Chapter 8
OLIVIA
I manage to hold it together long enough to get inside and lock the door.
Then the tears come.
And when they come, they come in devastating waves, each one leaving me more exhausted than the last. They’re the kind of tears that start somewhere deep in your chest, building pressure until they explode outward in gasping, choking sobs that would mortify me if anyone could hear.
Especially if Stefan could hear.
So I press my face into the pillow, muffling the sounds that rack through my chest until my ribs ache, because the last thing I want, the last thing I could bear, would be if he overheard and tried to come comfort me.
I’m not sure I’d be strong enough to say no.
The Egyptian cotton is soft against my skin, expensive and luxurious even as I soak it with snot and tears.
I’m a pathetic mess. When I finally run dry, I force myself upright—only to be hit immediately with a violent surge of nausea that has nothing to do with emotional turmoil and everything to do with the tiny life growing inside me.
I barely make it to the bathroom before my stomach empties itself. Welcome back to the manor, I think bitterly, gripping the toilet rim like it’s the only solid thing left in my universe.
The cool porcelain against my palms grounds me as another wave crashes through. Morning sickness at four in the afternoon. Just what the doctor ordered.
Though technically, I am the doctor, and I definitely didn’t order this particular prescription of misery.
When my stomach finally has mercy on me and stops trying to turn itself inside out, I struggle up to my feet.
I rinse my mouth and splash cold water on my face.
My reflection in the gilt-edged mirror looks hollow—red-rimmed eyes that seem too large for my face, pale skin with a greenish undertone, hair tangled beyond salvation.
I look like someone who’s been through a war. Which, I suppose, I have. A war between mother and son, with me as the battlefield, the collateral damage, whatever you wanna call it.
I reach instinctively for my phone, but I panic for a second when I realize my pockets are empty.
Right. Natalia claimed it was “damaged” during her so-called rescue. Therefore, I have no connection to the outside world. No way to call Camille, who’s probably losing her mind with worry by now. I can’t even call my mom, though her condescending lecture is the last thing I want to hear right now.
No, it’s just me, trapped in this dark fortress with a man I can’t decide whether to trust or run from. I’m Rapunzel in a designer prison, but there’s no happy ending in sight. No prince climbing up my hair to save the day.
Just a devil who owns the tower and holds all the keys.
Stefan had stripped away the illusion of Natalia’s kindness during the car ride—or at least, sown enough doubt to throw it all into question. But he hadn’t exactly made a great case for why I should trust him instead.
After all, didn’t he claim to learn everything he knows from her? The student surpassing the master, but still using the same playbook.
And yet.
And yet, and yet, and yet.
Against all logic, all reason, all self-preservation instincts that should be screaming at me to run—I still ache for him. It’s a physical, illogical thing, like an organ that got transplanted into me, one I never asked for and never wanted.
Seeing him burst through those woods like some avenging angel—or demon, more accurately—with his silver eyes wild with fear, dark hair windblown and disheveled in a way I’d never seen before—it felt like sunlight breaking through after years in darkness.
Like breathing after nearly drowning underwater.
Like coming home to a place I’d never actually been.
It doesn’t matter how many times I remind myself of his long list of sins. He schemed against you. Used you and abused you, lied to you, kept you in the dark at his leisure simply because it suited him.
Because when those hands touched my skin and he asked if I was hurt, none of that seemed to matter anymore.
I sink onto the bed and press my palms against my eyes until I see stars. I’m hoping it’s the hormones driving me slowly insane. Pregnancy does strange things to the brain, floods you with chemicals that make you irrational, make you crave pickles and ice cream and—apparently—Russian crime lords.
But deep down, in that honest place we all try to avoid, I know I was feeling this way long before I knew I was pregnant.
Before that first night in his office when he made me feel things I’d only read about in the romance novels Camille leaves lying around.
Maybe even from that moment at the gala when Stefan crushed Frederick Carson’s hand and called me “little fox” in that voice that made something low in my belly go absolutely bonkers.
A knock at the door makes me jump.
“Olivia.” Stefan’s voice, muffled through wood. “Can we talk?”
“No.”
Silence. Then: “You need to eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“The baby needs—”
“Don’t you dare use this baby to manipulate me,” I lash out.
More silence. I hear him shift, maybe leaning against the door. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “I’m not going anywhere, Olivia. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.”
His footsteps retreat down the hall. I wait until I’m sure he’s gone before reaching for the one thing I managed to keep hidden—the journal Natalia pressed into my hands before Stefan’s men arrived. It’s heavy, leather-bound, edges worn soft from years of handling. Matvey Safonov’s journal.
I shouldn’t read it. It’s probably another lie, the latest and greatest of them, carefully selected to paint Stefan in the worst light.
But I need distraction from the chaos in my head, and maybe understanding his father will help me understand him.
Sometimes, even a pretty lie is better than a hideous truth.
Matvey’s handwriting is thin, faint, nothing like Stefan’s sharp slashes.
The early pages are surprisingly philosophical—musings on the nature of ambition, observations about the passage of time.
One entry catches me, spiraling from watching a caterpillar in its cocoon into a meditation on transformation:
“We think metamorphosis is beautiful, but inside that chrysalis, the caterpillar dissolves completely. It becomes nothing before it becomes something new. Perhaps that is what we fear most about change—not the ending, but the in-between. The moment when we are neither what we were nor what we will become.”
I get sucked into Matvey Safonov’s world, finding myself unexpectedly connected to this man I’ve never met.
He writes with surprising vulnerability about his struggles, his doubts, the weight of the empire he’s building.
There’s poetry in his observations. A gentleness that seems at odds with what Stefan’s told me about him.
Then Natalia appears in the pages, and everything shifts.
The poetic handwriting becomes erratic. Sentences fragment. One entry just repeats her name over and over down the margin. When coherent thoughts return, they’re raw with regret:
“I loved her wrong. I loved her the only way I knew how—hideously and violently. In order to earn her love, I turned into a monster who demanded it. I should have known that true love is given freely, not forcefully.”
I read that line again. And again. The words blur as tears threaten. It’s too close to home, too much like Stefan’s grip on me. What’s that thing my high school teacher used to say? “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
The entries grow darker. Matvey writes about paranoia. He starts to suspect Natalia of sneaking around on him. Lies and conspiracies sprout like weeds. Then comes the revelation that stops my breath:
“She lost a child because of me. MY temper, MY fists, MY need to control everything around me. The doctor said it was stress, trauma to the abdomen. He didn’t need to say more. We both knew whose fault it was.”
My hand moves instinctively to my own stomach. The baby Stefan and I created shifts slightly, a flutter that’s becoming more frequent.
“She wanted to leave then. She would have—but I wouldn’t let her go. I told myself it was love. That was a lie. It was fear. Fear of being alone and facing what I’d become.”
Another entry, weeks or months later:
“It was not her that ended our marriage. It was me. Every blow I struck, every threat I made, every time I chose control over compassion—I was the one destroying us. She simply survived it. And when she finally fought back, when she finally chose herself over me, I cannot blame her. I can only blame myself for making her into someone capable of such choices.”
I set the journal aside and close my eyes. I’d wanted a villain, someone clear to blame. Instead, I find only sadness. Two broken people breaking each other further. A cycle of violence and manipulation that created Stefan, shaped him into the man currently pacing somewhere in this house.
Whose fault is that? Whose fault is anything?
I can’t hate Natalia—a woman who lost a child to her husband’s violence, who spent years trapped in a loveless, toxic marriage.
I can’t hate Matvey—a man aware of his monstrosity but unable to change it, writing his regrets in private pages no one was meant to read.
And if there’s no true villain, who do I hate? More urgently—who do I choose?
The journal draws me back in. Later entries focus almost entirely on Stefan. The margins fill with his name.
“More and more, he reminds me of myself. The way I used to be, before I was punished by my hubris. He has my temper and my endless suspicions. But also Natalia’s cunning, her ability to survive. What will he become, this son of mine? Which parent will win out in his blood?
I see him watching us. Learning. Every ugly thing that comes out of our mouths, he absorbs it all. God forgive me, I’m creating a monster to inherit my monstrous empire.”
The final entry I can bring myself to read:
“Stefan asked me today if I love his mother. I told him love is for weak men. The truth is I love her to madness. Isn’t that love? Wanting someone so badly that you’d consume them just to keep them closer? If that’s not, what is?
Someday, someone will love him the same way.
God help them both when that day comes.”