7. Sasha
SASHA
T he sound of the wine glass shattering against the wall follows me long after I leave the dining room.
It echoes in my head like a gunshot muffled by distance.
Even when the doors close behind me, I can still hear it.
The brittle crack of crystal meeting stone, the wet splatter that followed.
I picture the shards skittering across the marble, catching the light, the deep red streaks sliding slowly downward to the floor.
The smell of it lingers too, metallic and sour, clinging to the air like a memory that refuses to fade.
The color had been too close to blood. Too close to everything I have built my life on. And for reasons I do not wish to examine too closely, it stirs something ugly and restless inside me.
I have never had a woman defy me so openly before.
Not in my own house. Not at my table. Not after giving her protection and safety at the cost of a favor. Even my sister, reckless and sharp-tongued and immune to fear in ways that border on pathological, knows where the line is.
She pushes me, yes. Challenges me, absolutely. But she is not foolish enough to pull something like that in my presence like a child who believes indignation is armor.
Alina does not know the difference yet, and that is part of what makes her dangerous.
She believes this place is a prison, a gilded cage meant to break her spirit and strip her autonomy, reduce her to something more manageable. And while that may be true on some level, that belief frustrates me more than her anger ever could because it is wrong in the most fundamental way.
This estate is not a retreat, no. I do not delude myself into believing that.
There are cameras that monitor everything, yes.
Guards who won’t hesitate to enforce rules through physical means, sure.
Locked doors and places barred from entry, absolutely, and rules that bend only when I allow them to.
But this place is not the kind of prison she imagines, either.
It is not a punishment. It is not cruelty for the sake of it.
It is containment.
Alina has been caged before by her father and his paranoia. By his need to control the one thing in his life he believed could still be shaped to make his life and career more palatable for his own gains.
She’d been taken from the outside world under the guise of protection long before I ever got ahold of her, smothered by rules that masqueraded as concern.
I will not deny my own hand in continuing that pattern.
I pulled strings. Persuaded the right people.
Applied pressure where it mattered. I did exactly what was required to get what I wanted.
But I have never shown her an ounce of pure cruelty. Not like her father has time and time again.
It isn’t that I’m not capable of it. I am. My enemies know that quite intimately. But that distinction matters to me now more than ever.
I walk the halls until the noise inside my head dulls. Until the sharp edge of fury wears itself down into something I can contain again. My footsteps are silent against the polished floors, the house dim and watchful around me.
Control is supposed to be second nature. I have spent years perfecting it, honing it until it was instinct rather than effort. I learned early how to cage the chaos inside me, how to compress and sharpen it, weaponize it until it became a blade I could wield without cutting myself.
That discipline has kept me alive.
It has kept my men loyal, my enemies cautious, and my name untouchable.
But with her… it fractures.
Every time Alina looks at me with those furious, frightened eyes—so alive with defiance and grief and something dangerously close to want—I feel something rise in my chest that does not have a name I am comfortable using. It is not desire in the simple sense. It is disruption.
It is something I have no earthly idea what to do with, let alone solve.
I do not sleep that night.
Instead, I sit in the control room with the lights low, the estate’s CCTV grid spread out on the monitors before me. They glow softly in front of me, twelve quiet witnesses to everything that moves under my roof.
My fingers move without conscious thought.
Gatehouse. Perimeter. Tree line. Kennels.
Then her room.
It’s become a ritual at this point.
The camera feed flickers to life. Alina is sitting on the bed with her knees drawn to her chest, her posture tight and closed in on itself.
She is clutching something to her sternum, fingers curled protectively around the worn photograph she had with her earlier.
Her mother’s face is turned outward, frozen in a moment of warmth that feels almost obscene in this place.
The bedside lamp casts a soft halo around her hair.
She looks smaller like this, younger, stripped of the sharp edges she had at dinner that she’s used as armor since coming here. The anger has burned itself down to embers now, leaving behind something quieter and far more dangerous. Resolve.
She looks beautiful.
The thought lands unbidden, unwelcome.
I should cut the feed, I know that, heed my sister’s warning because this is not surveillance for security purposes no matter how easily I could lie to myself and say it is. This is something else. Possession masquerading as vigilance. Curiosity bordering on something I refuse to name.
Control and possession are two sides of the same coin, and I have never been particularly skilled at pretending otherwise.
I watch until her grip on the photograph loosens slightly and her head tilts back against the headboard and her eyes close.
Her lashes cast shadows against her cheeks, her mouth slack in sleep for the first time since dinner, and something in my chest tightens in a way I refuse to examine too closely.
She looks exhausted.
There is a part of me that wants to go to her.
To leave the control room, climb the stairs, and barge into her room without ceremony.
To stand at the foot of her bed and demand that she understand…
that she recognize how narrowly she avoided something far worse.
That she see the reality of her situation instead of the version shaped by fear and indignation.
I am not the worst man she could have ended up with.
Her father could have very easily chosen anyone else within the Iron Pact.
He could have handed her over to Aleksandr Volkov who sees women as ornamental liabilities, interchangeable and disposable.
Or Ivan Kuznetsov who believes obedience is best learned through pain and humiliation, whose idea of leverage is breaking someone until there is nothing left to resist with. Or Malyshko.
My jaw tightens at the thought.
Nikolai would not have bothered pretending she was a guest. He would have stripped her of every comfort within hours, turned her into a warning to anyone foolish enough to believe blood ties offer protection, and punished her every moment she decided to open her mouth and defy him.
With him, there would have been no patience, only the cold inevitability that would lead to her rotting away in a prison cell under his estate.
Compared to them, what she has here is mercy. But I know better than to voice that argument.
Suffering is not comparative to the person enduring it. Telling her that others would have been crueler does not make my control feel any less suffocating to her. It does not make the cameras disappear or the doors unlock or her future suddenly belong to her again.
And perhaps that is the most dangerous truth of all.
Because if I go to her now and try to explain myself, to justify my choices, to frame this as protection rather than possession, it will not be strategy motivating me. It will be something else.
Something… softer, and far more reckless.
I cut the feed.
This is not a desire I can afford to indulge. Honesty, in this context, would be sentiment. And as my sister said, that is also a luxury that will not survive long in this world.
The morning breaks grey and heavy with a dawn that promises nothing good.
Low clouds press down on the estate, muting the world into shades of steel and ash. There is no sun to greet the day, no warmth filtering through the tall windows. Only a dull, persistent light that makes everything feel suspended and unfinished.
I have already been awake for hours. What little rest I managed was shallow and fractured, interrupted by thoughts that refuse to be caged. I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, listening to the low hum of the estate while cataloging contingencies out of habit rather than necessity.
I am halfway through my first coffee when my phone rings.
The vibration against the polished wood of my desk is sharp and intrusive.
It irritates me instantly. Not because of the interruption, but because of what it implies.
Phones do not ring this early unless something has already gone wrong, and frankly, I’m not in the mood to be dealing with anything today.
I don’t need to look at the screen to know who it is.
Some instincts are honed well enough over years that they no longer require confirmation. They live somewhere deeper than thought, coiled and ready, whispering warnings long before the mind catches up.
Still, I glance down and see a familiar name.
Aleksandr Volkov.
I nearly sigh.
Of course it’s him.
Calling far earlier than etiquette would ever allow, far earlier than he would risk on a normal day, knowing my patience.
Volkov is a man who prides himself on appearances and civility, layered over cruelty and following the unspoken rules that keep men like us from tearing each other apart prematurely.
For him to abandon that decorum means one thing and one thing only.
This call is not social.
I answer without greeting. “What.”
There is a pause on the other end of the line that is brief but telling. Volkov is used to being indulged, used to people currying favor with him before he speaks. My refusal to play along never sits well with him, and normally, that alone would be enough to sour his tone.
However, today, it seems, is a different story.
When he speaks, the smug satisfaction that usually colors his voice is gone, stripped away to reveal something closer to unease.
“There’s been another bombing,” he says.
I don’t react or shift in my chair or tighten my grip on the phone. My expression remains carefully neutral even as the emotions settle in my chest with cold familiarity.
“Local to you,” he finishes.
That earns him my full attention.
I do not ask where.
I do not ask who.
Those details are immaterial for now. They will surface soon enough, laid out in sanitized reports, dissected over conference tables, weaponized in conversations meant to look collaborative while hiding ulterior motives.
Those answers always arrive once Nikolai decides to call us to his estate for deliberation.
“What kind?” I ask instead.
Volkov exhales, a sharp sound that betrays more than he intends. “A big one. Took out half a block. From what I can tell, it isn’t random.”
Of course it isn’t.
Random violence is for amateurs. For ideologues and fools who think their little act of disobedience will somehow change the status quo.
This is something else… a message being refined and presented to the world for some reason.
A hand tightening around the throat of the city with increasing confidence.
Morozov’s doing again?
“Nikolai will want all of us present for a meeting. You know he doesn’t like things to be unsettled for long,” he adds, already retreating back to the safety of his own syndicate. Volkov never lingers when he’s unsettled.
“I’m sure he will,” I reply.
The line goes dead after that.
I lower the phone slowly and stare at the surface of my desk, at the faint reflection of my own face staring back at me. There is no anger in my expression, just the same calm mask I’ve worn through wars and betrayals and bloodshed.
But beneath it, something else stirs.
Another bombing isn’t a coincidence. That is escalation. A copycat, perhaps, masquerading in Morozov’s shoes in order to stir up trouble within the city. Perhaps for a distraction or otherwise. Alina’s father wouldn’t be stupid enough to try something like that twice.
He’s already gained plenty of points in the polls over the past few days. There would be no reason for him to upend that with another tragedy when he’s barely been able to control the first one.
Nikolai will want answers. Especially from me, considering it’s within my district’s bounds.
He will apply pressure where it will be felt most keenly, where it will force a response even if I have none to give.
The Iron Pact thrives on balance, on the illusion of stability, but this…
this is a deliberate destabilization I have no control over.
The realization unsettles me.
I think of Alina asleep in her bed upstairs, clutching that photograph like a lifeline.
I think of the way she looked at me last night, furious and unbroken.
I think of the wine splattered against the wall, too close in color to blood, too close to the world I have spent my life navigating, and find myself wishing for a different outcome.
Nikolai will be tightening the leash soon to gauge my reaction if I don’t respond accordingly. It will be about proving that defiance has consequences and reminding me, and everyone else watching, that stepping out of line does not go unpunished.
All I can do now is wait.
Whatever comes next, I will meet it head-on.