14. Sofia
SOFIA
I’m not sure why the story slips out of me.
Why I’m telling him the fragmented memories I still have of my mother.
The words feel strange leaving my lips, soft and fragile in this world that has been built on harshness and discipline. But they keep coming anyway, carried by a need I can’t quite name.
Maybe it’s a distraction for us both, some flimsy attempt to fill the heavy silence with something gentler than the bruises darkening his skin.
Or maybe it’s unrelenting guilt because no matter how many times he tells me Ivan’s temper isn’t my fault, the cuts and dark splotches on Rowan’s skin say otherwise.
I am the reason he disobeyed.
I am the reason his ironclad loyalty has finally cracked.
And while I never believed my uncle to be incapable of violence, I thought, perhaps foolishly, that Rowan might be exempt from it. He is Ivan’s favorite, after all. I realize now how naive that was.
The Bratva doesn’t make exceptions, not even for the man Ivan considers his adoptive son.
Violence isn’t a failure of the system here.
It is what it is made of. An unspoken agreement everyone signs the moment they step into its shadow and endure pain in exchange for protection, offering absolute obedience in exchange for power while sacrificing pieces of yourself all the while.
On paper, it’s simple. Tempting, even. As long as you don’t step out of line, you are fed, clothed, and shielded by one of the most fearsome men in Russia. Your enemies become nothing more than past irritations and your secrets stay buried.
All it costs is your soul.
Who wouldn’t take a deal like that?
Plenty of people I know, but not men like Rowan.
Ones who grew up with nothing and for whom protection was a fantasy and hunger a daily companion.
Men who learned early that obedience could be bartered for survival.
Rowan made that bargain long ago, and the proof of it is written in red across his face.
Rowan doesn’t interrupt me at all. For the first time since I met him, he looks… human.
The shift happens without warning.
One moment, I’m pressing melting ice to his cheekbone and the next, my lips are brushing against his injured ones. I expect him to pull away immediately, to shut this down like he has in the past.
Instead, Rowan inhales slowly through his nose, and for a split second I panic. I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t want this. He is my guard, my uncle’s most trusted weapon. Touching him is crossing a line that could get us both hurt.
But he doesn’t stop me. He leans in with devastating hunger, his mouth pressing firmly to mine, the kiss deepening as if he’s starved for something he didn’t know he was missing until this exact moment.
I taste the faint copper of blood from his split lip and feel the rough glide of his tongue against mine.
It sends liquid heat pooling low in my belly and between my thighs.
His hand slides to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair, holding me exactly where he wants me.
I groan against his mouth.
Rowan breaks the kiss abruptly, a harsh curse escaping him as he pushes back from me. The sudden loss of him leaves me dizzy and aching. I reach for him instinctively, but he jolts to his feet, stumbling backward as though my touch burns.
“We can’t do this.”
My eyes widen. “Rowan.”
He won’t look at me. The iron walls slam back into place, sealing him off from me completely. In seconds, the man who kissed me like he was drowning is gone, replaced by the weapon my uncle forged and the soldier who doesn’t allow himself softness or want.
I rise slowly from the couch, my legs unsteady as if moving through water. My mind is too full, buzzing with the ghost of his mouth still on mine and the desperate way he’d leaned into me like he couldn’t help himself the way I couldn’t.
I walk out of the sitting room in a daze, leaving him behind.
Each step carries me farther from the man I shouldn’t have touched and deeper into consequences I’m not ready to face.
My heart thuds painfully hard against my ribs as I make my way down the hallway and up the stairs and into the sanctuary of my room.
The moment the door clicks shut behind me, I collapse.
My back hits the wood and I slide bonelessly to the floor, legs folding beneath me.
I press trembling fingers to my lips, tracing where his had been moments earlier.
The imprint feels branded into my skin, one I know I shouldn’t want but can’t stop craving.
I crossed a line tonight.
Not a small one but a catastrophic one.
If Ivan ever found out I touched that man, the consequences would be brutal, unforgiving in a way that would make tonight’s look like child’s play. My uncle may trust Rowan with my life, but he would sooner gut him where he stands than watch his perfect blade be pulled off course by me again.
That much has been revealed to me tonight.
I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting the swirl of emotion rising in my chest. Despite the danger and the certainty that I should run and distance myself for the sake of us both, I don’t want to. I want Rowan Vasiliev like a sin I’ve already decided I’ll gladly burn for.
The soft ping of my laptop cuts through the silence in my room.
Blinking, I force myself upright. My legs feel numb as I walk to the desk. A new message sits at the top of my inbox from the private investigator I hired in secret days ago after getting the politsiya to send over my mother’s file as a secondary measure to dig further into what I found.
My body slumps into the chair as I stare at the screen for a long moment. When I finally work up the strength to lift my arm, I notice my hand shaking. I click on the email chain to pull up the message waiting for me.
It is short and direct.
Your father has been found.
My breath catches.
After all these years of silence, of wondering where my father is, now I will finally have answers.
Strangely, part of me wants to delete the email and pretend I never saw it.
It would be easier that way in order to keep from rocking the boat any further than I already have at this point.
Another part, the one that kissed Rowan tonight, refuses to let the truth stay hidden any longer.
I open the email and wait for the photo attached to it to load.
An older man stares back at me, one I only recognize in a vague sense that feels too distant to form any emotional connection.
The report with it details that he is alive and living quietly in a small apartment on the outskirts of Moscow.
He has had no contact with any gang or Bratva within the area, and no obvious ties to my uncle.
The investigator notes suspicious activity in the form of one cryptic meetup at a location right in the dead center of the city. But other than that, there is nothing.
I close the laptop slowly and settle back into my chair.
Now what?