14. Sasha
SASHA
I shouldn’t have touched her.
That is the first thought that greets me when my eyes drag open in the thin, colorless light just before dawn. It lands like a fist to the sternum—hard and unforgiving and absolutely deserved. I’m still lying beside her when the memory clears enough for the consequences to take shape.
Alina sleeps curled against my side, her head tucked into the hollow beneath my jaw, her cheek pressed to my shoulder as if that spot has always belonged to her.
One of her legs is tangled with mine, anchoring us together.
Her breath ghosts warmly and evenly against my throat, stirring the fine hairs there with each exhale.
Her hair spills across the pillow behind her like a dark halo.
She looks beautiful… and peaceful.
Too peaceful for the hell I’ve dragged her into.
For a moment—a dangerous, unguarded one—a version of myself I barely recognize wants to lift my hand and trace the line of her jaw, to commit this quiet peace to memory. To believe this calm could be permanent, that it could be something other than a lie I allowed myself to believe.
The smarter part of me, the one forged in blood and long nights of necessary cruelty, knows better. That part tells me to move and disentangle myself carefully, to put distance between us before this becomes something I cannot control. Before it costs more than I can afford to lose.
But I don’t move.
Not right away.
I can’t.
Pale light slips through the heavy curtains in narrow bands, cutting across her bare shoulder, catching on the delicate rise and fall of her chest. There’s a faint crease between her brows even in sleep, like her mind refuses to fully let go. The sight twists low and unwelcome in my chest.
Control has always been my strongest weapon. The ability to step back, to detach, to make decisions that others can’t is what I’ve built an empire on, buried rivals with and survived long enough to become a thing people fear.
Last night, I let that very piece of me slip through my fingers.
She shifts slightly in her sleep, her grip tightening around me for a heartbeat as if she senses the space between us widening even in rest. Her forehead presses more firmly into my collarbone, a soft sound escaping her lips, an echo of a dream.
I go still.
The instinct to protect is immediate and violent, flaring so hot in my chest, it almost makes me laugh at myself. As if anything could touch her here without going through me first. As if I haven’t already been the one to hurt her the most.
Weak , a voice inside me sneers.
I swallow and breathe through it, counting her breaths until my pulse slows. This… this is closeness, an illusion of safety. It is not something I can allow myself to crave or want. Not with Nikolai breathing down my neck measuring my reactions, waiting for me to slip.
If they realize she matters… they will turn her into a weapon that I will not survive unscathed facing.
Carefully, painstakingly, I begin to shift out from under her.
I slide my shoulder an inch away, easing her weight off me without waking her.
She murmurs, her lashes fluttering, but she doesn’t open her eyes.
When I finally manage to free myself, I replace my warmth with the blanket, tucking it around her with an instinctive gentleness I don’t stop to question.
I sit for a moment on the edge of the bed and look back at her. She curls inward immediately, chasing the last of my heat without knowing why it’s gone. The sight settles into me like a bruise.
This cannot happen again.
I stand and dress quietly. I hate this. Hate the way my chest tightens at the thought of needing anything, least of all a woman who was once supposed to be a tool to use against her father and is now rapidly changing into something else.
Behind me, the sheets rustle.
I turn slowly.
Alina stirs, her long lashes fluttering as she blinks herself awake.
For a moment she just looks at me, caught between sleep and awareness.
Then memory must rush back to her once she registers me, her expression shifting instantly.
Her spine straightens. One hand clutches the sheet to her chest as if she’s suddenly aware of how exposed she is.
“Morning,” she says quietly, her voice hoarse with sleep.
I don’t answer.
She pushes herself upright, confusion knitting her brows when I don’t move closer or acknowledge the space between us. The silence stretches, thick and uncomfortable.
“That’s it?” she finally asks.
My jaw tightens. “What do you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know,” she mutters, glancing down before looking back up at me. “Something.”
I turn fully then and meet her gaze, but not the way I did last night. Not with the same hunger that clawed its way up from my belly, fracturing the last of my restraint. I give her the version of me that is carved out of discipline. The one who keeps this empire intact.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I say.
Her lips part. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
The word lands harder than I intend for it to. I see it immediately in the way her face falls, the subtle fracture that runs through her composure. Hurt flashes there, sharp and unguarded, before she tries to swallow it down. She fails, and I see it anyway.
She shakes her head, disbelief edging into her voice. “What the hell is this? What are you doing?”
“I’m reminding you who I am,” I say simply.
“And who is that?” she asks.
“The man who killed your mother,” I say flatly. “Don’t forget that.”
She flinches as if I’ve struck her.
For a split second, it nearly breaks me.
The urge to cross the room is violent and nearly undoes the careful mask I’ve slipped into.
It would do me no good to take the words back and tell her the truth beneath the wall I’ve built.
Last night had been foolish. Giving in to that desire was dangerous in a way she will never understand.
The softness she saw would get her killed if the wrong eyes noticed it.
Especially Nikolai’s.
So I turn away before the crack in my resolve shows. I let the cruelty settle over me like cooling steel and force whatever feeling this is down until I’ve crushed it beneath my feet.
“Lev will escort you downstairs,” I say, my hand closing around the door handle. “As I said before, don’t try to leave this house again.”
Her breath catches. “And if I do?”
I turn just enough for her to see my expression. “You’ll come to regret it.”
Then I open the door and leave
By midday, I’m drowning myself in work. It’s the only way I know how to survive the aftermath of a mistake.
Contracts stack beneath my hands. Shipping manifests scroll past on my screen in neat columns of numbers and routes.
Threat assessments pile up beside territory maps marked with red ink.
I force my mind to lock onto the familiar rhythms of command.
Anything to bury last night under layers of discipline and responsibility.
Anything to smother the memory of her warmth curled against my side when her body had sought mine without knowing why.
My men rotate through the office with updates, each one delivered with the same rigid professionalism they always use.
No one mentions Alina. No one dares to, anyway.
They talk instead about bank transfers and shell companies, about ghost accounts that funnel money through Cyprus and back into Moscow under names that have been burned into my memory for years.
Viktor Morozov’s aliases.
More threads surface as the hours pass, each one leading back to him like veins returning to a rotten heart.
Offshore accounts tied to intermediaries who don’t exist on paper.
Payments routed through charitable foundations and “educational grants” that don’t exist. The same signature patterns as the ledger Alina found in my study, the same handwriting.
The same arrogance.
Exactly like I suspected.
The trail is so blatant, it borders on insulting, which makes me wonder if it’s meant to be seen.
Viktor has always fancied himself clever enough to dance in the open while everyone else pretends not to notice.
But this is different. This isn’t calculated confidence.
It’s recklessness masquerading as boldness.
That unsettles me more than if he’d actually been careful.
If Viktor orchestrated the explosion to manufacture sympathy and rally his constituents around him like frightened animals huddling for warmth, why risk doing it where his own daughter was present?
Why allow her anywhere near the blast radius?
For a man who prides himself on control and shaping every narrative and outcome to his benefit, Viktor is becoming sloppy.
No.
Sloppy implies carelessness.
This is worse.
This is stupidity driven by desperation, the most dangerous combination of all.
It should give me satisfaction watching the noose tighten around his neck, witnessing a man who once thought himself untouchable finally overplay his hand. That is how it has always worked when my enemies grow desperate. I let them make mistakes and step in only when the outcome is inevitable.
But there is no satisfaction in this, only a hollow ache that settles behind my ribs and refuses to ease, a dread that feels too much like inevitability.
I’ve seen this pattern before. Men who are cornered do not suddenly grow cautious.
They burn everything around them in the hope that anything will save them.
Unless Viktor never intended for Alina to survive at all.
The thought slides into place with sickening ease.
Sacrifice has never been foreign to him.
He’s already proved that once. Offering his wife up to preserve his ascent…
what would one more body matter if it bought him forgiveness, power, and absolution in the public eye again?
A grieving father makes for a compelling story.
A martyr’s loss turns failing politicians human again.
My jaw tightens.