12. Alina #3
For a moment, the room is perfectly still. Even the hum of the computer seems to fade into the background.
“I didn’t—” he starts.
I cut in, my voice rising despite myself. I don’t care if anyone hears. I don’t care if the entire house comes running. “Don’t lie to me. You paid for it. I have the proof. Sasha confirmed it.”
“That’s absurd,” he sneers, a brittle laugh following.
My hands curl into fists at my sides. My nails bite into my palms right before I slam one of them down onto the desk with enough force to make the things on top of it rattle.
“Stop lying! I saw the money transfer order, your name right next to his! You killed her! For what? Because she found out about your dirty deals?”
His expression slips. Only for a heartbeat, just long enough for the truth to surface before he can drag it back under, but I see it clearly this time.
It’s fear, raw and unguarded. Not for me, that would never be the case.
But of being caught, of losing control and the exposure that will come of it.
Of the carefully constructed narrative unraveling right in front of him.
Then comes the rage.
It rolls in fast and ugly, tightening his jaw and hardening his eyes. It’s a fury born not out of grief or guilt but from inconvenience. Of being challenged and confronted by the one person he never thought would look too closely.
And then, with terrifying ease, the mask snaps back into place.
The politician returns.
He’s now the man who knows how to weather scandals, bury bodies—literal or otherwise—and smile through any storm no matter the consequence.
His posture straightens, his shoulders square, his face smooths into a cold and impassive frown.
The same one, one I’ve come to recognize intimately, worn every time he steps behind a podium.
“You don’t understand how politics works, Alina.” His voice is flat, rehearsed. “There were threats. Enemies . People waiting for an excuse to dismantle everything we’ve built.”
We.
As if my mother had ever been part of that we .
He continues, his tone sharpening, “Asking questions, digging into matters that never concerned her… she had become a vulnerability they would have used against us.”
Against you , I think wildly. Against your career. Against your ambitions and your power and your precious public image.
The words feel unreal, like they’re echoing down a long hallway I can’t quite reach the end of. My chest tightens so painfully, I can barely breathe.
“She was my mother !” I scream, the sound tearing out of me raw and broken.
The sound of my own voice startles me. “She loved you,” I choke.
“She loved me. She believed in you. She stood beside you while you climbed over everyone else to get to where you are now. While you sold pieces of your soul one deal at a time, and you killed her for it!”
“She was a liability!” he snaps.
I stagger backward, my heel catching on the edge of the rug.
For one terrifying second, the room pitches hard enough that I’m certain I’m going to collapse right there at his feet.
My hands fly out instinctively, grasping for balance, but there’s nothing solid to hold on to.
The walls feel too far away, too out of reach.
My stomach twists violently, a sick, wrenching spiral that drags bile up my throat. I swallow hard, fighting the urge to vomit, my vision blurring at the edges as my pulse roars in my ears.
A liability.
Not a wife. Not a mother. Not even human. That’s how he’s always seen her.
Just… an obstacle. Something inconvenient that threatened the narrative he was building, the image he was selling, the career he was desperate to protect at any cost. Something to be removed and disposed of like a stain that couldn’t be scrubbed out of an expensive piece of furniture.
I stare at him, really look at him now, and find that the man standing in front of me doesn’t look anything like my father anymore.
He’s something hollowed out. A shell wrapped in an expensive suit. A creature wearing the face of someone I used to love. The warmth I once associated with him has been replaced by something cold and alien, something that feels more like a carefully constructed imitation rather than a human being.
It’s in this moment that I realize that sometimes, monsters don’t always hide in the dark. Sometimes, they tuck you into bed, kiss your forehead goodnight, and teach you how to smile for cameras, all the while deciding who gets to live and who doesn’t behind your back.
I can’t tell if the dizziness is from shock or from the way my body is desperately trying to expel the truth I’ve just been forced to swallow.
“You’re sick,” I whisper. “You’re vile.”
“I did what I had to do for this family,” he growls back.
“You murdered this family,” I say. I know with absolute certainty that whatever bond once existed between us is dead. No amount of excuses or explanations will ever bring it back.
I stagger again, the room still swimming, and slip my hand inside my coat almost on instinct. My fingers close around the cool metal of a knife.
It’s small, barely sharper than a dinner knife, but it feels impossibly heavy when I pull it free. The polished steel catches the light from the windows as it clears the fabric. I hadn’t planned on using it. I hadn’t even known why I took it.
After Lev had given me the breakfast tray this morning with his usual careful kindness, I’d wrapped the napkin around the utensils to return them later, only for my hand to hesitate. A cold and uneasy feeling had curled low in my gut, urging me not to leave the estate empty-handed.
So I’d slipped it into my coat just in case. Never did I imagine that the reason I’d need it would be standing in front of me now.
The knife trembles as I raise it between us.
His eyes widen. For the first time since I walked into this room, real fear flares across his face.
“Sasha told me the truth,” I choke out, tears blurring my vision until his face doubles. “He told me I wasn’t sent to him for protection. That you sold me to him years ago. That I was part of some deal you worked out behind my back.”
He swallows hard. I see his throat bob, see his eyes flick down to the knife and then back up to my face again, over and over, calculating. Always fucking calculating.
He speaks carefully, palms lifting in a placating gesture. “Alina… Listen to me. You’re upset. What Sasha told you—the circumstances back then were complicated. It wasn’t?—”
“No!” I scream, the sound tearing out of me so violently, it shocks even me.
I take a step toward him.
Then another.
The knife stays raised, my arm burning from the effort of holding it steady.
“You lied to me my entire life!” I shout.
“I know what you were doing. I know you were trying to sell me off to anyone with enough money and power to help you climb higher. That’s why you dragged me to all those galas.
The dinners. The charity balls where men twice my age looked at me like I was a piece of meat. ”
My chest heaves, my breath coming out too fast, too shallow.
“Did Mom know?” I demand. “Is that why you killed her? Because she would’ve taken me and left you? Because she would’ve stopped you?”
His hand trembles as he drags it down his face, the motion almost desperate. He takes a step back, then another, until the edge of his desk presses into his thighs.
“I never meant to hurt you. I would have made sure you were paired with someone who would treat you well. It wasn’t about selling you. I was securing your future,” he says hoarsely.
I laugh. It comes out bitter and broken. “So you thought the best way to secure my future was to give me away to a man like him ?”
“I didn’t say that,” he protests quickly.
I tighten my grip on the knife, the handle biting into my palm. “One of the Iron Pact,” I spit. “That’s who you were shopping me to. That’s what all of this was for. You couldn’t wait to jump on the opportunity to have one of them in your back pocket.”
The color drains from his face. His eyes widen, not with fear this time, but shock. Pure, unfiltered surprise. “How do you—” He stops himself, then tries again. “Who told you about that?”
“Does it matter?”
He hesitates.
It’s barely perceptible, just a fraction of a second where his mouth opens and no words come out, but it’s enough.
That hesitation tells me everything I need to know.
It tells me that if the answer would save him, he would give it.
Truth, lies, none of it matters to him except in how it serves his survival.
For a brief, terrifying moment, my mind goes somewhere dark.
I imagine stepping forward and closing the distance between us.
I imagine the resistance of fabric and flesh as the knife sinks into his chest, the shock that would flicker across his face as the breath leaves him in a wet, rattling gasp.
I imagine his hands flying up, slick with blood, fingers grasping uselessly at the wound as he stumbles backward, knocking into the desk, papers scattering like startled birds.
Would he beg me to call for help, his voice small and terrified now that power has finally abandoned him?
Would he sob my name the way he did over my mother’s casket despite being the one to put her there?
Or would he snarl, furious even with death closing in, accusing me of betrayal, of ingratitude, of ruining everything he’s ever built?
The knife feels heavier in my hand as the thought takes shape, as real and vivid as memory. My fingers flex around the handle, knuckles whitening, my pulse pounding so loud it roars in my ears.
It would be so easy. One moment of violence, one irreversible act to end the man who destroyed my family, who turned my mother into a line item in a ledger and my life into a bargaining chip.
Justice, some would call it.
My feet stay rooted to the floor, trembling but unmoving.
Not because he deserves mercy. He doesn’t. Not because I want to spare him. I don’t. And not because I’m afraid of the consequences, though the fear coils in me all the same.
I don’t move because I refuse to become him.
I refuse to let my life be defined by the same brutality that’s defined his. I refuse to turn myself into another monster who justifies blood with reasons and necessity. I refuse to let this moment carve me into something cold and hollow, the way it carved him, the way it has carved Sasha.
I don’t want blood on my hands. Not his. Not anyone’s.
The realization hurts almost as much as the truth itself because it means walking away without the satisfaction of punishment. It means carrying this pain forward instead of ending it here in a single, violent moment.
My arm shakes as I lower the knife, the metal dipping toward the floor but never leaving my grip.
He watches me closely, breathing shallowly, his eyes tracking every movement like a trapped animal waiting for the strike that never comes.
“You don’t get forgiveness. You don’t get absolution. And you don’t get to decide what happens to me anymore. I’m done with you,” I say quietly, my voice raw but steady.
He opens his mouth, maybe to argue, maybe to plead. I turn away before he can. If I stay one second longer, if I let myself keep imagining how easily this could all end, I’m not sure I’ll keep choosing the person I still want to be.
Lev doesn’t ask what happened when I get back into the car.
He doesn’t turn around or clear his throat or offer platitudes he doesn’t believe in. He simply watches me through the rearview mirror for half a second too long before pulling away from the curb, the engine humming low beneath us.
He doesn’t need to ask what happened. The evidence is written all over me.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I’m still clutching the knife like it’s the only thing tethering me to reality, my fingers locked so tightly around the handle that my knuckles have locked around it.
My cheeks are wet with tears I’m only now aware are falling from my eyes, leaving tracks that itch but I don’t have the energy to wipe away. My chest feels hollowed out, scooped clean by something sharp and cruel.
I stare out the window.
I feel numb and overloaded, empty and brimming all at once, like my body doesn’t know what to hold onto and what to let go of.
My father is a monster.
Not a flawed man. Not a complicated one. A monster who looked at my mother and saw an obstacle. A liability. A problem to be erased so he could keep climbing, keep smiling for the cameras while pretending to be something noble.
Sasha is a monster too. In a different shape with different methods to his cruelty. Quieter and deadlier. A man who makes problems disappear because that’s what the world trained him to do and who did it without hesitation when my father asked.
I am trapped between them, a coin tossed between wolves, each convinced the other is worse, each certain they’re justified in what they’ve done to me.
The car turns onto the long, private road leading back to the estate. Trees crowd closer on either side, their branches bare and skeletal, reaching overhead like ribs. The gates come into view, tall and unyielding.
Something in Lev’s posture shifts, drawing my eyes from my window.
He tenses, his hands tightening around the wheel. When the drive opens up, my gaze lifts automatically out the windshield and then my breath catches.
Sasha is standing on the front steps.
Waiting.