Chapter 19
Kiryan
I sat in my office and stared at the coffee gone cold on my desk. The file stayed open to the same damn page.
Isabella's words—"Give the baby a home"—kept slamming into my temples.
She had been pregnant with a kid that was probably mine. If I divorced Elena, everything looked like it could slide back into place. And yet when Isabella said, "Marry me," I still turned her down. Then I walked out without watching her fall apart.
I went back for Elena. Not to be gentle. Not to explain. I just needed to touch her, to prove the woman living in my head wasn't some one-night mistake—wasn't something I could just shut off.
I hadn't expected Elena to still be sitting in the living room, waiting. She looked pale, eyes red, but she stood anyway and said, "You're back."
When I kissed her, her breath burned against my mouth. She felt slimmer than I remembered, almost fragile. My hand slid along her waist, and every inch of her skin told me the truth—what I wanted from her had never been about marriage, duty, or habit.
My body's dead silence around Isabella finally made sense. It had only ever reacted to Elena. Even if she just looked at me, my blood ran so hot it felt like it could blister my skin.
And Isabella had been the past. The woman she'd been lately didn't even feel familiar.
Especially last night. The moment Elena's name came up, the hate in Isabella's eyes had shocked the hell out of me.
Her soft, poised mask slipped for a second, and the person underneath was almost a stranger.
And when she said she only wanted "a home for the baby," she'd sounded like she was announcing a win she'd lined up long ago.
The timing matched. Before she left New York, we'd still been together. Based on dates alone, I couldn't outright deny the kid. But her reaction had felt wrong in my gut, wrong enough that I couldn't stop questioning how real any of it was.
I hit the intercom. "Send Feodor in."
Less than a minute later, he stopped at my desk. He glanced at the untouched paperwork and lifted one brow.
"I need to know what happened after Isabella left New York," I said. "Every hotel she stayed at. Any private flights. Everyone she met. And her medical records before she went back."
"You suspect her?" He looked like he couldn't believe what he'd heard.
"It is standard procedure."
Feodor nodded. "Got it."
He had just turned when the glass exploded.
"Down!"
Instinct threw me to the floor, my right hand already yanking my gun free.
The metal lamp frame by the desk snapped as a round tore through it. Glass rained everywhere. Feodor dove behind a load-bearing wall, muzzle angled toward the window.
No second shot came.
The floor-to-ceiling window spiderwebbed out from the bullet hole—white cracks everywhere. The ballistic layer had been punched through. The round skimmed the spot where my head had been, took out the lamp, and buried itself in the wall. Somebody had aimed for my skull.
"Lock it down," Feodor barked into his comm. "Pull traffic cams from the nearby intersections. Look for anyone carrying a long case and any vehicle that just peeled out."
I tracked the trajectory and stared outside. Across the street, the black mesh on a construction building lifted in the wind, like someone had just stepped back from the roofline.
Feodor used a handkerchief to pick up the deformed slug. "Large caliber. Missed by inches."
I touched my cheekbone. A smear of blood came back on my fingertip—glass, probably. "He didn't miss. The glass kicked the round."
Otherwise it would've gone straight through my temple.
Elena at the manor flashed through my mind.
If the shooter switched targets to the manor... even with the best security money could buy, I wasn't gambling on a one-in-a-thousand chance.
I pulled out my phone. No messages.
Elena hadn't complained that I'd disappeared this morning. She hadn't asked when I was coming back. She rarely pushed, but today that silence felt like a needle buried in the back of my neck.
I called her. No answer. Once. Twice. Same result.
It felt like a hand closed around my lungs.
I tried Olga. Still nothing.
I grabbed my keys and moved.
Feodor blocked the door. "We haven't found the sniper. If you go downstairs now, you're walking into a second kill zone."
"Get the armored car into the underground tunnel."
"I go with you."
"You stay." I shoved past him. "Check the slug. Keep digging into Isabella. And find out who knew my schedule today."
Every minute I wasted meant one more minute Elena could be in trouble.
The car shot out of the underground passage, two escort vehicles boxing us in, front and back.
The driver pushed it to the limit. I sat in the back seat and called Elena again and again. Every time—no answer.
Last night she'd been warm against me. This morning I'd left without waking her, without a single word. I'd told myself I had to handle the mess first. Now I would've given anything to shove that bedroom door open again and force the version of me who'd walked away to stay.
The moment we stopped at the manor, I threw the door open and got out.
No gunfire. No blood. But the hollow quiet inside hit harder than a body on the floor.
I cut through the hall and took the stairs two at a time. "Elena!"
My voice hit the high ceiling and fell back, empty.
On the bedroom desk sat a stack of papers, and on top of it—her wedding ring, the one that never fit right.
My feet locked.
I'd taken her ring off and tossed it into a drawer. I'd promised I'd replace it with one that fit. I'd kept putting it off. Now it lay there, still and cold, like she'd finally returned everything that had never been hers.
My fingertips touched the band. The metal was ice.
Then the words on the page punched straight through me—
Divorce agreement.
I sucked in air and flipped through it. On the last page, the wife's signature line held Elena's name. The husband's line held mine.
The letters, the slant, the final stroke—almost identical to how I wrote. But it wasn't my signature. I hadn't signed it. I'd never even thought about divorcing Elena.
"Olga!"
I needed to know what the hell had happened. The manor hadn't been attacked like I'd feared, but my home had still been gutted.
Olga appeared in the doorway fast. Her gray hair was a mess, her eyes red-rimmed.
"Where's Elena?"
"She left."
"Where did she go?"
"I don't know."
"You were here. How the hell did you not know?"
Olga strode up and stared at the papers in my hand, anger sparking in her eyes.
"Now you care?" she shouted. "When she held that agreement and said she had no reason to stay, where were you?"
"I didn't give her this."
"It has your signature on it!"
"It was forged."
She froze.
I slammed the papers to the floor. "I never signed it. I never had a lawyer draw up a divorce."
Olga's face drained, bit by bit. "Then what about the recording?"
"What recording?"
"The one Isabella sent her. In it, you said you were divorcing Elena and marrying Isabella. Isabella also sent a pregnancy test report."
My spine went tight. "When did she get it?"
"This morning. After you left."
A forged agreement. A recording. A conveniently timed pregnancy report. All dumped in Elena's lap at once. Last night Isabella had tried to force my hand. I'd refused. Hours later, Elena had stepped aside and made room for her.
That wasn't coincidence.
If this had been a spur-of-the-moment move, there was no way the paperwork would've been ready that fast. Which meant Isabella had been waiting. The second I said no, she'd already had the knife ready to cut Elena out.
"It was all bullshit," I said, not even sure who I was trying to convince. "Even that report. The kid might not have been mine."
But I remembered letting go of Elena's hand at the birthday party. Following Isabella when she cried. Standing guard at the hospital after the crash. Leaving Elena alone at home until dawn.
Nobody needed to forge anything.
Everything I'd done had already been evidence for the divorce.
The agreement was fake. The signature was fake.
The recording was fake. But Elena would've believed it because I'd poured the foundation myself.
I'd put Isabella ahead of her again and again, told her this marriage was just a replacement.
Last night I'd held her and still refused to explain.
A forged answer had sounded more believable than the truth.
She left because I'd never given her a reason to stay.
"Did she say where she was going?" I asked.
Olga shook her head. "She said New York is big enough. She can live off her painting."
Of course she could. The only thing Elena had ever begged me for was not to throw away her art supplies. She'd always been able to survive on her own talent.
"So it was all that bitch Isabella," Olga spat, like she'd finally found someone to aim at. "I should have said it louder. She can't be trusted."
I couldn't argue. I'd trusted Isabella and driven Elena out. It was the dumbest thing I'd ever done.
I called Feodor.
"Find Elena fast and make sure she is safe," I ordered. "She left the manor with luggage this morning."
Feodor confirmed.
"And one more thing," he said, voice shifting.
"Talk."
"We already pulled Isabella's movements after she left New York. The hotels, the people she met, the timing of her first exam—it doesn't match the story she fed you."
Rage flared in my chest. Then it went cold, sharp enough to cut.
"The baby?"
"On paper, the dates could line up, but—" He paused. "I already sent you the report. Look at it."
My screen lit up. Before the file even finished loading, I was moving for the door. Feodor's tone told me everything.
Isabella had lied to me from the first second to the last.