22. Sofia
SOFIA
Rowan’s exile changes the estate overnight.
I feel it the moment I wake up. Nothing else can explain the sudden pressure sitting on my chest when I open my eyes to the pale morning light bleeding in through the curtains.
Before, Ivan’s estate always carried a dull level of tension hidden beneath its polished surface. It lived in the walls like slowly encroaching mold, impossible to see unless you knew where to look. It had always felt controlled to a certain extent.
Now this place feels strangled.
I learn within a half hour of waking that Ivan had Rowan removed during the night after a closed door meeting turned sour. Whatever happened between them to cause such a riff has been the talk of the entire estate, though quietly and behind closed doors.
I don’t know who I am without him.
And now Ivan has forced him to find out.
The thought twists inside me hard enough that I have to close my eyes.
For one terrible moment, I imagine Rowan somewhere outside these walls stripped of his purpose that once made him whole.
Now he has no protection from the world beyond that would love to find out how much of the blade remains when the hand that once held it finally lets go.
Did he leave willingly?
Did he fight to stay? To take me with him too?
His absence leaves a strange hollow inside me.
Now there is only Ivan and the men who obey him without question. Unfortunately, my uncle has made one crucial mistake. He still believes I am controllable, that I am the frightened girl he sent away years ago and will keep my head down and not cause any more waves.
I intend to use that belief in my favor.
When I head to Ivan’s wing, I don’t stop until I reach his office.
Two guards follow several steps behind me.
They don’t try to redirect me at first. Maybe because they think I’ll turn toward the breakfast room or the library.
Somewhere more acceptable. But I keep walking past the long gallery with its old portraits and dead men staring down from their gilded frames.
Past the sitting room where Alina once made me laugh after Moscow swallowed me whole.
The closer I get, the colder the house feels.
Ivan’s wing is quieter than the rest of the estate. More severe. The walls here are paneled in dark wood, the sconces set lower. It is a part of the house everyone avoids unless they have been summoned.
The man stationed there is older, his expression carefully blank. He straightens when he sees me, but there is none of the wary respect I’d grown used to from the guards who knew Rowan and would act accordingly with him at my side.
Now there is only me.
“Where is he?” I demand.
The guard’s face remains neutral. “Miss Kuznetsov, you are to remain in the east wing until further notice.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He shifts slightly. “I apologize, but—”
“Move,” I say and step forward.
He quickly shifts into my path. “I can’t allow that.”
“Miss Kuznetsov, lunch should be getting served. We’ll take you to the dining room,” one of the guards behind me says, reaching for me.
For a few seconds, I stand there staring at the carved wood door behind the guard I’m facing, breathing hard through my nose as my hands curl into fists at my sides.
Ivan is beyond that door, protected by loyal men who will never question him. He has removed Rowan from my side, and now he thinks all that’s left is for me to remain the obedient niece he’s always thought me to be.
I want to scream.
The urge rises so violently it almost chokes me. I want to scream his name until he’s forced to open that door and see what is going on, to address the pain he has caused me.
Maybe I should break something expensive instead.
A one of a kind vase, a framed portrait, one of those ugly antique lamps lining the hallway, something from the gallery wall. Costly enough to get his attention, loud enough to fracture the suffocating quiet this place has descended into.
I imagine porcelain exploding against the wall, shards of it scattering across the floor like teeth.
I imagine the guard flinching and the door behind them opening, Ivan stepping out with that calm, disappointed expression, finally forced to face me instead of sending orders through other men’s mouths.
“Miss Kuznetsov,” the guard in front of me says carefully.
I punch him in the jaw.
Two sets of hands grab at me instantly as the guard’s head jerks back. Pain explodes through my knuckles the instant they connect with bone. A bright, brutal burst that shoots up my hand and into my wrist, making my breath hitch.
Though I did not hit him hard, he stumbles back out of sheer shock. One hand comes up to rest on the side of his face. Before any of them have a chance to recover, my entire body shoots up from the ground. The top of my head connects against a solid chin.
The guard to the left of me curses and lets go. I move before he reaches for me again, ducking sideways. My shoulder slams into the other guard to jostle him hard enough to let go, the same way I did the first one.
“Do not touch me,” I snap.
All three men freeze for a fraction of a second.
I am still Ivan’s blood, and even in this new, suffocating reality of the estate, that means damage done to me must be explained. Bruises must be justified, rough hands must have reasons to survive under my uncle’s scrutiny.
I use their hesitation to shove past the first guard, my shoulder clipping with his as I grab the handle of the door and push it open.
“Miss Kuznetsov!”
For one precious, ridiculous second, I almost laugh.
I step into the office and slam the door behind me.
The sound cracks through the room like a gunshot.
For one bright, reckless second, vindication flares in my chest. My breathing is a little elevated as I stare at the closed door.
On the other side, I hear movement, a guard’s low voice as he argues with the others about knocking.
When I finally turn around, I find my uncle sitting behind his desk with a phone pressed to his ear. There is a small pull at the corner of his mouth, the faintest hardening around his eyes. He is every bit a Pakhan calculating whether this sudden breach requires tenderness or correction.
My right hand still throbs from punching that guard, but I ignore it and pull in a deep breath. “I need to talk to you.”
After another pause, he murmurs into the phone before ending the call, setting it facedown on top of his desk. He leans back slightly in his chair, studying me with mild curiosity now. “What do you want, Sofia?”
My throat tightens, but I push away from the door to cross the distance between us. My pulse drums loudly in my ears. “The truth.”
Ivan’s brow lifts faintly. “About?”
“My mother.”
For a moment, he says nothing at all.
His gaze fixes on me with a stillness too calm to be surprised. Or if he is, he hides it well. He exhales slowly and shakes his head, dismissing the hidden accusation with barely veiled irritation.
“Is there a reason you are asking me about this?”
“Why can’t I find any information about my father? I searched online for him and only found his name on my birth record. Other than that, he’s been completely erased from existence. Was that your doing?”
For a moment, I expect anger or a harsh reprimand to remind me of my place within the hierarchy of this household.
I prepare myself for the demand to know what I searched and what triggered the sudden curiosity, who helped me, what I found, whether Rowan had any part in it.
I expect him to rise to the bait because guilt, if pressed correctly, often comes out wearing rage as a mask.
Instead, he simply sighs at me as if he expected this conversation long ago.
“Your father is a coward who ran the moment things became difficult. He left you behind after your mother’s passing to go pursue other avenues in Germany. Why would I ever encourage you to have contact with a man like that?”
My hands clench at my sides as I step closer to the desk. “That’s not what the information I found says.”
For the first time since I entered, Ivan’s expression tightens. “And what is that, exactly?”
“You killed her.”
I watch him carefully.
I have spent weeks learning how men like him hide behind their silences.
Rowan inadvertently taught me that lesson until I became an expert.
Every unanswered question inside me surges forward at once when the silence hangs over us, all fingers pointing at the fractures slowly forming beneath Ivan’s carefully crafted facade.
“Whatever you think you discovered, Sofia, I would encourage you to think critically about it. You are making accusations you do not understand the gravity behind.”
It’s then that I realize something important. He hasn’t denied it.
I have learned over the past few weeks that men who live by secrets do not only lie with their words as most people do. They do so with careful omissions that can be spun in a different direction when caught.
Ivan rises slowly from behind his desk.
The motion is controlled, but I still notice the slight stiffness at his side. He is not fully recovered. The wounds from the ambush still leave his body vulnerable no matter how elegantly he dresses over them.
Once, that would have made me soften.
Perhaps in a way it still does, somewhere deep down. I hate that even now with all of my unanswered questions and my mother’s ghost haunting us both, part of me still looks at him and sees the only family I have left.
“Tell me the truth of what you did to her.”
“Careful,” he warns.
“Or what? You’ll exile me too?” I ask.
His eyes flash.
For all his power and all his coldness, Ivan loved Rowan in his own terrible way.
I saw it in the grief that followed his punishment after coming back from the coroner’s office, the betrayal he felt beneath the anger.
He did not throw out a disposable soldier because he was no longer useful.
Ivan has made the mistake of cutting off his own limb and expecting the rest of him not to feel the loss of it.
“You need to understand something,” he says, his teeth clenching around every word. “This world does not run on love or loyalty, Sofia, the way you think it does. Your father was a coward who abandoned you the moment things became inconvenient for him.”
“You never even looked for him!” I shout back. “You never finished the investigation, you never tried to find out what really happened that night! You just—”
“Because there was nothing left to investigate!” The words explode out of him before he can stop himself.
I reel back, completely stunned.
“You want the truth so badly?”
I don’t so much as breathe while he continues.
“Years ago, Irena and Dmitri discovered something they were never meant to know. They stumbled onto an early version of a long-term plan I have been crafting for a long time.” He drags a rough hand down his face.
“But instead of supporting me, they panicked. My sister believed the plan would plunge Russia into chaos. Worse still, they decided the only way to stop me was to expose me to Artym Malyshko. That wasn’t a simple disagreement of politics, Sofia.
That was betrayal. From my flesh and blood. ”
“So you killed them?” I whisper in horror.
“They were going to destroy everything I had built,” Ivan says flatly.
The words land with brutal finality. “Everything our family stood for. I ordered them both to be eliminated, but the operation didn’t go according to plan.
The attack that was meant to take them both out only succeeded in killing your mother.
Dmitri escaped before the job could be finished and fled the country.
He abandoned you the same way he abandoned her in the end. ”
A bitter laugh escapes him.
I feel the ground beneath me disappear. Every childhood memory of my mother suddenly feels fragile, like glass shattering under immense pressure.
My uncle did it.
I had my theories… but that and hearing the details from his own mouth are vastly different.
My uncle murdered my mother to protect his ambition.
And if he is willing to do that, then he will kill again to protect it, including me.
It’s evident in how far he’s pushed Rowan away from him, his most loyal subject.
His expression has shifted into that unreadable one once more. “This is the world you were born into, Sofia. The one I have tried desperately to protect you from. Fighting me will only cause you more pain.”
I have nothing left to say after that.
By the time I leave his office, my mind is already moving several steps ahead. I walk calmly back through the estate hallways, past staff and guards who have no idea that their Pakhan’s world has just begun to collapse in on him.
My uncle will never get the chance to finish his plan because I will make sure it never happens. If no one else is willing to stop him, I will.
The walk back to my room feels endless, every step weighted with the reality of what I now know.
My mother didn’t die in some tragic accident like I had always been led to believe.
She was executed because she dared to threaten my uncle’s grand vision of power.
Because she tried to protect the family from the monster at its head.
What sickens me most is how Ivan has had the audacity to pretend to mourn her all this time. Sending me away under the guise of protection while pretending he was the grieving brother protecting his niece from a cruel world. All the while, he had been the one hiding the smoking gun behind his back.
The rage that simmers beneath my skin is quiet, but it burns hotter than anything I’ve ever felt.
I reach my room and close the door behind me.
The lock clicks softly in the silence of the room.
For a long moment I just stand there with my back pressed to the wood, letting the truth settle into my bones.
My uncle is a murderer.
My uncle killed my mother.
And Rowan… Rowan, who has bled for him, killed for him, built his entire identity around loyalty to him, is now exiled because of me.
I cross over to the window and look out over the grounds. Guards patrol in pairs, their breath fogging in the cold air. The estate feels more like a prison now more than ever, but even prisons have their weak points.
And I will find this one.
Even if it kills me.