“I’ll get it to Greece,” he’d said quietly. “Discreetly.”
I trusted him to deliver it.
I didn’t trust time.
Ruslan received hundreds of pleas every month. Requests. Confessions. Warnings. Mine was just another envelope in a mountain of need. Would he open it? Would my name still mean something? Or would it sit unopened, ink fading, until hope became irrelevant?
That question gnawed at me constantly.
This afternoon, I sat on the wide landing halfway down the grand staircase—just a shallow step overlooking the foyer below.
Sunlight slanted through the tall windows, gilding the marble in gold, but the warmth never reached me. I hugged my knees to my chest and stared at the empty space where my life used to be.
My thoughts kept circling the same fork in the road.
Stay and fight for Vanya—slowly, silently, risking discovery while trying to trigger whatever memories Dmitri still carried buried deep in his mind.
Or leave.
Find the other women who’d escaped with me and disappear completely.
Ana. Sofia. Christina. Simona. Carina.
And Bianca.
The thought of her lodged like a stone in my stomach. Still trapped. Still suffering under the Kompania brothers.
I prayed the others had found safety—borders crossed, new names claimed, some scrap of kindness in a world that had devoured us whole.
But Bianca...
I closed my eyes.
Footsteps descended behind me.
Light. Unhurried. Confident.
I didn’t need to turn.
Seraphina stopped two steps above me. No Vanya at her side this time. No performance. Just her—immaculate, composed, victory humming beneath her skin like a private anthem.
I smelled her perfume before I saw her—something expensive and floral, designed to linger.
She extended her phone toward me.
“Here.”
I stared at the device like it might bite. “Why are you giving me your phone?”
Her lips curved faintly. Not a smile. A concession. “Your father wants to speak with you.”
The words hit like ice water poured straight down my spine.
My chest collapsed inward.
Marco Volkov.
The architect of my childhood nightmares.