15. Alina
ALINA
I t’s been over a week since that night with Sasha.
Already, it feels surreal.
When I try to hold onto it, the memory slips through my fingers. Sometimes, I catch myself wondering if I imagined all of it. The details blur at the edges, softened by time and disbelief, until it feels less like a memory and more like a dream I woke up from too quickly.
What feels real—suffocatingly so—is the silence that has followed since then.
Sasha hasn’t looked at me the same since.
In truth, he barely looks at me at all. When our paths cross in the halls, it’s like we’re strangers bound by proximity rather than two people who crossed a line that can never be erased. His words are clipped and professional, stripped of any warmth that might suggest the intimacy we once shared.
He’s gone back to treating me like a wandering spirit in his home. This place feels haunted again, not by ghosts of the past, but by the echo of what briefly existed between us and was then quickly buried.
Meals appear outside my door every few hours like clockwork.
I hear the quiet approach of footsteps, the soft pause just on the other side of the wood right before knocking.
Lev’s presence is the easiest to recognize, but even he doesn’t linger long.
The tray is set down, the footsteps retreat, and then silence settles back in thicker than before.
I eat mechanically, if at all, the food tasting like nothing.
The distance Sasha has put between us feels like he’s cutting away an infected piece of tissue before it can spread.
For a week I’ve been trapped inside my own head, pacing the same mental corridors over and over again until I’ve gone nearly insane. I replay every look, every word, every touch until they lose meaning and then circle back again sharper than before.
The questions never stop.
What did it mean? Did it mean anything at all? Was it a mistake, a weakness, a kindness he immediately regretted? Or did that come later?
The spiraling leaves me hollowed out and exhausted, caught between wanting answers and being terrified of what those answers might bring.
I’m suffocating in the wake of it. Drowning with the need to talk to someone before I explode because staying trapped inside my own head is starting to feel dangerous.
But who is there?
Lev is the closest thing I have to a confidant, and that truth is both comforting and a little cruel. Sweet, awkward Lev, who brings my meals and pretends not to notice when I barely touch them. Who clears his throat when our conversations veer too close to something personal.
I can see it in his eyes when I ask questions he can’t answer—questions about Sasha, about why the rules keep tightening instead of loosening, about whether any of this will ever end. He wants to help, I know he does, but he’s bound just as tightly as I am, only by loyalty instead of locked doors.
Every answer eventually circles back to the same refrain, delivered gently, like a mantra meant to soothe rather than inform. “He’s keeping you protected. That’s what matters.”
Protected from what? From whom? From my father? From the world? Or from himself?
I stop bothering after a while because I can tell when I’m nearing the edge of what Lev is allowed to say.
Roman, on the other hand, is much worse.
He isn’t gentle or awkward. He’s a wall. His constant presence is a shadow that shifts when I move, always keeping me within sight even when I’m not consciously trying to avoid him. He watches me like I’m some kind of threat waiting to explode, an equation he’s constantly recalculating.
He speaks only when absolutely necessary, his words clipped and efficient.
If I screamed in front of him, I’m fairly certain he’d just blink slowly, maybe adjust his stance, and then resume staring holes into the nearest wall.
Roman isn’t cruel, exactly. He’s just… empty in a way that makes me feel more alone than outright hostility ever could.
I need someone human.
Someone warm and imperfect and unguarded. I need proof that before this, before contracts and murders and orders, I had a life. Friends. A future that belonged to me. A world that didn’t revolve around Bratva politics and surveillance and doors that only open when someone else decides they should.
Late one night, the chance materializes.
It happens so suddenly it feels unreal, like fate itself has reached out and tapped on the glass just to see if I’ll notice.
I catch Yelena, Sasha’s sister, storming out of one of the offices in the east wing, her voice sharp and cutting as she finishes an argument on her phone. I flatten myself against the wall instinctively as she passes, her heels clicking across the marble with irritated clacks .
She disappears down the corridor, still muttering under her breath, and that’s when I notice the office door ajar.
Just slightly enough for warm light to stretch across the floor in front of it like an invitation.
My pulse jumps. I know immediately that I should turn around and walk away.
This house has taught me what curiosity costs.
Despite that, my feet move anyway, my gaze flicking toward the opening as I pass.
Inside, the room is empty. The desk is neat, almost aggressively so. And there, sitting plainly atop it like it belongs to no one and everyone at once, is a landline phone.
A real one.
I don’t think. If I stop and do, I’ll talk myself out of it. Fear will win. The rules will close in again.
So instead, I move.
My steps are quiet, my body already vibrating with adrenaline as I slip through the cracked door and ease it shut behind me.
The click is soft, but it echoes in my head like a gunshot.
I cross the room in three quick strides and reach for the phone, my fingers hovering over it for a single, suspended heartbeat before I force myself to grab it.
I dial the only number that comes to mind. Muscle memory takes over, my fingers moving before doubt can stop them. The ringing feels endless and painfully slow.
Finally, the other end of the line is picked up. “Hello?”
My knees nearly buckle. I grip the edge of the desk hard enough to crease my palm, using it to keep myself upright as a rush of dizzy relief crashes through me. For a split second, I can’t even breathe.
“Nat,” I whisper.
There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other end, followed by a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob. “Alina? Oh, my God… is this you? Where are you? Are you okay? Are you?—”
I choke on a laugh that scrapes my throat raw. God, I missed her. Missed the way she panics first and asks questions later. Missed the sound of her voice and the way it anchors me to pieces that are real. “I’m okay. I’m alive.”
“Oh, my God,” she repeats. “Everyone thought you were dead. Or kidnapped! Or in Witness Protection or something!”
Witness Protection…
The absurdity of it almost makes me laugh again
“I’m sorry. I’ve… I’ve had a lot going on. After the bombing, my dad took me out of school.”
Nat exhales shakily. “Yeah. I saw that. He’s been on the news nonstop giving statements. Holding press conferences. He keeps talking about how devastated he is that he almost lost you. He said you were lucky to survive. Called you his greatest treasure. Reporters ate it up.”
Greatest treasure.
I laugh, but it comes out wrong. It sounds just as broken and hollow as I feel. “His greatest treasure. Right.”
“Where are you?”
I wish I could tell her the truth, say I’m trapped in a fortress owned by one of the most powerful men in Moscow, that my life is being negotiated like pieces on a Monopoly board and my freedom is the price tag with a kill order attached to it. But even thinking it feels dangerous.
Nat is loyal. She’s kind but she’s also human. People like her talk, they always do. Especially in a city like this. While I would never blame her for spreading my business because of a misplaced sense of assistance, the last thing I want is to get her involved in any of this.
“I’m… with someone who’s hiding me,” I say carefully. “Someone my dad knows.”
Her voice jumps an octave. “What? Who?”
“Whatever my dad is saying,” I rush on before she can interrupt, panic tightening my chest, “don’t trust him. I just found out he’s the one who had my mother killed.”
“What?” Nat chokes.
“My mom didn’t die in an accident. He ordered it. I found the paperwork. I confronted him, and he confessed,” I say, the words sounding unbelievable even to my own ears.
Her breath catches audibly like she’s been punched. “Oh, my God, Alina. By who?”
“I can’t say, but I’ve had everything confirmed from the source.”
It feels wrong talking about it like this, flat and clinical like I’m reading from a report instead of recounting the worst truth of my life. On the other end of the phone, Nat is falling apart in real time, her grief raw and immediate. Something I should be feeling just as deeply.
But… I’ve already bled myself dry. I’ve had weeks to sit with this. Weeks for the shock to burn down into numbness. Now when I talk about my mother, there’s only a dull ache that presses against my ribs, persistent and heavy but survivable.
“Alina, this is… this is insane. You need to go to the police.”
I almost laugh. “I can’t. You don’t understand how deep this goes.”
“Then come to me,” she pleads. “Please. I’ll help you. I don’t care what it takes.”
The sincerity in her voice nearly undoes me. “I can’t put you in danger. I just needed… I needed someone to know I’m alive. That… I’m not crazy.”
“You’re not,” she says fiercely. “You hear me? You’re not.”
Footsteps echo faintly in the hallway outside the office.
Shit…
“Nat,” I whisper. “I have to go.”
“What? No—wait—Alina!”
“If anyone asks,” I cut in softly, “you haven’t heard from me. Not really. And if my dad says anything—anything—assume it’s a lie.”
“I…” Her voice breaks again. “I love you.”
The words hit harder than anything else.
“I love you too,” I say right before the receiver is ripped out of my hand.
I gasp sharply, the sound tearing from my throat as I spin around, my heart slamming so hard against my chest it hurts. For a split second, the room tilts when I see exactly who’s standing behind me.
Sasha.
He stands impossibly close, one hand gripping the phone I was just holding, his knuckles white around it as the tendons stand out starkly beneath his skin.
The other hangs loose at his side, deceptively relaxed.
His suit jacket is gone, his sleeves rolled up like he’d been pulled from something urgent and unfinished.
But it’s his eyes that stop my heart entirely.
They’re black. Not dark, not shadowed, black in a way that swallows the light instead of reflecting it.
“Who,” he says quietly, each syllable precise and deadly, “were you talking to?”
The words land like a loaded gun on the table between us.
All the blood drains from my face in one sickening rush. My hands feel numb, useless at my sides. I try to speak, to lie, to say no one or it doesn’t matter or you don’t get to ask me that , but when my mouth opens, nothing comes out.
His gaze drops to the phone when it begins to ring. His thumb moves with practiced ease, answering the call before bringing it up to his ear. I watch his eyes track my expression, watch the exact moment he says, “Hello?” and the voice on the other end comes through and recognition settles in.
Oh, fuck.