10. Rowan #3
A starving boy with split knuckles and blood in his teeth. A stray with no family, no name worth speaking or remembering, no future beyond dying young in some filthy warehouse while men threw money at the floor and called it entertainment.
I know exactly what will happen once we come back to the estate, what will be waiting for me, specifically.
There will be no public reprimand in the foyer, no dramatic dressing down in front of his men.
He knows better than to weaken his own blade before the entire household.
It will be quieter than that, a summons after Sofia is secured somewhere he considers sufficiently controlled.
It will be behind a closed door, his face unreadable in the lamplight while he waits for me to stand in the center of the room like the boy he first met and rebuilt into something useful.
Then he will begin.
My pulse hammers as I tap my thumb on the screen and lift the phone to my ear. The call connects, and it rings twice before the other side picks up.
“Rowan,” Ivan greets. “That was fast. What did you find?”
The question is a hand closing around the back of my neck, squeezing until it stings. He thinks I’m calling from the morgue. Believes I’m there and have done exactly what I said I would do and am reporting back just as promised.
For one brief, treacherous second, I consider lying.
I could say I’m still en route and calling to confirm some minor, unimportant detail I already know the answer to.
Buy time, keep Sofia out of it until I can figure out another way to justify this outing in a way he might approve of.
Or keep him in the dark altogether and figure out smuggling her back in the same way she left undetected.
But that would be cowardice, earning me a far greater punishment than the one I’m already looking at ahead.
I swallow, forcing my tone to sound casual even as my grip tightens on the steering wheel. “Hello, Pakhan. Actually, I’ve decided to take Sofia with me.”
There’s a beat of silence. Then Ivan’s voice comes through, sharp with anger. “You did what?”
“She needed fresh air,” I say.
The lie is insulting.
To him.
To me.
But the alternative is telling him the truth that his niece somehow escaped the library, hid in the back of my SUV, and showed me a notebook containing enough questions about her mother’s death and her father’s erasure that may completely topple whatever secrets Ivan has been keeping all these years.
And I can’t put Sofia in the crosshairs of his anger like that.
I would never.
I wait for him to say something. Anything. But the longer the silence stretches on, the more guilty and tense I feel.
It is incredibly rare for Ivan to be speechless, and never from me. I have seen Ivan pause before giving out an order to decide a man’s fate. I have seen him let silence stretch during negotiations to force the other party’s hand far sooner than they intended.
But this is different.
For all the bodies I’ve put in the ground at his command, for all the doors I’ve broken open and secrets I’ve carried without once letting them touch the light of day, this may be the first time I have genuinely surprised him.
When he speaks again, his voice is lower, nearly a growl. “Return her to the estate, Rowan. Immediately.”
My hands want to turn the wheel before thought intervenes, my body recognizing his authority faster than any promise I could ever make. It is muscle memory, devotion wired into every fiber of my being. A blade feeling the hand holding it tighten around its hilt.
“Pakhan,” I begin to say carefully.
“Do not,” he cuts in.
For a second, the boy I used to be flinches somewhere inside me. The one who learned Ivan’s approval could feel like shelter and his displeasure like being thrown back into the undertow. That boy wants to bow his head and apologize and plead for forgiveness.
But I am not only that boy anymore. I am the man Ivan made.
And perhaps that is the problem.
The full weight of that presses down on me through the phone, through the years filled with every debt I have ever owed him. For a moment, I cannot breathe around it.
“Okay,” I finally say.
I close my eyes once the line goes dead and lower the phone slowly into my lap. For several seconds, I don’t put it away. I hold it in my hand while my eyes drift out the windshield of the SUV, taking in the unmarked road that leads toward Moscow’s center districts.
Sofia’s voice is soft when it comes. “Was he mad?”
I almost laugh. That would be the thing she asks me. “No.”
Silence fills the car again, but it is different now. I put the SUV back into drive and pull it carefully onto the road. This time, Sofia keeps quiet as her hands fold firmly in her lap. She watches me from the rearview mirror, holding my gaze every time my eyes catch hers.
For the first time in my life, I have chosen something, someone, over the direct order of my Pakhan.
There is no undoing this.
I am now a man walking into forbidden territory with Sofia Kuznetsov beside me and a thousand consequences waiting for us when we get back home.