Chapter 14 – Konstantin #2
I catch her wrist before she can take another step. Not hard. Absolute.
“You stay with me,” I say. “You don’t speak unless I allow it. You don’t move unless I approve. Do you understand?”
She doesn’t even pause. “I promise.”
Immediate. Earnest. That scares me more than defiance.
I grab the sweatpants from the bed and hold them out. “Wear these.”
She rolls her eyes, but she takes them and pulls them on anyway. Obedient. Too fast. I pretend not to notice how that twists something ugly and possessive in my chest.
We move.
I keep her half a step behind me as we descend to the landing. My hand stays at her lower back, not gentle, not rough—territorial.
The doors open.
Detective Samuel Reed steps inside.
Late fifties. Gray hair combed back like he still believes in professionalism. Lines carved deep around his mouth, the kind grief leaves behind when it settles in for good. His eyes flick to Raelyn—and soften immediately.
That alone makes me hate him.
“Raelyn Hart,” he says quietly. “You look just like him.”
She inhales sharply beside me. “You knew my father?”
“Knew him,” Reed replies. “Worked with him. Trusted him.”
My hand tightens at her waist.
“Why are you here?” I ask. “And what news do you think you have the right to bring into my house?”
Raelyn moves anyway, slipping forward despite the restraint in my grip, as if pulled by something stronger than fear.
“Please,” she says. “Just tell me.”
Reed’s shoulders sag. The weight of years presses him downward.
“I was hoping,” he begins, then stops. Swallows. “I was hoping you wouldn’t have to hear this from me.”
My jaw locks.
“Your father is dead, Raelyn.”
The words fall softly. Carefully. Like that makes them kinder.
Her breath catches—sharp, broken.
“He was declared KIA,” Reed continues, voice low and solemn. “His body was never recovered. Classified complications. The kind that don’t leave room for funerals or closure.”
She shakes her head. Once. Twice. Like she can physically refuse the sentence.
“He tried to protect you,” Reed says. “Everything he did was to keep you out of it. He would have wanted you to let go. To move on.”
Something breaks.
Not loudly. Not all at once.
A sound tears out of her chest—raw, devastated, animal. Her knees buckle.
I catch her instantly.
She collapses into me, fingers fisting in my shirt, face pressed hard against my chest as sobs rip through her body. Not quiet tears. Not restrained grief.
This is ruin.
I hold her tighter, one arm locking around her shoulders, the other cradling her head, absorbing every shudder like it’s my duty to take the pain into my own body.
Her grief soaks into my bones.
I lift my head.
Over her bowed crown, my gaze finds Reed.
Cold. Flat. Murderous.
Unblinking.
If grief were a weapon, he just fired it at point-blank range.
And I will never forgive him for the way she sounds right now.
Not ever.
Reed keeps talking for another minute—condolences, procedure, regret—but I’m no longer listening the way he thinks I am.
I’m watching instead. The way his eyes flicker left when he mentions dates.
The pause before he says classified complications.
The way his hands stay too still, like he’s afraid movement will betray him.
His story is clean.
Too clean.
When he finally leaves—escorted, polite, breathing my air longer than I’d like—the doors close behind him with a sound that feels permanent.
Raelyn doesn’t notice.
She’s folded into me, fingers twisted in my shirt, voice breaking on the same sentence over and over.
“He’s gone,” she whispers. “He’s really gone.”
I tighten my arms and pull her fully into my chest, shielding her from the room, from the walls, from the truth I’m already dissecting piece by piece. Her tears soak through the fabric. Her body trembles like she’s trying to hold herself together by force alone.
I rock her slowly. Instinctive. Wordless.
“He can’t be,” she murmurs. “He promised. He always came back.”
I press my mouth to her hair, breathe her in, anchor her where the world just fractured.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur—not as reassurance, but as a statement of fact. “You’re not alone. Not now. Not ever.”
She clings harder, like she’s afraid I’ll vanish too. I let her. I don’t move. I don’t rush her grief. I absorb it.
And while I hold her, my mind works.
Hart disappeared with two tails on him. One criminal. One clean. Reed says dead, but offers no remains, no location, no real proof—just authority and finality. Men who speak the truth don’t need it to sound inevitable.
This man did.
Raelyn’s sobs quiet into broken breaths. I lift her without asking, carry her away from the hall, away from where that lie was delivered, and sit with her on the couch, her curled into my side like she belongs there. Because right now, she does.
My hand moves in slow circles against her back, and my jaw locks.
I’ll find out what really happened to Nathaniel Hart.
I’ll peel this story open until it bleeds.
And whoever thought they could end this with a sentence and a condolence….
They’ve just made themselves my enemy.
Reed is lying. I feel it in my bones.
And Markov isn’t the only enemy in this story.