24. Rowan
ROWAN
Somehow, some way, Sofia finds a way to contact me.
The message reaches me just after midnight through one of Malyshko’s direct lines.
For a full second, I think I’m hallucinating when a knock comes at the door.
Sitting alone in one of the guest rooms Nikolai had temporarily assigned me not doing anything useful enough to justify still being awake except staring at the ceiling and trying not to picture exactly what the next forty-eight hours are going to look like.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be in the war room with three out of the four Iron Pact leaders listening to them discuss how they intend to storm Ivan’s estate and remove him before he can drag the rest of us into whatever ruin he has convinced himself is destiny.
The guest room is warm and beautifully furnished, but I see none of it.
This bed is too large for a man who has no intention of getting any sleep.
Nikolai’s staff had come around twice after dinner to check whether I needed anything.
I refused both times. Mostly because hospitality feels obscene when my stomach is twisted with dread.
So instead, I have been sitting here mourning what hasn’t happened yet. Mourning before death is a strange thing. Like kneeling beside a grave that hasn’t been dug yet and trying to memorize the name on the tombstone that has yet to actually exist.
The knocking jolts me out of my thoughts hard enough that my pulse kicks once in irritation. I scrub a hand down my face and push myself to my feet, every muscle stiff from sitting too long in one position. The carpet muffles my steps as I cross the room.
If nothing else, I assume Nikolai may be on the other side of the door requesting something. After all, I am currently indebted to him for taking me in, even if it’s for temporary access to an ally turned enemy.
He is one of few people in this city I would not ignore at an hour like this.
When I open the door, however, it isn’t Nikolai standing there. One of the estate staff surprises me instead.
She has a phone held out toward me. “For you, sir.”
Me? I nearly say. The word catches in my throat before I can make myself sound quite that stupid out loud.
With a raised brow, I slip the phone from her outstretched hands.
It’s one of the internal handsets from the residence.
Secure enough for household use, not the encrypted line Nikolai uses for actual business.
Which means someone inside the house routed this call directly to the line I’m currently holding onto.
Who in the world would be calling me at this hour? And more importantly, how would they know I’m here?
A thread of suspicion works its way through me as I nod my head to the woman and shut the door slowly. One of Nikolai’s men? Volkov wanting to sink another hook into me for his own amusement? A trap from Ivan, somehow already reaching this far?
My hand tightens slightly around the receiver. I stare at the little star symbols on the LED screen for a full five seconds before bringing the phone up to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Oh, thank God,” Sofia says on the other end. The line crackles briefly from her exhaling sharply. The sound hits me with enough force that I have to brace my free hand against the door. “You have no idea what I had to go through to get my uncle’s damn Rolodex off his desk.”
A laugh tears out of me. One I can’t stop. It rips free and helpless, caught between relief and a kind of violent tenderness I have no idea what to do with.
Of course she found a way to get to me. It wouldn’t matter how tightly locked down Ivan has her.
Sofia has never once accepted being forced into submission regardless of who is on the other end trying to convince her it’s good for her.
She bites back, questions hard, and learns how to get out of the cage instead of crying over the bars keeping her inside. Even when she’s scared, she moves.
Maybe especially then.
God, I miss her.
The realization blooms so hard in my chest, it almost hurts to breathe around it.
I turn and walk farther into the room, putting distance between myself and the door on instinct, lowering my voice even though I know this house is as secure as it gets and that the staff member who handed me the phone is already gone.
I sit slowly on the edge of the bed, my hand tightening around the phone like she might disappear if I loosen my grip for even a second too long. “How the hell did you even do that?”
There’s a rustle on the other end, then the sound of a door shutting quietly.
The noise is small, almost swallowed by the static on the line.
I picture her slipping into some forgotten corner of Ivan’s house with her shoulders pulled tight to her ears, one hand cradling that battered receiver she’d stolen from one of the guards unaware enough to protect it while she checks over her shoulder to make sure no one is watching her.
She huffs out a short breath. “By becoming a complete menace to my uncle’s staff and abusing the fact that nobody in this damn house likes to mind their own business.”
My mouth curves despite everything.
“You snuck into his office,” I guess.
“Damn right.” The answer comes back immediately, heated enough that I can practically see the indignant lift of her chin.
“You don’t know how many numbers I called trying to find you.
After the fourth contact telling me they hadn’t seen you, I just decided to go for the big guns.
I figured one of the three would have some knowledge of what happened to you. Or where you went.”
My chest squeezes painfully.
I know what it would have taken for her to do it—sneaking past guards, searching an office that wasn’t hers to touch, pulling open drawers while every second could be the one where she got caught, flipping through Ivan’s private contacts one name at a time before frustration overtook and convinced her to stuff the entire thing into her pocket before fleeing back to safety.
For her to have gone so far out of her way to not only steal Ivan’s personal list of contacts but to go through that amount of effort of searching to find that one that led her exactly to me nearly steals my breath away. No one has ever done anything like that for me before.
I've never been important enough for that.
Yet she did all of that for me.
I look down at my free hand and realize my fingers have curled around the duvet cover hard enough to wrinkle the fabric. I swallow around the lump forming in my throat. “You were right to trust your instincts. I’m glad to hear from you.”
She’s quiet for a moment before she says, “I’m so sorry, Rowan. I wish… I really wish things didn’t have to come to this. I know how much you love him.”
That is an understatement, though one that doesn’t bear needing to repeat. Sofia already understands more than most ever will how tragic this all feels. In a way, I’m grateful to have someone feel just as equally pained by the outcome that we have all unfortunately come to.
Whatever love Ivan once had for me is long gone now, swallowed up by the same ambition that will eventually choke out every other remaining connection he has in this world until all that is left is him standing alone in the middle of the smoldering ashes of what had once been his life.
It’s sad to know that the man who raised me is not the one I know now. That is what makes this hurt the way it does.
Or maybe that is the lie I keep trying to tell myself because it hurts less than the actual truth.
Maybe the man who raised me has always been this one.
Maybe he has always been capable of this and I am only now seeing him clearly because Sofia forced light into the places I had spent years defending from any honest gaze.
I’m not sure who the person standing in front of me was when I was exiled, but it wasn’t the same person I have considered a father for almost two decades.
The man behind that declaration felt colder than any enemy I have ever put in the ground.
He looked at me and saw not the boy he rescued, not the enforcer who has bled for him over and over, not the man who stood at his shoulder every day, unwavering.
He saw an obstacle.
A compromised asset.
That, I believe, is the part Ivan couldn’t forgive. That I turned, and the thing he built to protect his blind spots finally looked straight at one and refused to pretend it wasn’t there any longer.
And maybe that is what finally split something in me. Not from the exile itself. Not even from the blows before that. It was the look in his eyes when I said I couldn’t support him and the cold certainty that followed when he told me if I would not stand with him, then I was his enemy.
“Yes,” I say, my voice growing rough. “But he is endangering more than just himself and our Bratva.”
The line goes quiet for a while. “I’m glad you went to Nikolai for help. Alina mentioned that might be where you were.”
My brow raises before I can stop it. “Alina?”
She hums softly. “She’s that woman I met when Nikolai came to see Ivan after he returned home from the hospital. She was the woman I was sitting with when you both came to get us.”
Memories flood into my mind of Sofia curled into an armchair in one of her soft sweaters, trying to look composed while the woman accompanying Nikolai sat opposite her. At the time, I barely gave their conversation any thought beyond simply passing idle time.
It seems I’d underestimated their connection.
“I called…” Her voice cuts off for a moment as the sound of paper rustling in the background fills the receiver. Page after page flips until she slaps the right one. “Sasha’s residence and ended up talking to Alina. She was the one who suggested I call over here.”
Ah.
So that is Alina’s connection to the Iron Pact.