3. Alina
ALINA
I ’ve spent the hours since being locked inside this room pacing the perimeter and surveying it (twenty-three steps from the window to the door, nineteen from the bed to the fireplace, nearly thirty from the bed to the bathroom) until I’m nearly dizzy.
I count because it gives me something to do, something to hold onto that isn’t panic or fear that I’ve somehow been brought into the lion’s den unwillingly with the knowledge that my father left me here like a sacrifice on an altar I never agreed to kneel upon.
The carpet is thick, swallowing the sound of my bare feet as I walk, but it can’t swallow the rage that has begun to bloom inside me from how unfair all of this feels. It coils in my stomach first, hot and useless, until my entire body feels like it’s practically on fire.
Actually, unfair doesn’t even begin to cover it. Unfair is what you’d call getting grounded over a late curfew or a bad grade. This is something else entirely.
This is betrayal dressed up as “protection”.
I try the door every twenty minutes, but it never budges.
The guards outside—two of them, judging by the shadows beneath the door that move every so often—don’t speak to me when I knock. They don’t even react when I shift from polite requests to be let out to pleading to outright demands for them to open the door.
They simply murmur to each other in low tones, carrying on as though my existence is simply background noise. As though I am already just another piece of furniture inside the estate, a new fixture for them to ignore.
My muscles ache from pacing. The cuts on my hands and arms throb beneath the bandages that I’ve already re-dressed since coming here.
The sky outside the window has darkened completely and beyond that, lights flicker on one by one across the courtyard, illuminating the snow-covered pathways and the silhouettes of patrolling guards roaming the front gates.
Eventually, I end up back in the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror to stare at my reflection, at my wild hair and eyes rimmed in red.
I see a woman who doesn’t look like herself anymore, someone who has been shaken by a tragedy and delivered to a man who isn’t at all the safety net he’s been promised to be.
Eventually, I hear the lock on my door finally click open.
My body jerks at the sound as I race out of the bathroom, my heart pounding from the one noise I’ve waited for and dreaded all in the same breath. It may mean temporary freedom, but it may also mean the next part of this nightmare is just beginning.
When the door swings open, the guard from before fills the doorway. His expression is neutral, carved from the same stone as Sasha himself, unreadable.
“You’re expected down at dinner,” he says.
Not invited . Not requested . Not asked .
Expected.
It’s a word heavy with command, one that makes my spine stiffen instantly.
A laugh bubbles up in my throat at the absurdity, sharp and humorless, that I have to force myself to swallow down. I sigh instead.
“Fine. Take me to him,” I say, lifting my chin.
The hallway outside my room feels colder than before, as if the temperature has slowly started plummeting since the moment I arrived.
Two more guards fall into step behind us when we reach the end of the hallway.
Their boots echo in unison while we walk, a reminder that any direction I turn, I am flanked by men who would kill for Sasha without blinking.
As we descend the main staircase, warm golden light spills across the foyer. Another chandelier hangs overhead, sparkling like icicles caught in sunbeam rays. Every step toward the dining room tightens the knot in my stomach.
The guard in front of me opens a set of double doors, ushering me inside.
Sasha Sokolov sits at the head of a long mahogany table, a glass of red wine in his hand.
The candlelight paints his features in sharp, unforgiving lines.
His dark hair is tousled slightly, a little messier than before, like he’s run a hand through it one too many times while speaking with my father.
His suit jacket is off, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing thick veins and dark ink stroked over his skin. He looks powerful and every bit as dangerous as I know he is.
When his eyes lift, I stumble slightly and forget how to breathe.
“Alina. Sit.”
The guard closest to me walks me over to the table and pulls out the chair beside him. Not across from him, not down at the other end of the table. Right next to him.
I hesitate only a single second before I slowly lower myself down.
His presence fills the entire room. It’s dense and suffocating.
One of his waitstaff appears with two plates, both mirroring each other with roasted vegetables, seared meat, and a small loaf of freshly baked bread.
The scents are warm and comforting, a stark contrast to the tension radiating between us.
Sasha doesn’t touch his food when his plate is placed down in front of him. He just watches me.
I push the food around with my fork. The silence between us grows heavy, stretching uncomfortably enough to make my ears ring.
He could fill it if he wanted to, explain why I’m here.
Explain what’s happening and why his phone call to my father freaked him out so badly.
Explain whether he had been the one who texted me to warn me about the bomb, and if so, why ?
He doesn’t do any of that, though.
“Eat,” he finally says.
My fork stills. “I’m not hungry.”
A partial lie. While I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast this morning, my stomach is coiled into too many knots to even think about swallowing anything that isn’t my own saliva.
One eyebrow lifts in a subtle reprimand. “I find that hard to believe.”
My face flushes. “Why was I brought here?”
Sasha’s jaw tenses, just barely enough to notice, but I’m close enough to him that I see every twitch on his face, every subtle expression he emotes before he can smother it under that cool exterior.
“Your father believes I can keep you safe. That’s why you have been brought to me.” His eyes drop to my hands that still faintly tremble.
I force myself to meet his gaze. “Safe from whom, exactly?”
From the moment the question leaves my lips, I know I won’t get an answer. Sasha doesn’t move or blink. I doubt he’d ever be careless enough to let information that important slip even if there were a gun being held to his temple.
Instead, he asks quietly, “How are your wounds?”
It’s such a normal question, something a doctor or a friend might ask because they care. Coming from him, it gives me whiplash.
“Fine,” I say.
His eyes flicker. Something unreadable passes through them. A shadow. A memory. A warning? I don’t know what it is, only that it doesn’t fit with the image of the man I know him to be.
“Tell me why I’m here. Why that bomb went off at my University.”
“You should have been nowhere near that building,” he says quietly.
The sentence lands like a stone dropped into water, sending ripples of confusion refracting throughout every part of me. My brows knit before I can stop them.
Should have been nowhere near it?
The words echo in my head, loud, insistent, impossible to ignore.
Questions crash together all at once.
Why would he say that? Why would he care? Why warn me? Why help me?
Unless… he had been keeping tabs on me for far longer than I, or Papa, even realized.
The thought is absurd. Completely, absolutely absurd.
This man, this ruthless, violent, iron-spined Bratva monster doesn’t care about politics or students or innocent lives caught in the crossfire of whatever deals he makes.
He doesn’t care about casualties, especially ones like me.
The stories about him are the kind that parents use to scare their children into behaving.
He is nothing more than a come-to-life boogeyman.
Sasha Sokolov doesn’t care about people. He doesn’t spare anyone who doesn’t fit with his agenda any time to go through that kind of trouble. He destroys them as he sits fit, uses people until they’re no longer useful, and then discards them accordingly.
And yet… he warned me .
He forced me out of the building and saved my life.
Why? To what end? To get me here? And if that’s the case… why?
None of this makes any sense.
My pulse stumbles as I study him more closely under the warm glow of the dining room lights.
He’s not looking at me anymore. Instead, his attention is fixed on the glass of wine in front of him.
He picks it up and swirls it, staring down into the liquid as if the answers he won’t give me are hiding somewhere inside the red hue.
He shouldn’t care. He doesn’t care.
Someone like Sasha Sokolov is incapable of softness or mercy or feeling anything beyond the cold calculus of power he wields.
He’s the kind of man who gives orders that bury people.
The kind of man who commands rooms through silent demands alone.
One who looks at the world as pieces on a board, each one meant to be sacrificed when necessary.
Caring about someone like me—the daughter of a politician—makes absolutely no sense at all.
I’m nothing to him.
“When can I go back to school?” I ask.
His gaze lifts slowly from the glass. As soon as those dark eyes lock onto mine, the entire room seems to contract around us, the walls drawing closer, my pulse beating an unsteady rhythm in my ears that makes me dizzier than before.
“You won’t be returning any time soon. Not until I say.” The calm certainty in his voice infuriates me more than if he’d shouted it.
“You can’t just?—”
“I can.” He finally lifts the glass of wine to his lips and takes a slow, unhurried sip, like this conversation is nothing more than a mild inconvenience.