its way out and left bitterness behind. I didn't want Olga seeing that photo. She would have exploded. She would have gone after Kiryan. She would have worried about what that meant for this marriage.
Olga stared at me for a few seconds, clearly not buying it. She had been in this house her whole life. She had taken care of Kiryan longer than I had even been alive. My lies didn't fool her. She glanced at my phone, suspicious, but she didn't push.
I breathed again.
Kiryan had told me from the start: it was an alliance. No love. Still tied together. I had been the one shoved into an empty spot after my sister left. I had accepted that.
Then he had given me a studio. He had praised my work. He had apologized for the misunderstanding. He had pulled me into the bedroom and said, Why was a wife running from her husband's bed?
Those things had made me believe he might actually be falling for me. Made me believe the feelings I had buried for years had finally been seen—not as Isabella's little sister, not as a stand-in to patch a broken engagement, but as Elena.
I had even thought, Give him time. He would love me the way I loved him.
I had been a fucking idiot. Everything he did had been second-best. And I had been like a kid who had never gotten candy—one taste of sweet, and I had called it love.
"I am full," I said, setting down the toast I had barely touched, and stood.
Olga rose with me. "You barely ate. What the hell happened?"
"I just don't have an appetite."
"Elena—"
"I am fine."
I smiled, but my cheeks felt stiff, wrong.
I left the dining room and went into the studio, shutting the door behind me. The second my back hit the wood, tears fell.
That photo and Kiryan's promises from that night kept looping in my head. My heart hurt like it had been torn open.
I didn't know how long I cried before something else finally cut through.
Work. I just needed to work. Let color fill my head. Let the brush move until the grief thinned out—even if it was only for one minute.
I grabbed a brush.
The moment the tip hit paper, the line went crooked. I wiped it away and tried again. Still wrong.
My eyes slid to the nude portrait I had painted of Kiryan, and I remembered the night he had placed the studio key in my palm.
And then—like a slap—the image of him and Isabella in that bed slammed back into me.
When I blinked myself back, the outlines of the two of them were already on my paper.
My stomach lurched.
I dropped the brush, clapped a hand over my mouth, and ran down to the first-floor washroom. The second I knelt by the sink, acid surged up my throat. I hadn't eaten enough to throw up, so I just gagged and heaved, gripping the cold counter until the nausea eased.
Then I heard a voice outside. Low. Hard. So familiar my whole body locked up.
Kiryan had come back.
Olga's voice followed, sharper than usual.
"Nice of you to finally show up."
"Where is Elena?" Kiryan sounded calm, like always.
I turned on the faucet to drown them out and rinsed the sour taste from my mouth.
The studio was on the second floor, the only place in this house that ever felt safe. But to get back there, I had to pass the staircase facing the main hall.
I didn't want to see him. No—more than that, I was scared to.
If I didn't look at that familiar shirt, I could still pretend the photo didn't exist. Pretend last night hadn't erased the softness of the past few days.
I wanted the studio. I wanted the door shut. I wanted paint and canvas around me. Even if it had betrayed me too, it was still the only place I could breathe.
I stood there with my hand on the doorknob for a long time before I finally pushed it open.
Kiryan stood in the center of the hall, still wearing the same shirt from the birthday party. The collar had been buttoned now, but the fabric held the wrinkles of a night slept in.
The moment I appeared, he saw me. His eyes landed on my face and didn't move.
Some pathetic part of me still tightened under his stare. My brain had seen the photo. My body still remembered his heat when he came close.
His gaze swept over my eyes, my bloodless lips, and something in him sank.
"You look like shit."
When he spoke, his voice dropped lower than it had been with Olga.
"The paint smell is too strong. It gave me a headache," I said, grabbing the first excuse I could.
"In the afternoon, someone will check every paint you have," he said. "Anything that reeks gets replaced. From now on, you write a list for Olga—whatever brands you want."
Olga stood there with her arms crossed and gave a short nod.
The broken place in my chest somehow hurt again.
Kiryan did cruelty clean. He did care like it was his right.
"No," I said, trying to slip past him.
"I am not asking." Kiryan shifted and blocked my way.
That familiar force pressed down. Before, I would've felt my pulse jump at that unreasonable kind of concern. Now it just felt absurd. His breath hit me—and threaded through it was a thick rose scent.
Isabella had worn that perfume since she was eighteen. She had always said it made people remember her the second she walked into a ballroom.
That smell clung to my husband. My stomach tightened again.
"You cried," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"Something got in my eye."
"Elena."
My name fell from his mouth and skimmed my spine, wrecking my breathing. He lifted a hand like he was going to touch my face. His thumb hovered a breath from the corner of my eye—then stopped midair.
I stared at his hand. A few hours ago, Isabella's body might've been pressed under it. I flinched away.
His hand lowered slowly. The warmth in his eyes cooled.
"Let me pass."
He didn't move.
"Don't start pretending you give a damn now," Olga strode over, looking straight at Kiryan. "Your wife didn't sleep all night. She called you countless times. You didn't answer once. This morning you hung up on her. Elena didn't tell me where you went, but I am not senile."
A muscle jumped in Kiryan's jaw. He drew in a breath, like he swallowed down something nastier.
"Last night was more complicated than you thought."
"Complicated?" Olga shook her head, disappointment cutting into every word. "So complicated you stayed out all night and couldn't even tell your wife? What you did isn't any different from your father."
The air froze.
"Don't mention him in front of me," Kiryan's voice sank.
"Then don't do the same damn thing and break Elena's heart—"
"She chose to finish the engagement. I didn't force her to marry me instead of Isabella."
Hearing it again still crushed my chest.
Something I couldn't see sat heavy behind Kiryan's eyes. I didn't know what it was, only that it stood between us. It made the way he looked at me turn hard again.
"The one who was supposed to marry into the Morozov family was Isabella. She left, Elena put on the dress and took the spot. Nobody held a gun to her head."
Olga looked stunned, like she hadn't expected Kiryan to say that now.
And when his last sentence landed like a verdict, my heart forgot how to beat.
So that was what he really thought.
"So everything you did for me was bullshit?" My voice came out raw, ugly.
The resentment lodged in my throat—I couldn't swallow it, couldn't spit it out.
Kiryan and Olga both looked at me.
"You gave me the studio. You let me sleep in your bed.
You apologized for what happened—was all of that fucking fake?
" I lifted my chin, forcing myself to meet his gaze.
"You still think I stole my sister's place, don't you?
So I don't get to ask where you went last night.
I don't get to be upset you didn't come home. Whatever you do to me, I deserve it."
Those deep gray eyes held mine, something churning in them I didn't dare name. He took a half step forward, his size cutting off the light.
"What answer do you want to hear?"
That sentence ran right over my chest.
"I don't like your answers anymore."
His hand closed around my wrist. Familiar heat pressed to my pulse and my body shivered on instinct. He felt it. His thumb paused against my skin. For a second, we were so close I almost forgot whose bed he had come from.
Then the rose scent slid back into my breath.
I yanked my hand free.
His face turned fully cold.
"Elena, stop acting like a child."
"Acting like a child?" I laughed once, but my throat burned like it had been cut open.
I pulled out my phone, found the photo Isabella had sent, and turned the screen toward him.
"Isabella already sent it to my phone. How the hell am I supposed to 'understand'? Pretend I didn't see her naked in your arms? Or thank you for coming home after you fucked her and still remembered to replace my paint?"
Anger and confusion hit Kiryan's face at the same time.
Before he could speak, Olga snatched the phone from my hand.
"Oh, God. What the hell is this?"