Chapter Twenty-Seven - Annie
The estate doesn’t breathe the same anymore.
Guards move in pairs along the halls, radios crackling low, weapons always at hand.
Doors that once stood open now click shut behind heavy locks.
The air hums with tension, thick and metallic, as if even the walls are braced for impact.
To everyone else, this is safety. To me, it feels like a gilded cage.
The private wing is quieter than the rest of the house, too insulated, too polished. The marble floors mute footsteps, the drapes swallow outside noise, and the chandeliers glow warm no matter how dark the night.
My son thrives here. He sleeps through the night without waking, sprawled across sheets that smell faintly of lavender, his small breaths steady and even.
In the mornings he plays on rugs so soft they could swallow his toys whole.
He laughs more often, full and unguarded, the sound bouncing against walls that have never known joy.
That should ease me. It doesn’t. Every comfort in this place carries a shadow, and every shadow has Dimitri’s name written in it.
I keep the photograph hidden under the mattress. Some nights I take it out, running my thumb over the blurred edge where the date stamp bleeds into gray. My father’s face stares back at me, caught between exhaustion and defiance, flanked by men whose eyes are as dead as their guns.
It anchors me, reminds me of who I am and where I came from.
It curses me too. There’s no denying it anymore; he hadn’t been innocent. Richard Vasile had been part of this world long before I ever set foot inside it.
The knowledge doesn’t free me. It chains me tighter.
When the lights go out and the house sinks into silence, I lie awake with the image of Dimitri in my mind.
The night he found me in his study replays endlessly—the weight of his stare, the silence stretched too thin, the fury contained in every measured word.
I wonder if he knew even then, if he already carried the truth I hadn’t pieced together yet.
Maybe he’d been watching me fumble toward it, letting me trip over scraps of my own bloodline until the picture was whole. The thought gnaws at me, sharp and bitter, until I taste metal at the back of my throat.
I tell myself I’ll confront him. That I’ll demand answers, force the truth from his lips the way I should’ve from my father’s.
Timing always slips through my fingers. My courage burns hot when I’m alone, when the walls echo only my breathing. It falters the moment I hear Dimitri’s voice carried through the corridors, deep and certain, cutting through the quiet like it belongs there. Every time, my resolve crumbles.
So I wait. I fold the photo back under the mattress, smooth the sheets until the secret lies flat, and tell myself tomorrow I’ll be braver. Tomorrow I’ll open the door, step into the hall, and ask him what he knows.
Tomorrow never comes.
The house is restless tonight. The storm presses hard against the windows, thunder rolling through the walls like distant artillery.
I settle my son into bed, smoothing his hair until his breathing evens out, then slip into the corridor, unsure where my feet are taking me.
The halls are hushed, every door closed, the silence broken only by the low rattle of rain against the glass.
I pause when I hear it—a faint clink, ice shifting in a glass. The sound carries down the private hall, alien against the quiet. A sliver of lamplight cuts across the carpet, leaking from the half-open door to the library.
My pulse stutters. I should turn back, retreat to the room where secrets can’t reach me. Instead, I move closer, each step heavy.
Dimitri sits inside, the lamplight painting his shoulders in gold and shadow. Papers are spread across the desk in neat rows, his fingers resting against them like they’re another weapon.
A tumbler of vodka sweats beside his hand, half empty, the ice cracking faintly as it melts. He doesn’t look up at first, the storm outside rattling the windows, filling the silence between us.
I step inside before my courage can break. My voice comes sharper than I intend. “Did you know Richard Vasile?”
His head lifts slowly. Our eyes lock. The room holds its breath.
The silence stretches until I think he won’t answer. Then he does, voice low, even, but edged with something harder. “Yes.”
The single syllable lands heavy. He doesn’t stop there.
He speaks of my father as if reciting history—how Gabriel Moreno had him in his grasp, how Richard moved money through channels no one outside the families could ever trace.
Trusted, important. Until betrayal carved his fate.
Until loyalty snapped and secrets bled through cracks too wide to mend.
Each word strikes like iron.
My throat tightens, hands curling against my sides.
I want to argue, deny it, insist he’s wrong.
But the photograph under my mattress says otherwise.
The files I saw in his study whisper the same.
The truth doesn’t soothe me; it guts me.
My father hadn’t been a victim, swept into violence he didn’t understand.
He’d been part of it. This world. The one I now live inside.
The air feels colder. I can’t breathe past the weight pressing down.
Dimitri leans back in his chair, the leather groaning softly, his gaze fixed on me with unnerving calm. He studies me like he’s been waiting for this moment, like he already knew what I’d ask. His glass catches the lamplight when he tips it, the vodka shifting clear and sharp.
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
The question cuts deeper than any revelation. It sounds like accusation, heavy and unforgiving. But there’s something else in it too, quieter, harder to name—an opening, as though he’s inviting me to step closer, to stop clawing at shadows when the truth has always been in his hands.
My lips part, but no words come. The storm outside lashes at the windows, thunder breaking across the sky. Inside, the silence closes in, waiting for me to decide whether to answer him or to run.
The urge to laugh claws at me, bitter and sharp. Ask him? As if it were that simple. As if I could stand in front of the man who cages me, who wields silence like a blade, and expect something other than pain. My throat works around the words before I can stop them.
“Because I didn’t trust you.” The admission tastes like blood. My voice lowers, rough. “Well, and because I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.”
He doesn’t look away. His eyes hold mine, unblinking, weighty as stone. The silence between us thickens until it suffocates. My heart slams against my ribs, breath sharp and shallow, but I don’t retreat. If he wants truth, he’ll get it. Even if it destroys me.
The quiet stretches taut, a wire pulled too tight. It hums in my bones, unbearable, until it snaps.
Dimitri rises, the chair groaning under his sudden movement. Two strides carry him across the room, fast, decisive, impossible to stop. His hand spears into my hair, tilting my head back, and before I can breathe his mouth is on mine.
The kiss isn’t tender. It’s fire—raw, consuming, a violent claim that strips away every fragile barrier I’ve built. His lips crush mine, his grip unyielding, the storm outside echoing in the storm he forces into me.
I resist for a heartbeat. Fury lashes, grief surges, longing claws its way through both. My fists knot in his shirt, trembling with the need to push him back, to punish him for every wound he’s carved into my life. When I pull, it isn’t away—it’s closer.
My body betrays me, hunger surging where fear should live. His taste floods my mouth, vodka and smoke, bitter and intoxicating. His heat presses into me, steady, relentless. I break against him, against the fire and the gravity that hold me in place.
The kiss consumes. It devours grief, drowns fury, burns through the months I spent choking on questions I was too afraid to ask. It doesn’t heal, not even close, but it leaves no room for illusions, no space for lies. Only raw, scorching truth.
I gasp into him, ragged and desperate, fingers clutching tighter at his shirt, nails scraping against muscle beneath. His hand fists harder in my hair, angling me to his will, and I let him, because fighting only feeds the blaze.
The storm rattles the glass, thunder cracking above us. Inside, it’s nothing but heat, nothing but fire tearing through the ruins of doubt.
When the kiss finally breaks, I’m breathless, my chest heaving, my lips swollen and raw. His gaze scorches mine, unreadable but devastating. The space between us is gone, obliterated.
There’s no cage, no war, no past in this moment. Only the truth we’ve both been running from—truth pressed into my mouth, seared into my skin, undeniable as the fire still burning in my veins.
Our mouths tear apart only long enough for me to drag in a ragged breath before he claims me again.
The kiss is brutal, unrelenting, lips bruising, tongues colliding.
He drives me backward until my spine thuds against the shelves, books rattling around me as his hands close hard around my waist, my hips, gripping like he could anchor himself to me.
I gasp against him, fury and desire ripping me open. I want to hate him—for the cage, for the silence, for the truth about my father rotting in files on his desk. Every reason dissolves under the fire of his touch, melting into ash as hunger floods through me.
His mouth drags lower, scorching a path along my jaw, my throat.
His teeth scrape, sharp enough to sting, followed by the hot drag of his tongue.
He leaves heat in his wake, and I tremble beneath it.
My fingers tangle in his hair, dragging him closer, nails scraping his scalp as though pain is the only language strong enough to hold my need.