19. Alina
ALINA
I make my escape plan throughout the night.
Finding myself in a predicament like this is the last thing I ever thought would happen. For weeks, escape was a fantasy born of desperation, a mental exercise to keep myself sane when the walls felt like they were closing in.
I imagined slipping away because I was afraid. Because I was cornered. Because I needed to save myself. I never imagined I would be leaving like this.
I never imagined I would be running not from Sasha, but for him.
The irony of it settles heavily in my chest as the hours crawl by, each minute dragging. I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to the estate settle into its nighttime rhythm. I turn the words over and over in my head, trying to make them make sense.
Do you love her?
Yes.
It still feels unreal, like a line from a story. Love was never part of the deal. Not when I was sold. Not when my life became collateral damage in a world where men think feelings are weaknesses and women are leverage.
Sasha doesn’t love safely. He loves the way he does everything else, with absolute destruction and with no exit strategy.
His loving me means he would burn down his world to keep me, even if it meant standing in the ashes.
I don’t know how to live with that kind of devotion pressing against my throat.
I never asked for it, and I refuse to be the reason he loses everything.
I strip the emotion from it the way my father taught me to, even though thinking like him makes my skin crawl. I break the night into segments. I map routes in my head of the house from memory, hallways, staircases, blind corners where cameras don’t quite reach.
Sasha thinks I won’t leave because I care, but he’s wrong. That’s exactly why I have to.
I pack nothing that would be noticed. I layer clothes over my own and take only what I can’t live without and pack it into a small bag I found weeks ago at the back of my closet. By the time the sky begins to lighten at the edges, my decision has hardened into something unbreakable.
I stand quietly in the center of my room and take one last look around what was once both my prison and my refuge.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
I don’t know if I mean it for him or for myself or for the version of us that might have existed in a different life if we were ever given the chance. Maybe all three.
Then I turn toward the door and slip out into the hall before Lev comes to retrieve me for breakfast.
When I arrive at the reinforced gates, I hesitate.
The rideshare has already pulled away, its taillights dissolving into the fog like a decision I can’t undo, leaving me standing alone. For a heartbeat, I just stare, my hands clenched inside my coat pockets while the weight of where I am settles into my bones.
The estate that looms beyond the gates is enormous in a way that feels intentional rather than beautiful. Sasha’s home, despite its size and severity, has warmth beneath its bones. I spent weeks pretending I didn’t feel that warmth. Days where I fantasized about escaping it.
Nikolai Malyshko’s estate holds no such illusions.
The gates alone are a warning, thick steel reinforced with angular ironwork that looks less decorative and more like it was forged for war.
Beyond them, the main structure rises from the earth like a monument to dominance, stone upon stone, no soft curves, no concessions of comfort. Even the landscaping feels aggressive.
This is a place designed not to shelter, but to withstand.
I swallow hard, my throat tight, and force my feet to move closer to the gate. Each step feels heavier than the last.
Is this a stupid decision? Absolutely.
Coming here to beg for Sasha’s life—because that’s what this is, no matter how I dress it up in nobler language—is probably the most reckless thing I’ve ever done. I’m walking straight into the territory of a man who is rumored to thrive on breaking people apart. I know that. I’m not naive.
But I still have to do it because the alternative is worse.
Letting Sasha burn everything down just to protect me is not bravery. It’s not romance. It’s annihilation. Allowing that to happen would make me just as selfish, if not worse. If someone has to be sacrificed to stop this, it should be me.
I lift my chin and head up the long drive toward the gate.
High above, in the guard tower, movement catches my eye.
Shadows shift, figures straighten. I feel their attention lock onto me like a spotlight.
Weapons are raised but not pointed at me.
The silent warning is enough to stop me from moving any further.
I tilt my head back and look up at them, forcing myself not to flinch under the weight of their scrutiny.
“What business do you have here?” one of them calls down.
“I’m here to see Nikolai Malyshko,” I answer evenly, though my heart is pounding hard enough that I’m sure they must hear it.
There’s a pause. Then another voice joins in, colder. “And who are you?”
I draw in a slow breath, steadying myself. This is the moment, the name that turns me from nothing into something dangerous.
“Alina Morozova.”
The silence that follows is telling.
“No one is authorized on the premises today,” the first guard says at last.
I run my tongue along the back of my teeth. “If you call him and tell him I’m here, I’m sure he’ll be very interested in letting me in.”
I can’t see their faces beneath the tactical gear, but I don’t need to.
I can feel the shift as they turn toward each other, exchanging looks.
The weight of my claim hangs between them.
One of them steps back and raises a radio to his mouth, turning slightly away as he speaks into it in a low voice, quiet enough that I can hear the cadence but not the words.
The other guard keeps his attention fixed on me.
His hands tighten around his assault rifle.
I shift my weight from one foot to the other, impatience and anxiety tangling together in my chest. I want this done and over with.
Every second I stand here is another second for doubt to creep in and convince me that turning around and running in the opposite direction will be the true fix to all of this.
I can’t imagine a world where the person currently threatening to fracture the Iron Pact shows up unannounced on Nikolai Malyshko’s doorstep and he doesn’t want to see it for himself. It’s like your enemy being delivered to you on a silver platter with no strings attached.
Finally, the guard with the radio returns. He doesn’t even look at his partner as he bypasses him and reaches for a control panel mounted beside their post. There’s a low mechanical groan as the locks disengage and the massive gates begin to part.
“A car is coming down to get you,” he says.
I step forward immediately, shaking my head. “Don’t bother. I’ll walk.”
“Miss—”
“I said, I’ll walk.” My voice is sharp enough that he stops himself. For a moment, it looks like he might argue, but he must think better of it because he simply nods and doesn’t say anything more as the gate opens fully.
I move through without looking back.
Whatever waits for me inside, I’ll face it on my own two feet.
The walk up gives me enough time to feel solidified in my choices. With every step, the panic that chased me here dulls into something colder and steadier. Resolve, maybe. Or resignation.
My boots crunch softly against the snow covered gravel that looks like it’s been meticulously placed. When I finally reach the front doors, guards are already waiting on the steps for me. I don’t bother trying to speak as I’m waved inside.
They pat me down with professional thoroughness, stripping my coat and bag away without ceremony. I barely register the loss of my things as they lead me deeper into the estate, two guards flanking me in silence.
We move through corridor after corridor, each one quieter than the last, the walls thick and insulated in a way that makes the outside world feel impossibly far away.
Eventually, we stop in front of a set of double doors that look almost…
ordinary. Plain wood. Gold polished handles.
Nothing ornate or threatening about them.
One of the guards knocks twice.
A muffled voice answers from the other side.
The door opens inward, revealing a man dressed far more casually than the others with no tactical gear or visible weapons, just sharp eyes that assess me.
He looks me over once, then steps aside, waving me in.
As soon as I cross the threshold, he slips past me and closes the door behind us with a solid, final click.
The sound echoes in my chest.
Another set of double doors is opened, and I’m guided forward into a study that makes Sasha’s feel almost modest by comparison.
The room is enormous. Deliberately so.
Everything here is designed to signal power without ever needing to announce it.
A hand-carved table dominates the center of the space, large enough to seat a war council.
Vaulted shelves line the walls, filled with leather-bound tomes and neatly cataloged files, history and strategy sharing space without distinction.
Lamps cast a low, controlled glow, throwing long shadows across a Persian rug that looks older than most governments.
And at the center of it all sits Nikolai Malyshko.
He is younger than I expected.
Strikingly so.
Not in the boyish sense. There is no softness in his features, though he looks closer to my age than Sasha’s, which is not something I expected at all.
His posture is relaxed, one arm draped over the back of the couch he’s seated on, but there’s nothing casual about him.
He sits with an ease of someone who has never once doubted his own authority.
He doesn’t stand when I enter, nor when the man behind me dips out of the room and shuts the door. He simply looks at me, and the room seems to still under the weight of his attention.