Chapter 9 #3
Something painful twisted through my chest. He looked lost. “I can’t stand the thought of him near you,” he admitted softly.
My breath caught. “Nikolai—”
“I can’t give you the life you want. ”
The words silenced me immediately. His expression darkened further.
“You deserve safety,” he said. “A normal future. People who aren’t…” His gaze moved briefly around the destroyed room. “This.”
“You think I care about normal?”
“You should.”
“I don’t.”
His eyes searched mine carefully like he genuinely didn’t believe me.
“I would kill for you without hesitation,” he admitted lowly. “If someone touched you, I would make them regret surviving long enough to breathe afterward.” Heat and emotion tangled violently in my chest.
“I would take a bullet for you without thinking,” he continued. “Burn entire families to the ground if they threatened you.”
The darkness in his voice should’ve scared me. Instead, it made my heart ache.
“None of that changes what I am.”
I didn’t know what to say, so chose silence. However, my attention shifted toward the desk against the far wall. A box sat near the corner untouched despite the destruction surrounding it. Everything else in the room looked demolished. Not that.
“What’s that?” I asked softly.
Nikolai glanced toward it briefly. “Stuff from Lucien’s office.”
“You went through his things?”
“No.”
His mouth twisted slightly. “I was planning to burn them.”
That honestly felt very on brand. Curiosity flickered immediately through me. I rose slowly before walking toward the desk.
“Emerald.”
“What?”
“Whatever’s in there won’t help you.”
Ignoring him completely, and I opened the box.
Paperwork sat stacked near the top alongside folders, old photographs, and an expensive crystal whiskey glass. Little desk trinkets. A gun, of course. Then I saw it. An old leather journal near the bottom. My pulse picked up slightly as I lifted it carefully from the box.
“What’s this? ”
Nikolai leaned back slightly against the bed. “No idea.”
I opened the cover slowly. Lucien Voss. Written across the first page in sharp dark ink.
A strange feeling settled heavily in my chest. Lucien was dead but somehow holding that journal felt like touching a piece of him that still lingered. Like opening it might unleash ghosts neither of us were prepared for.
“Oh my God.”
Nikolai looked unimpressed. “That can’t possibly be good news.”
“It’s a journal.”
“Which means somewhere in those pages is probably the written equivalent of psychological warfare.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
I flipped slowly through several pages filled with handwriting and dates stretching back years. Curiosity bloomed immediately. Fear too. Maybe answers lived inside these pages. Maybe horrors did too.
“Can I read it?”
Nikolai stared at me like I’d completely lost my mind. “You want to read the diary of a homicidal manipulative psychopath? ”
I shrugged slightly. “Honestly? A little.”
A faint flicker of amusement crossed his face before disappearing again.
“You’re concerning.”
“Maybe this gives more answers on why he acted the way he did. More back story on what trying went down with my parents. Maybe understand him.”
That wiped the amusement away immediately.
“Why?”
“Because maybe understanding him explains everything else.” My fingers traced lightly across the worn leather cover.
“My parents. You. All of it.”
“You won’t like what you find. Sometimes the truth is better left hidden.”
I looked toward him slowly.
“Maybe,” I admitted quietly. “But I’m tired of everyone deciding what I can and can’t handle.”
The words settled into the room like smoke.
Nikolai stayed silent for several seconds, dark eyes fixed on me while rain tapped softly against the tall windows behind him.
The storm outside had grown heavier sometime during our conversation, distant thunder rolling low across the estate while warm amber light stretched across broken glass and overturned furniture.
The room looked exactly how this entire situation felt. Ruined. Tense. One wrong move away from becoming worse.
My gaze drifted toward the desk again. Toward the black box. Toward the journal sitting beside it. Curiosity curled hotter inside my chest.
Unfortunately, Nikolai immediately said, “No.”
I blinked innocently. “You can’t keep responding to my facial expressions.”
“You were literally staring at it.”
“Maybe I like mysterious objects.”
“You like trouble.”
“That too.”
A faint trace of amusement touched his face before disappearing almost instantly. That was becoming a serious problem. Those tiny moments where the coldness slipped and something real surfaced underneath. Every time it happened, it became harder to remember why I should fear him.
My hands wandered farther into the box before he could somehow read that thought directly off my face. I gathered the box in my hands. Broken crystal crunched lightly beneath my sock as I moved toward the couch near the fireplace.
“You know,” I said casually, “normal people usually process emotional distress without redecorating an entire room.”
“It helped.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
“That’s honestly refreshing self-awareness.”
His eyes followed me quietly while I cleaned off the couch. A broken bottle still rested near one of the couch legs, amber liquid staining the expensive rug beneath it.
“You really lost your mind over a business card.”
His expression darkened at that. “It wasn’t the card.”
The calmness in his tone sent a slow heat curling through my stomach. I glanced back at him.
“Then what was it?”
Nikolai didn’t answer immediately. Which told me enough already. Suddenly I remembered the way he’d moved between me and Malrik without hesitation. The tension in his jaw. The fury in his eyes. The way his entire body seemed ready to kill over a simple touch to my hand .
My pulse stumbled unexpectedly.
Oh. Oh no.
Understanding crept over me far too slowly to stop.
“Nikolai…”
His gaze stayed locked onto mine. “He looked at you like he wanted something,” he said finally. “I didn’t like it.”
Heat crawled slowly up my neck. The honesty in his voice hit harder than it should have. Not jealousy exactly. Possession. The dangerous kind. The kind that wrapped itself around my lungs every single time he looked at me lately.
I stood slowly, trying very hard to ignore the sudden warmth spreading beneath my legs.
“Well,” I muttered lightly, “that sounds emotionally unhealthy.”
“It is.”
“You admit that suspiciously fast.”
“I’m not confused about what I am.”
The statement sent a chill across my skin. The terrifying part was—neither was I anymore.
I looked away first. My eyes landed back on the black box sitting partially open beside the journal. Before Nikolai could stop me, I lifted the lid farther open .
“Emerald.”
Too late. Inside rested several old photographs beneath stacks of folded papers yellowed with age.
An unexpected painful knot twisted deep in my chest as I picked one up carefully.
Mira and Nikolai. Younger. Maybe late teens. Mira stood beside him wearing black, dark hair falling over one shoulder while Nikolai stood slightly behind her with one hand resting near her waist. Not touching fully, close enough to imply something anyway.
They looked…intimidating together. Beautiful too, in a sharp dangerous kind of way. However, there was no warmth in the picture. No softness. No love. Just two people standing where they’d clearly been told to stand.
I glanced back toward him. “You kept pictures of her?”
Something unreadable crossed his face.
“She was family.”
The answer felt strangely careful. My eyes dropped back toward the photograph again. The longer I stared at it, the stranger it felt. Not because of Mira, because of Nikolai.
Even younger, there was already something restrained about him. Like every expression had been trained out of him before it could fully form. I looked back up .
“You two were together.”
Nikolai’s teeth clenched briefly. “Yes.”
Something about the word hit me in a way I couldn’t explain. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to feel off. Hearing it out loud made something unpleasant twist inside me before I could stop it. Which was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous.
I forced my voice lighter. “That feels mildly important.”
“It wasn’t real.”
My eyes met his. “What?”
“Lucien arranged it when we were teenagers.”
His voice carried a quiet intensity that did something dangerous to my composure. I looked back down at the photograph again. It made perfect sense. The distance between them. The emptiness. They didn’t look in love. They looked trapped.
“She didn’t want it either,” Nikolai continued quietly.
I swallowed carefully. “And you?”
Something dark flickered behind his eyes before disappearing. “I didn’t want anything Lucien chose for me.”
That sentence hurt more than it should have .
Suddenly all I could picture was younger Nikolai being told who to love. Who to become. What his future would be before he was even old enough to decide for himself. No wonder control made him vicious. His entire life had been built around it.
The truth hit me slowly while my eyes stayed fixed on the picture I was holding. “You look miserable,” I admitted softly.
A humorless laugh left him quietly. “I probably was.”
The honesty in his voice pulled my attention back toward him again. He looked exhausted suddenly. Tonight, had peeled back too many layers neither of us were supposed to see.
The room fell quiet again after that. Rain continued hitting the windows softly while thunder rolled somewhere farther away now. I looked back toward the photograph one final time before setting it gently back in the box.
Then my eyes drifted toward the journal again. Still there. Still waiting, and judging by the look Nikolai gave me the second my attention landed on it—
“No.”
I sighed dramatically. “You are honestly ruining my personality.”
“You had problems long before me.”
“Rude. ”
“You’ll survive.”
“Debatable.”