15. Rowan
ROWAN
For the next several days, I become a ghost inside my own home.
Avoiding Sofia turns into an obsession that borders on religious.
If she enters a room, I leave through another door, already slipping out the back before her footsteps even register.
I adjust patrol routes, shift training hours, even take meals at strange, irregular times just to ensure our paths never cross.
To the rest of the household, nothing seems abnormal. I’ve always been more on the antisocial side—silent, watchful, preferring the shadows to conversation. No one questions why the Pakhan’s blade moves like smoke through the halls of this estate.
But inside my own head, every second near her feels like standing too close to a fire that is about to consume me and burn me alive.
I berate myself nonstop about the kiss.
God, that kiss… it is the dullest blade of all cutting me open over and over with each twist of my memory replaying in high definition.
It is want and weakness that I cannot afford to entertain, let alone crave this badly.
I’ve replayed that night far too many times in the dark of my room as my hand drifted low on my belly before sense has snapped at me like a whip against bare skin.
It all haunts me in unforgivable ways.
Every moment since, I’ve been locked in a brutal internal war.
I call myself a fool, weak and disloyal.
I should have shoved her away at the first brush of her lips against mine.
Or even stopped her before she ever reached for my cheek to soothe it with ice wrapped in cloth.
Instead, I let her in and see me vulnerable. And worst of all, I kissed her back.
I have no business letting the Pakhan’s niece taste me like that. Which is precisely why I must stay as far away from her as physically possible.
I throw myself into work with obsessive dedication, using duty as armor and distance as punishment. If I’m glued to my Pakhan’s side, then I can’t be near Sofia and risk another moment of weakness.
Ivan doesn’t question my sudden intensity. If anything, he seems pleased to have his blade back where it belongs, silent and unquestioningly at his side.
I stand behind him like a shadow during every closed-door meeting, strategy session, and whispered conversation with the inner circle of the Kuznetsov Bratva, listening without speaking and locking every detail into my mind as Ivan unveils the full scope of the plan to infiltrate the government.
First, he wants to install a puppet to take up the mantle left behind by Borchin’s scandal.
A polished politician groomed to smile for the cameras while Ivan pulls every string from the shadows.
Someone the public will adore even more than the last. Then with patience and time, and a steady climb through the ranks until that puppet sits within arm’s reach of the presidency, Ivan’s true plan will ignite.
He intends to force a war.
Not a full-scale global conflict, just enough of a border dispute with a neighboring country to justify calling on martial law. Under it, elections can be postponed indefinitely. Democracy stalls, and power concentrates with no institution capable of stopping it from happening.
In its wake, Ivan Kuznetsov becomes the invisible ruler of Russia for the rest of his life.
It’s a decades-long strategy, a quiet coup disguised as political progression that will mean a generational shift of control. This is the danger Nikolai warned me about weeks ago. The kind of ambition that could fracture the Iron Pact if it actually comes to fruition.
I listen in silence regardless. It isn’t my place to question him, not anymore. In fact, it never has been. But as Ivan outlines the future of the Kuznetsov dynasty and the successors that will come after he is gone, I feel a chill settle deep into my bones that I cannot shake.
Exhaustion overtakes me when I finally leave Ivan’s wing.
The sun has long since set, the estate drowning in the stillness of its residents safely tucked behind their bedroom doors.
I should go to bed to finally rest my eyes.
Or do anything except wander the halls like I’m trying to outrun my own thoughts.
Unfortunately, my feet carry me toward the kitchen.
My eyes wander when I reach it, finding a few things wrapped up and set aside for the morning’s breakfast service inside the fridge.
I close the doors without taking anything.
My appetite hasn’t returned since the night Sofia kissed me, but somewhere in the back of my mind, a small, rational voice reminds me that a man who hasn’t eaten in nearly two days is a liability.
I end up rummaging through the pantry with little interest, pulling out ingredients that require far more effort than I currently have the mental energy for. As I set them aside, I turn to grab one of the knives on the butcher block.
It’s then that something shifts in the corner of my vision. When I turn toward it, I find the back door leading to the shipment bay is cracked open. Barely enough to be noticeable, but something my eyes instantly latch onto.
My focus sharpens instantly, snapping me out of my daze. I step closer, my hand already drifting toward the knife block out of pure habit as I pass by it. My fingers brush over one of the hilts and I tug it up into my hand without missing a stride.
When I reach for the door, preparing myself to scold whatever idiot thought leaving it open to the back of the property was a good idea, it is suddenly pushed open from the outside. I freeze in place as a figure slips in fast, shutting it behind them with a decisive click of the latch.
I lift the knife in the air calmly, pointing it at the hooded figure.
For a full second, my brain refuses to process their face when they finally turn around.
“Rowan?” Sofia’s voice squeaks, coming out in a small, startled whisper.
It takes me one hard blink to finally kickstart my brain into working again.
“What,” I grind out between my teeth, “are you doing?”
She glances down at her clothes—dark pants, fitted jacket with a hood, practical boots meant for walking long distances, a long shirt underneath. It is not the attire of someone innocently wandering the grounds at midnight for a stroll to clear their mind.
My gaze sweeps her from head to toe. “Sofia. Why are you dressed like you’re about to rob a bank?”
Her throat works around the lump forming there.
She opens her mouth to say something, then completely startles me by grabbing the front of my shirt and yanking me down into a kiss.
For one stunned heartbeat, I freeze, every instinct screaming at me to push her away.
Then the dam breaks and I kiss her back just as I did in that damn sitting room.
The knife in my hand clatters to the floor as my hands find her waist, pulling her hard against me. She makes a small, needy sound against my mouth that goes straight to my cock. Her fingers twist around the front of my shirt, keeping me melded against her.
The kiss turns deeper, messier, our tongues sliding against each other and our teeth grazing with every tilt of our heads. I back her up against the wall next to the door and pin her there with my hands moving to her hips.
She gasps and rolls them against me instinctively, the friction dragging a low groan from my throat.
“Rowan,” she breathes against my lips when I move to kiss down her neck, voice trembling with the same desperate hunger I feel clawing inside my chest.
I should stop.
I should walk away right now and never look back.
Hearing my name on her tongue like that, soft and wrecked and wanting, nearly undoes me completely.
I refuse to starve myself of this any longer.