Chapter 19 – Sofia
I’m alone again.
The estate feels quieter than it should, like even the walls are listening but refusing to answer me back.
My books are spread across the floor and the couch, open like wounded things.
Pages I once loved now feel unfamiliar, like they belong to someone smarter than me. Someone who knew what they were doing.
Now that I know the truth, I can’t unsee it.
Every spine. Every margin. Every little habit I thought was mine—it all feels… arranged. Intentional.
My fingers hover over a familiar book before I pull back, as if it might bite me. This was never just reading. It was something else. A system.
A language I was apparently meant to understand without being told how. I press my palms into my eyes.
“Think, Sofia,” I whisper to myself.
But thinking doesn’t help.
I sit back on the floor and force myself to breathe slower, to stop chasing the panic rising in my chest. Lukyan thinks the answers are here. Hidden in these books. Hidden in me.
I’m not doing this for him; I’m doing this for me. Because if my father hid something inside me, I want to find it. To honor him. To show him he didn’t make a mistake entrusting it to me.
I pick up one of the books again. This one I’ve read at least five times alone, and multiple times with my father. A novel about grief and memory. Nothing suspicious on the surface. Nothing that should feel like a puzzle.
But now everything feels like a puzzle.
I flip through it slowly, watching the pages more than reading them. Notes. Underlines. Dog-eared corners. My habits. My fingerprints and my father’s all over it.
Did I always mark this paragraph? Or did I do it because something inside me told me to?
My throat tightens.
“No,” I murmur. “This is ridiculous.”
But my hand is already reaching for another book. Then another.
I start comparing them without meaning to. Spines aligned. Placement. Order. Which ones I reach for first when I’m anxious. Which ones I always return to at night. Which ones I avoid without knowing why.
A pattern begins to form at the edge of my thoughts. It’s not clear. Just… a feeling. Like standing in a dark room and sensing the shape of furniture before I touch it. I pause.
My breath catches. Suddenly I remember something. My father’s voice. I blink hard, trying to pull it closer.
We’re in his study. I’m younger—small enough that the books feel like towers around me. He’s watching me struggle with a puzzle, smiling like he already knows I’m going to give up before I succeed.
“You always look too hard,” he says gently.
I frown. “I’m trying.”
“I know.” A pause. Then softer: “But some things don’t want to be chased.”
That memory lands strangely in my chest. I sit still, the book halfway open in my hands.
Don’t chase it.
My eyes shift slowly across the room again. The way I always return books to the same places. The way my hand hesitates over certain titles before choosing others. The way I feel calmer when the arrangement is just right, even if I never questioned why “right” felt like that.
My heartbeat changes. Like something inside me is waking up. I set the book down and stand. Walk to the shelf. Stop.
Instead of grabbing anything, I simply look. Really look. And for the first time, I stop trying to solve the books. I start trying to remember myself. Memories cause me to sink to my knees.
The soft click of the library door latch makes me stiffen. I don’t even have to look up from the mess of books scattered around my knees to know it’s him.
Lukyan steps into the room, his dark eyes instantly taking in the scene—the splayed novels, my frantic notes, the desperate lines I’ve been trying to connect. He immediately understands where I’m headed. He sees that I’m trying to crack my father’s code myself.
But instead of the calculating triumph I expect to see on his face, a look of pure anguish crosses his features. He doesn’t encourage me. Instead, he steps closer and speaks, his voice thick with a heavy, unexpected emotional weight.
“Stop, Sofia. Please, just stop.”
I snap my head up, glare at him through a veil of tears, and pull a book protectively against my chest. “Get out, Lukyan. I can do whatever I want. They’re my books; it’s my father’s memory, and I don’t answer to you.”
He shakes his head, dropping to his knees right in the middle of the mess of paper, completely disregarding his usual rigid pride. He looks up at me, his eyes entirely desperate.
“Zaychik, please… I want to fix this,” he pleads, the rough edges of his voice cracking.
“This is all my fault. I know that. But please… I’m hopeless without you.
Please forgive me. You don’t have to force yourself to do this.
I don’t want the code anymore, Sofia. If it means losing you, if it means you look at me with that hatred in your eyes for the rest of our lives, I don’t want a single cent of it.
I am content with what I have. I have enough power, enough wealth.
I don’t care about the network. I just need you. ”
I tilt my head slightly, watching him intently. A sudden, jarring shift vibrates through the air between us. For the first time, I’m violently confronted with the glaring contradiction between his cold past actions and the bleeding, raw vulnerability of his current words.
The agonizing conflict inside me doesn’t just vanish, but the anger begins to morph into a painful, confusing ache, moving us in a completely different direction.
“What are you even talking about?” I ask, my voice trembling as I look at him. “How can I possibly trust a single word that comes out of your mouth after everything?”
“You only have to give me time,” he rushes out, reaching toward me but stopping himself just short of touching my hands. “Just give me time, and I’ll prove myself to you every single day. I’ll earn every ounce of your trust back, even if it takes a lifetime.”
He runs a hand through his hair. “You matter to me, Sofia. Beyond this mess, beyond the syndicate, beyond the code, and beyond absolutely anything I initially intended when I met you. You’re my home now.”
I tear my eyes away from his, my chest heaving as I try to protect myself from the hope his words stir up. “I don’t believe you,” I whisper, shaking my head. “I can’t.”
Lukyan doesn’t hesitate. He closes the final distance between us, sliding his large, calloused hands up to cup my face. His touch is remarkably gentle, warm against my cold cheeks, forcing me to look straight into the dark intensity of his eyes.
He leans in close, his breath brushing my lips, and says something so much stronger, an absolute vow stripped of all armor:
“Then don’t believe my words, Sofia—look at my chest and feel how my heart only beats because you are in the room.
I was a dead man walking through a frozen life until you cracked me open.
If you walk away from me, you won’t just break my heart; you’ll end me.
I’m entirely, completely yours. Kill me if you must, but don’t doubt this. ”
The raw, terrifying gravity of his confession goes straight to my core, shattering the last of my defenses. A soft, broken, whimpering sound escapes my throat as the tears finally overflow, my body trembling violently under the weight of a truth I can no longer deny.
We’re kissing before I can even think to react.
The collision of our lips is desperate, a chaotic burst of all the pain, anger, and sudden, overwhelming relief swirling between us. I don’t try to stop him. I don’t have the strength to fight the gravity pulling me toward him, nor do I want to.
I claw at his shoulders, my fingers frantically tangling in the fabric of his shirt before slipping underneath, desperate to feel the heat of his bare skin against my palms.
He groans deep in his throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated hunger, and breaks the kiss for a fraction of a second to breathe against my lips. “I need you, Sofia. I need you so bad.”
I respond by wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him down to kiss him even harder, pouring all my unspoken fears and burning desire into him.
Lukyan guides me down, laying me flat on the floor right on top of my scattered books, the paper crinkling beneath us.
His large, heavy body follows me down, his calloused hands roaming over my curves with a fierce, possessive urgency.
We claw at each other’s clothes, shedding the fabric in a frantic blur of tangled limbs, unable to bear any distance between us for a second longer.
There’s no preamble, no slow teasing—just a raw, consuming necessity. He sinks into me fully, a breathless gasp escaping my throat at the sudden, stretching fullness of him.
I instantly lock my legs tightly around his thick waist, lifting my hips to meet his heavy, powerful thrusts.
Every touch burns; every collision deepens the desperate rhythm, drowning out the secrets, the lies, and the world outside this room until there’s nothing left but the two of us breaking against each other.
He drives into me with an unbridled fury, each hard pound sending a jolt of pure electrical heat straight up my spine. The absolute weight of him is crushing, grounding me to the floor as his thick hips slam relentlessly against mine.
He isn’t holding back anymore—the rigid, disciplined mafia boss has completely unraveled, leaving only a man desperate to anchor his soul to mine. The books slide and scatter beneath us with every thrust, completely forgotten beneath the friction of our skin.
“You’re mine, Sofia,” he growls, his voice a dark, gravelly rasp against my ear as he drives deeper, hard enough to steal the breath right out of my lungs. “Do you hear me? Fucking mine. No one else touches you. No one else takes you from me.”
A broken gasp hitches in my throat as he shifts his angle, finding the exact spot that makes my vision blur into blinding white stars.
“Tell me you feel how much I need you,” he mutters darkly, his grip tightening on my hips, bruising my skin as he picks up the pace into a bruising, breathless speed. “Tell me you’re not going anywhere.”
“I feel it,” I gasp. “Oh—Luk—I’m not going anywhere.”
“Fuck, Sofia… you’re so tight, so perfect. Wrap your legs tighter around me.”
I arch into him, crying out his name as his dirty words slip into my mind, stripping away the very last of my reservations. The rhythm becomes frantic, a dangerous, chaotic storm of heavy friction and gasping breaths.
He anchors his hands on either side of my head, staring down into my eyes with a fierce, burning intensity as he delivers a succession of deep, merciless thrusts that bring us both right to the very edge of the precipice.
The world fractures into brilliant, blinding shards of heat as we crash over the edge together. I cry out, my fingers digging deep into the muscles of his back as a violent, relentless wave of pleasure ripples through me.
Lukyan lets out a low, guttural growl, his entire body shuddering violently above me as he delivers one final, deep thrust, burying himself completely inside me as he spills his warmth deep within.
The frantic, chaotic storm slows, leaving only the sound of our ragged, echoing breaths filling the quiet bedroom.
He doesn’t pull away from me. He keeps his heavy body pressed against mine, his forehead resting against my shoulder as he tries to catch his breath.
After a few minutes, as the reality of everything we just said begins to settle back into my mind, a sudden wave of vulnerability washes over me.
I try to gently wiggle my hips, trying to shimmy out from under his heavy grasp.
In an instant, his arms tighten around my waist, pinning me gently but firmly back down to the scattered books.
“Sofia… please,” he whispers, his voice thick, carrying a vulnerable plea I’ve never heard from him before. “Just let me hold you for a minute longer. Please.”
I freeze, staying completely still beneath him. He buries his face deep into the crook of my neck, inhaling sharply, breathing me in as if I’m the only oxygen left in the world.
My heart pounds frantically against my ribs, a wild, erratic rhythm—but it isn’t from fear or anger anymore. I can feel the last of my icy defenses melting away, my entire body softening, molding itself completely into the contours of his heavy chest.
God, I’m so down bad for this man. Even after the lies, even after the betrayal, my soul still answers to his touch, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it.