21. Alina
ALINA
T he first few days spent at Nikolai Malyshko’s estate pass by strangely.
There is no instruction given to me when the guards bring me to and from my room. No list of rules to follow and no schedule to abide by. No explanation of where I am allowed to go or what is expected of me.
The guards simply step aside and allow me to go wherever without ceremony.
None of them speak to me, not even when I attempt to ask questions or offer polite greetings. Their faces remain impassive beneath the cold white glow of the hallway sconces. The estate’s walls absorb every sound, turning even my breathing into something intrusive and out of place.
These men are not like the ones at Sasha’s estate.
Sasha’s men, for all their ruthlessness, are unmistakably human.
They curse under their breath. They crack jokes when they think no one else but them is around.
They fidget when they have been standing for too long.
Some even avert their eyes when they see me pass.
Nikolai’s guards, however, are cut from something much colder.
They move with a coordinated precision that has nothing to do with military discipline and everything to do with their unwavering obedience. They are reapers wearing tailored suits, keeping their hands folded behind their backs until the moment they are ordered to do something else.
At first, I cling to the one small comfort Nikolai offered me when I arrived—his promise that I would be treated as a guest.
The word settles strangely in my chest. Guest, not prisoner.
After weeks of living under Sasha’s roof where every kindness came wrapped in control and every silence felt like judgment, I want to believe the word means something here.
I want to believe that Nikolai Malyshko, ruler of the Iron Pact, will honor it simply because he said he would.
For a day or two, the illusion almost holds.
The room his guards give me is expansive in a way that feels deliberate rather than indulgent. I can wander the halls freely, pass servants who bow their heads and avert their eyes, drift through rooms that feel like museum exhibits rather than living spaces.
It’s enough that, for a few fleeting moments, I almost forget why I’m here.
Almost.
But by the second day, the unease begins to creep in.
Since my first conversation with Nikolai, he’s been conspicuously absent. For a man who commands an entire city with a flick of his wrist, his silence feels intentional. Less like indecision and more like strategy. Is he testing me? Letting me stew? Waiting for Sasha to make the first move?
Or is he simply enjoying this, letting me sit in the space between hope and dread, suspended like an insect pinned beneath glass?
I wander the estate deliberately on the off-chance I might stumble into him. I pass studies, sitting rooms, galleries lined with portraits of men whose eyes follow you no matter where you stand. Yet still no Nikolai.
By the time I find myself drifting into the library, my nerves are stretched thin.
It’s vast, far larger than Sasha’s or any library I’ve ever seen, for that matter. Floor-to-ceiling shelves curve along the walls, stacked with leather-bound volumes and modern tomes alike. Ladders on rails climb toward the ceiling. The air smells like dust and ink and something faintly metallic.
I move slowly between the aisles, trailing my fingers along spines I don’t read, my thoughts spiraling tighter with every step. This place feels quieter than the rest of the estate, almost reverent. A sanctuary in its own right.
I drift deeper, toward the back where the shelves curve inward and the light from the tall windows thins into shadows. The farther I go, the more the library feels… private. Less curated, like a place no one bothers to tidy because no one is supposed to be here.
That’s when something catches my eye.
A sliver of canvas. Just the corner of it peeking out from behind one of the shelves, dulled with dust and partially obscured like it’s been deliberately hidden rather than forgotten.
The frame is dark wood, scratched and worn, nothing like the polished portraits lining the rest of the estate’s halls.
I stop.
My pulse kicks harder, curiosity pricking, sharp and immediate. Why would a portrait be shoved back here? Why hide it at all in a house that seems to display everything else so proudly?
I tilt my head, studying the angle, then glance over my shoulder. The library remains empty behind me.
Slowly, I step closer.
When I reach for it, my fingers brush dust so thick, it coats my skin in a fine film. The frame doesn’t budge at first and I have to grip it with both hands, bracing my foot against the shelf as I wrestle it out inch by inch to free it. It’s heavier than I expect.
The canvas scrapes softly against the wood as it slides out, the sound grating in the quiet. My arms strain as I pull it fully into the open, my breath catching with the effort. I stagger back a step, steadying the portrait against my thigh before letting it rest back against the shelf.
For a moment, all I see is grime, then I wipe a hand across the surface. The dust smears away easily. The face staring back at me steals the air from my lungs.
It’s a woman.
Her light blonde hair is swept back from her face.
Her strong cheekbones are dusted pink. Her eyes, a vibrant green, look almost alive despite the state of the canvas—sharp, intelligent, unyielding.
She’s dressed simply with no jewels and no extravagance, nothing that screams wealth or status.
A quiet ferocity that feels achingly familiar clings to her.
She’s young. Much younger than I expected.
Late teens, maybe early twenties at most. Her face hasn’t yet learned restraint or compromise.
There’s an openness to her expression that feels almost defiant, the kind of beauty that doesn’t ask permission to exist. Her eyes are sharp and knowing, like she’s already seen too much of the world and decided it won’t break her.
I tilt my head, studying the brushstrokes, the way the artist captured her posture upright and unflinching. Why would this be back here, hidden, buried behind shelves like something shameful?
The question barely finishes forming before a voice cuts through the silence behind me.
“You’re quite the curious thing, aren’t you?”
I jump out of my skin.
A startled gasp tears out of me as I nearly lose my grip on the portrait.
It tilts dangerously, the heavy frame slipping an inch before I catch it again.
My heart slams into my ribs so hard, it makes my vision blot temporarily.
I spin around, one hand flying to my chest, breath coming fast and shallowly.
Nikolai stands a few feet behind me.
He looks infuriatingly calm, hands loosely clasped behind his back, head tilted slightly, dark eyes lit with faint amusement as if he’s been watching me puzzle over this moment for far longer than I realized.
I drag in a slow breath, trying to collect myself. “You scared me.”
“I see that,” he says mildly.
His gaze slides past me to the painting in my hands. The amusement dims just a fraction, replaced by something a little more guarded.
“Is it a habit of yours,” he continues, “to disturb things that are clearly not meant to be found?”
Heat creeps up my neck. I glance down at the portrait, suddenly acutely aware of how incriminating this looks. “I—I didn’t mean to. I just… saw it.”
“Mmm.” He hums softly, unconvinced.
Guilt washes through me. “Sorry.”
He doesn’t acknowledge the apology.
Instead, he steps around me with quiet authority and reaches for the frame. His hands close around it easily, fingers firm and practiced. He lifts it from my grasp without effort, the weight that strained my arms apparently nothing to him.
I watch silently as he carries it back to the shelf.
He doesn’t handle it with reverence. There’s no gentleness. The corner of the frame snags on the carpet, scraping softly, but he doesn’t stop. He lifts it again and shoves it farther back, deeper into the shadows until it disappears entirely behind rows of old books.
Gone like it never existed.
My fingers twist together in front of me, a nervous habit I can’t seem to stop. “What’s her name?”
He pauses. Only for a heartbeat. “Diana.”
The name echoes in my head.
Diana.
I turn it over silently, my mind racing. Mother? Sister? Someone else entirely? The image of her is still burning behind my eyes.
“Who is she?” I press.
He exhales once, short and controlled, as he gives the painting one last shove, ensuring it’s completely hidden now. This time, there’s no trace left, no edge left sticking out, waiting for the next person to come stumbling across it.
Something tightens in my chest at the thought. I don’t even know why it bothers me so much, but it does. It feels… wrong. Like erasing someone twice.
When Nikolai turns back toward me, he brushes his hands together, dusting them off as if he’s finished dealing with a trivial inconvenience.
“Does it matter?” he asks.
I frown. Before I can stop myself, I step into his path, forcing him to halt. The move surprises both of us, I think.
My heart pounds, but I hold my ground. “Yes. Of course it matters.”
The silence that follows is heavy.
Nikolai studies me then. His eyes narrow slowly, not in anger, but in assessment. Just like he did the day I came stumbling to his estate, begging for Sasha to be spared despite their quarrel. For the first time since I arrived at his estate, I feel like I’ve seen something I was never meant to.
Whatever, or whoever , Diana is to him, whatever she represents, I know one thing with absolute certainty. She was never meant to be found.
Now that I’ve seen her, I don’t believe Nikolai Malyshko will forget that.
“My wife,” he finally says. The words are said softly, almost carelessly, but they hit me like a physical blow.
My eyes widen before I can stop them. For a second, I just stare at him, my mind scrambling to reconcile the portrait with the man in front of me.
He takes advantage of my stunned silence to step around me, his shoulder brushing mine as he passes.
The contact is brief, barely there, but it sends a strange awareness through me anyway of how solid he is, how deliberate every movement feels.
He heads down the aisle, feet whispering against the carpet between towering shelves.
It takes a full fifteen seconds for my brain to catch up. Then I’m moving. I jog down the aisle after him, my pulse skittering, questions tripping over one another until one finally escapes my mouth.
“You have a wife?”
He doesn’t slow.
“I did.” The answer is flat. Final.
I wince instinctively.
Did.
Past tense.
Oh, God.
Everything clicks into place with a sickening clarity—the hidden portrait, the dust, the way it was shoved out of sight instead of honored like the rest of the ones lining this house.
The quiet sadness I thought I imagined earlier when we first met.
The way his gaze hardened when I pressed him about love.
The reason he looked at me like I was a ghost he couldn’t quite shake.
Loss.
The kind that doesn’t fade. It calcifies.
I fall into step beside him, suddenly unsure of my footing. “I’m… I’m sorry.”
He stops.
Not abruptly, but enough that I nearly walk into him. He turns his head slightly, not fully facing me, his expression unreadable from this angle. For a moment, I think he might dismiss me, wave it off with indifference or irritation.
Instead, he exhales. “Don’t be. You didn’t kill her.”
The words aren’t said with any cruelness behind him. They’re worse, said in a detached way that suggests he’s said them to himself a thousand times over until it finally one day clicked.
I swallow. “What happened to her?”
His jaw tightens just enough to notice. “She was executed.”
“By whom?” I ask.
This time, when he turns to me, there is no mask left in place. No polite curiosity or amused detachment. Nikolai Malyshko finally looks at me the way a man looks at a wound he never allowed to heal.
His eyes are dark, so dark they seem to swallow the light between us. Whatever lives there is old and bitter, buried under layers of control so practiced, they might as well be bone. It isn’t rage I see. It’s something colder, learned a long time ago that fury burns itself out but memory does not.
“By the man I took this position from,” he answers.
The sentence is almost conversational.
A chill crawls down my spine like ice tracing every vertebra. My stomach twists as the implications unfold all at once. His predecessor. The former leader of the Iron Pact. The man he overthrew.
His wife was executed, not by enemies across the table but by the one sharing his surname.
Nikolai turns away before I can find my voice again, already moving down the aisle. His steps are unhurried. “Sasha is waiting for you.”
I blink, still stunned so completely, the words don’t register at first. “What?”
“He’s come with your father,” he replies.
My heart slams violently against my ribs. I stumble to follow him, dread flooding my veins so fast, it makes my hands shake. The corridor opens up ahead, the shelves thinning as we near the exit of the library.
“You said you would think about my offer,” I manage.
“I did,” he replies, glancing back at me at last. Amusement has returned to his expression once again. “Then you delivered me an even better one without realizing it.”
My throat goes dry. “What does that mean?”
He slows just enough to allow me to catch up again. “It means that tonight, everyone will be forced to show their hand.”
Guards are already waiting near the doors beyond, standing at ease but watching me with a focus that makes my skin prickle. Somewhere beyond them, Sasha is standing in the same house, waiting for me.
Will he be mad I’m here?
Nikolai gestures forward with a subtle tilt of his chin. “Come along, Devushka . It’s rude to keep people waiting.”