Ruslan
The first thing I notice when I wake up, before my eyes even open, is the cold. It’s not enough to be uncomfortable, but reminds me that summer is finally behind us. Especially here, higher up in the mountains.
For a few seconds, I keep still beneath the blankets, staring at the rough-hewn ceiling overhead while pale dawn light filters through the curtains. The cabin creaks softly around us, settling into another morning as wind moves through the pines outside.
Then Emma wiggles slightly, shifting closer.
She’s tucked against my side, one arm draped across my stomach, curls spread across the pillow. Sometime during the night she’d stolen half the blankets and nearly all the space in the bed. Which might be why I’m chilly.
I’ve never slept better.
That fact should be irritating, but somehow I find it…amusing?
For weeks, I’ve been surviving on a few restless hours at a time. Colorado has a way of dragging old ghosts out of the shadows, and Andrei has ensured that every one of them has surfaced since the moment I set foot on the tarmac.
Yet here, in a cabin I haven’t seen since childhood, with a pregnant woman curled against me, I slept like a man with nothing to fear.
I carefully ease myself off the mattress. Emma stirs slightly but doesn’t wake. Her hand briefly searches the warm spot I’ve abandoned before she pulls herself into it sleepily, curling up tighter.
My heart thuds once, twice, hard—a warning or a promise. I’m not sure, but I don’t want to examine it any closer, and drape a blanket on her before moving away into the rest of the space.
The cabin is quiet in the early morning light.
A faint layer of mist hangs between the trees beyond the windows, stirring with the morning breeze.
The mountains in the distance glow gold beneath the rising sun.
The simplicity of it all feels almost foreign after years of penthouses, private jets, and security teams.
My father would have loved this morning.
For a moment, I can almost see him standing on the porch with a mug of coffee in one hand, surveying his mountains like a king inspecting his kingdom. Ready to tug me out into the nearby meadow and identify every wildflower in it.
Then the image fades.
I rub a hand across my face. The problem remains, as much as I want to ignore it: Andrei.
None of this will be over until I decide on my plan of attack. There is one very clear path forward, but…Emma. The baby. Kate.
All three feel like a sacrifice. Not to mention the woman I last knew was tucked away in a trailer miles from here, doing her best to stop existing. Could I do that to her? To these people I’ve come to care for, just to take my brother down over a feral past?
I step out onto the porch, close the door carefully, and double-check that I have reception. Stepan answers after three rings—a little slow on the uptake, but then, it is earlier morning there.
“Boss.”
“You’re awake.”
A snort comes through the speaker. “You trained me.”
I move toward the front window, trying to see past the gauzy curtain if Emma has stirred at all yet.
“Do we still have the file? The one on Kate and her mother.”
Silence. Stepan isn’t confused. He knows exactly which file I mean. But I’ve never spoken of it, not since Kate came to live with me.
“Yes.”
Sunlight is just starting to break through the pines and dapple the forest floor. A dart of motion pulls my attention, and I turn quickly.
A doe bounding into the deeper shadows.
“How extensive?” I ask, distracted by the fact that this feels like sacrilege. Talking about this in the middle of such a gorgeous morning, a gorgeous place.
“Extremely. It’s detailed. There are photographs from the original police reports, and interviews with the officers about their initial doubts on his account.”
Of course, it is. I hired competent people.
The file on Shannon has existed for years. It’s been insurance, leverage. A weapon I always hoped I would never need to use. Even though I don’t know exactly where she is, I have an idea, and that’s enough.
It was also supposed to be a peace offering if Kate ever had questions about what happened before I came into her life.
Now I find myself thinking about it every day.
“You’re considering it.” It isn’t a question. Either way, Stepan shouldn’t be asking. Or at the very least, shouldn’t sound as approving as he does.
When I remain silent, he sighs heavily.
“You should know something.”
“Go on.”
“If you decide to use it, nobody will question you.”
I lean against the window frame. The words offer no comfort, and my brow knits, wondering why my second-in-command bothered to bring that up. I know it as well as he does.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No,” Stepan agrees. “But it’s what you need to hear. And what’s to say that if you don’t expose him now, he won’t get away with it again? Marriage doesn’t fix problems, Boss; it often worsens them.”
I wouldn’t know, but Stepan has been married to the same woman for twelve years. A firecracker that I’d hire in his stead if something ever went sideways.
The forest beyond the porch remains peaceful, completely indifferent to the war brewing beneath the surface of my life. For a long moment, neither of us speaks, but it’s Stepan who has to break the silence once more.
“For what it’s worth, boss, I support whatever decision you make.”
I close my eyes. That is precisely the problem. Everyone will support the decision—everyone except the people who will have to live with the consequences. Not that I can ask them.
Behind me, I hear a door creak. Emma. She must be up, and I haven’t even started the fire.
The file still exists. The option remains on the table. But is winning worth the cost?
“Thank you,” I murmur absently, already pulling the phone away from my ear. “I’ll be in touch, Stepan.”
Emma is standing behind me when I end the call, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
One moment I’m staring out at the trees, wrestling with choices I would rather not make, and the next I catch her reflection in the window glass. Her curls are mussed from sleep; her expression still soft with exhaustion.
Unfortunately, her eyes are alert. Suspicious. That’s my girl.
“What file?”
Of course she heard that part, though I’ve no idea how. Are the glass windows that thin? And how long has she been up?
I place a hand on her lower back, drawing her back into the cabin and toward the woodstove before answering. The fire has burned down overnight, leaving only a bed of glowing coals beneath the ash. I kneel and add another log, giving myself a few seconds to think.
Emma settles into the chair nearby, but she’s not willing to let this go. I can hear it in the way she says my name.
I sigh. “I don’t want to lie to you.”
Sitting up defensively, eyes narrow, she bites out: “So don’t. What file? Does this have to do with Kate?”
I nod, acutely aware of the stiffness that has settled in my neck out of nowhere. For a long moment, only the crackle of settling wood fills the cabin.
Then I look up.
“The file is on Shannon.”
Emma frowns. The name clearly means nothing to her.
“Who is Shannon?”
The answer sticks briefly in my throat, not because it’s difficult to explain, but because I’ve spent years protecting Kate. And this is Emma—though she still has secrets from me, I know that she could keep this one. That she’ll understand.
Still, old habits die hard. And years later, I’m still angry.
“Kate. She’s Andrei’s daughter.”
The expression on Emma’s face doesn’t change, but her eyes go somewhere far away.
“I—” she manages to get out before blinking rapidly and sliding further down into the chair. “I guess that makes…sense? She calls you uncle, but I guess I thought…”
I nod, understanding what she thought: that I’d adopted a child, or maybe had a sibling or close friend I hadn’t mentioned.
“Oh my God.”
Her brows raise as the full understanding dawns, a hand going to her mouth.
“Oh God. Andrei is Kate’s father!? But how—”
Before she can finish the question, I interject smoothly, “Shannon is her mother.” Emma licks her lips and leans forward, obviously listening carefully now.
“When Shannon became pregnant, Andrei wanted nothing to do with it. They were young. He had ambitions. A future. A carefully planned life. He was just getting into politics, right at the start, thirteen years ago.”
My jaw pulses, aches, with everything that comes next.
“A child didn’t fit into that future. And Shannon...
” I trail off, trying to recall; what was she like back then?
At that point, I was still in Colorado, still angry after our mother’s death.
That I hadn’t gotten to ask her why she ran so quickly from her grief; that I hadn’t made amends.
“She was just normal. Too normal, I think. After Kate was born, it wasn’t hard for Andrei to make sure that Shannon lost custody and disappeared. ”
Emma goes very still. I feed another log into the stove now that the first has caught.
“Andrei had money. Lawyers. Connections.” The disgust from all those years ago still roils in my gut.
“So is Shannon…?”
I shake my head. “No; she’s alive. I’ve been keeping an eye on her, as much as I can. She’s in Utah.” Emma’s expression darkens.
“And what happened to Kate?” she asks, that sly look on her face—she’s putting the pieces together. Understanding that this goes deep and dark and could be exactly the thing to end Andrei.
“He dumped her into the system two months after getting custody. Didn’t even do it himself; had an intern bring her to the local office with a few things.”
Silence fills the room. I don’t look at Emma. I don’t need to. I can practically feel her horror, and I know that soon it’ll morph into anger.
“And she doesn’t know.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “No; how could I tell her any of that, Emma? That her own father didn’t want her. That her mother is a husk.”
That is the truth. The most frustrating part of the truth.
“I found Kate eventually,” I explain, sitting back on my heels and looking Emma full in the face now.
I’m past the worst of it, ready to charge ahead.
Still angry, still wanting to rip his throat out.
“It took years of investigating, but I found her and I adopted her. And not long after I found Shannon. The file you heard me talking about—it’s everything I compiled, that my men compiled, at the time. During the search, and after.”
Emma’s hands ghosts over her stomach. She asks a question that breaks my heart, though I thought it was beyond breaking.
“Shannon didn’t want her back?”
With a sigh, I crack my neck. “She would have taken her if she could, I think. But she wasn’t in any place to. After what Andrei did to her, she became an addict. She’s recovered since, but I don’t think he trusts herself. So Kate stayed with me.”
Unspoken words sit between us, neither of us wanting to acknowledge them.
Kate stayed with me. A Bratva Pakhan. A ruthless man who has killed others in warehouses, behind gauze and tulle. A business mogul disguising danger.
“Ruslan. You know what you did was the right thing, right?”
Nausea twists in my gut, and I find myself pushing away, pushing myself up, pacing across the room toward the small kitchen. My back is to Emma as a riot of emotions I thought long buried surface.
“It was the easiest decision I ever made,” I murmur, staring at nothing. “Bringing her home. I’d do it all again; I’d give it all up if I had to.”
The words feel simple. Certain.
I can feel Emma’s eyes on my back, but somehow I’m not prepared for the next question she asks.
“Does Andrei know?”
“No. He has no idea.”
Her eyes widen. And suddenly she understands all of it.
The file. The leverage. The weapon I can use against him.
“Oh.”
The cabin feels smaller now, the warmth of the fire more stifling than comforting. I want nothing more than to be out on the porch again, striding into the pines and away from all of this. The past, again, always. Why can’t I be rid of it?
Emma slowly shakes her head.
“If you expose that...”
She can’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t need to.
I know.
God, I know.
Kate would become national news overnight. The forgotten daughter, the abandoned child—the politician’s secret. Every camera in the country would descend on her during a vulnerable time in her life.
I picture her lopsided smile, hear her bright laughter when she has friends over terrorizing the house. Can I do that to her? To end this, a war that is mine, and not hers?
Emma’s voice is quiet when she finally speaks.
“You could destroy him. And ruin her.”
It isn’t an accusation; it’s the truth. The one I’ve been avoiding since following the thread from Emma to Victoria, to all the women before.
The fire crackles softly. Somewhere outside, a bird calls through the trees, starting up an insistent chatter.
Because Andrei deserves to fall, but Kate deserves peace. Which do I choose?