Apologies were words—cheap when spoken too late. Gifts were bribes dressed as affection. I’d tried both before. They’d meant nothing to her then, and they would mean even less now.
What I needed was truth.
Every lie unraveled. Every manipulation exposed. Every choice I’d made laid bare without excuse or justification.
But would she listen?
Had Ruslan warned her I was coming? Had he given her time to steel herself—or was I about to become an ambush she hadn’t asked for?
Would she open the door with fury blazing, or would she slam it shut the second she saw my face?
The uncertainty gnawed at me, raw and relentless.
I finished unpacking, slid the empty bag beneath the bed, and lined my toiletries on the narrow bathroom shelf—soap, razor, toothbrush.
No cologne. I didn’t deserve to smell like anything but what I was.
Hunger twisted in my gut then, sharp and insistent.
Jet lag, adrenaline, the emotional wreckage of the past days—all of it catching up to me. I could have called for food. The butler would have brought something simple.
But food could wait.
Penelope couldn’t.
She was the axis everything now revolved around.
The air I needed to breathe. The wound that would not heal unless she allowed it to.
I straightened, rolled my shoulders back, and crossed the short distance to the door. My hand hovered over the handle for a beat longer than necessary before I forced myself to open it.
The hallway was quiet.
Too quiet.
I walked the few steps to her apartment next door, each one feeling heavier than the last.
Her entrance loomed larger than mine—wider door, subtle carvings etched into the frame, the faint scent of lavender drifting from beneath the threshold.
Ruslan’s work. A reminder of hierarchy. Of who was protected here.
I didn’t resent it.
If anyone deserved safety, comfort, space—it was her.
I lifted my hand to knock.
And froze.
My knuckles hovered inches from the wood as something unfamiliar seized my chest.
Fear.
Not of death. Not of violence. Not of losing power.
Of rejection.
Me—who had ordered executions without blinking, who had stared down men twice my size with guns trained on my head—was paralyzed by the thought of a single door opening.