9. Sasha
SASHA
B y the time the storm rolls in over the hills, the entire estate rumbles with unease.
The wind slams against the eaves with enough force to make the old bones of the house groan, a deep, resonant sound that carries through the walls like a warning.
Sleet pelts the windows in sharp, relentless bursts.
Somewhere deeper in the infrastructure of the estate, the generator hums unevenly, the overhead lights flickering just enough to be irritating without fully giving out.
I sit behind my desk with my jacket discarded over the back of a chair, sleeves rolled to my elbows, hands braced against the edge of it. Supply ledgers are open in front of me, ones I’ve been staring at for nearly an hour.
I know exactly what they say. I could recite the totals from memory if pressed. These numbers represent shipments rerouted, accounts balanced, favors called in and debts postponed. It is the language I have spoken fluently since I was old enough to understand what money means.
Yet none of it sticks.
My eyes keep passing over the same columns without comprehension, blinking like reading a foreign language. Every time I try to force my focus back into place, my mind slides away again, pulled backward by something far more corrosive than exhaustion.
Yesterday.
Alina sitting there with her hands shaking as she held those papers. The way her face had drained of color when she realized what she’d discovered. The way her eyes had lifted to mine in disbelief, somehow expecting me to laugh and tell her it was a misunderstanding.
I drag a hand down my face and exhale slowly through my nose, trying to force the memory back into its cage.
I see her again when the folder slipped from her fingers, papers scattering across my desk like fallen leaves. Photographs sliding free of her mother’s face staring up at me, smiling in that way people like her always do when they still believe the world is fundamentally fair.
I had known that moment would come one day. I had simply never expected it to be like that.
And I also never expected it to… affect me as much as it has.
That is the part that irritates me most.
Pain is an indulgence I cannot afford. Regret is a luxury reserved for men who have the option of walking away from their past. I do not. Everything I am is built on decisions that cannot be undone, blood that cannot be unspilled.
You killed her.
Yes. I did.
The admission lands in my mind with a dull finality that should have ended the matter entirely.
It should have closed the door on doubt, on reflection, on anything that resembles remorse.
I have dealt those same fates to plenty of others in different forms with different faces attached to them.
Death is not foreign to me. It has followed me like a shadow since I was old enough to understand that survival in this world is a zero-sum game.
Her mother’s death should have been simple.
It usually is.
I have delivered that same sentencing more times than I care to count.
I have done it cleanly, efficiently, sometimes personally, sometimes through intermediaries.
I have signed orders that carried further-reaching consequences than a single life extinguished in a quiet moment.
Entire bloodlines have ended because I decided they were inconvenient, and I have never lost sleep over it.
Not like this.
I drag a hand over my face and exhale through my fingers, pressing my palm briefly to my eyes as if that might scrub the memory clean. It doesn’t. Nothing does.
The image of Alina standing in my study, pressed to the wall, shaking and furious and broken all at once, is carved into me now. I had told her the truth because lies would have insulted her intelligence.
Up until this point, I had severely underestimated the cost of honesty.
Since then, she hasn’t come out of her room once. She has refused every meal that has been sent up to her, refuses to answer when anyone knocks to escort her around the estate to coax her out of her room. Even the guards have begun to tread carefully outside her room at night when they guard it.
I had figured giving her space would help in stabilizing her. That had been the intention, anyway. Distance, quiet, time to process are the tools I have seen work on men twice her age when confronted with unbearable truths.
I assumed it would work for her too.
Instead, it seems to have unraveled her further.
And me with her.
I find myself checking the CCTV feeds on my tablet more often than I care to ever admit. I tell myself it is habit at this point, a routine that has become necessary to ensure she remains unharmed in her current state.
But… deep down, I know that is not why I keep watching. It is because every time the camera flicks to her room, I find my chest growing a little tighter at the sight of her. She looks… wounded. There is no other word for it.
She spends hours sitting in the same place, staring at nothing, clutching that photograph like it is the last piece of her old life she recognizes.
I tell myself this will pass.
I tell myself she will harden the way everyone eventually does. That anger will replace grief and that fury will give her something solid to stand on again. I tell myself that if she hates me enough, it will be easier. Hatred is predictable. Hatred can be managed.
But when I bring up the feeds again on my tablet for the nth time that day, something is different. She isn’t sitting on the bed this time. She’s pacing the length of her room.
The realization tightens something in my chest before I can smoother it, threading itself through me like a hook.
Concern .
The word forms, fully formed and undeniable, and I hate it almost as much as I recognize it.
I tap through the camera angles with practiced efficiency, fingers moving on instinct even as my attention sharpens.
Wide shot first. The full scope of her room, cream walls washed in dim light, the four-poster bed untouched.
Then the tighter angle by the window that looks over the foot of the bed.
Then the corner shot near the bathroom door, partially obscured by the molding.
She crosses through all of them.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Her arms are wrapped tightly around herself, fingers digging into the fabric at her sides as if she’s trying to physically hold herself together. Her movements aren’t the way they usually are when she’s angry or defiant. They’re erratic and uneven.
Behind me, the wind howls against my windows, rattling the glass hard enough that even through reinforced glass, I can hear it. Shadows strobe across her walls as the exterior lights flicker, that same wind battering against her side of the estate too.
She flinches. Her shoulders jerk upward, her head snapping toward the sound coming from the windows as if she’s expecting something worse to follow.
She stumbles back a step toward her bed, her chest visibly hitching even through the silent feed.
One hand flies up to her chest, fingers curling into the fabric of her night shirt.
I lean closer to the screen without realizing I’ve moved.
She’s scared.
My jaw tightens.
I could ignore it. Should ignore it. This is not my role. It was never meant to be. I am not her comfort. I am not her reassurance. I am the man who holds the key to her freedom, not her confidant. That is the line I am supposed to hold.
But… my body doesn’t listen.
The decision is made somewhere below conscious thought, bypassing reason entirely.
One moment, I am staring at the feed. The next, I am on my feet.
I barely register the tablet hitting the desk.
I don’t bother gathering up my files and locking them away like I usually do. None of that matters right now.
The study door nearly rips from the jamb under my hand, the wood slamming back against the wall with more force than necessary. My stride lengthens automatically, muscle memory taking over as I cut through the corridors of the estate, my footsteps striking the marble with purpose.
I don’t give myself time to reconsider any of it before marching upstairs.
The guards posted outside her wing straighten the moment they see me coming, surprise flashing across their faces. One of them opens his mouth, likely to ask what’s wrong, to report what they’ve observed over the past few hours in order to follow protocol, but I stop him with a single look.
They fall silent instantly, backs snapping straighter, eyes fixed forward as if they’ve suddenly remembered exactly who I am. No one reaches for a weapon. No one steps in my way. They know better than that.
I don’t acknowledge them again as I move between them and reach for her doorknob.
This is a mistake.
I know that even as I push her door open. Crossing this line means admitting something I have been refusing to name for weeks now. It means acknowledging that the fear I saw on that screen did not leave me indifferent. That I am not as detached from her as I should be.
But I’m already here, and whatever instinct I should have listened to has long since been drowned out by the sound of my own desires. There is no stopping myself now. Turning back would require a discipline I no longer seem to possess where she is concerned.
The room smells faintly of smoke from the dying hearth, but beneath it is something a little softer, perhaps the lingering trace of her.
Alina stands near the window. One hand is pressed flat against the glass, fingers splayed in a wide arch as she watches the sheets of sleet come down. Her shoulders are hunched, her spine rigid, and she is trembling from head to toe in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.
Her breathing is sharp and uneven, quick little gasps pulled into her lungs as if the air itself is scarce.
“What are you doing, Printsessa ?” I say quietly.