Whatever.
It wasn’t like I promised not to sleep with him before I left Mikhail.
Thankfully, his foresight hadn’t extended that far into the future.
Mikhail had been cautious in the tools he’d embedded in me. The earrings fed him my small whimpers in the dark after a nightmare, and the soft croon of a lover. But they didn’t show him the realization dawning over his enemies’ faces after catching me in a lie. They didn’t capture the sly twist of a plan forming silently behind my back.
I’m so damn torn.
One half of me aches to blurt the truth out to Maksim in a raw confession, lay everything on the table and let him see the position I’ve been forced into.
Last night changed something in me.
It wasn’t just the feel of his hands or the way his breath caught mine as we kissed. It was the sudden, brutal clarity that being in his arms was the only real time I’ve felt truly protected. For the first time since I was taken, I didn’t feel like a thing to be traded. I felt like someone to fight for.
I want him to know that.
I want to tell him how hollow I felt when I shook Mikhail’s hand, what it cost me to say yes to him, and how every lie I tell now is from fear for Leo’s safety. I want him to understand the choice I made so that when he looks at me, he sees motive and desperation rather than betrayal.
But the other half of me is terrified.
If even a single word slips back to Mikhail that I’ve saidanythingabout this plan, Leo dies. Mikhail set the rules that way for a reason, so there would be no nuance for me to hide behind if the time ever came where my loyalty to him was questioned. He would have every right to punish me for fucking him over, and I would be given no room to argue.
That is why a confession to Maksim is a luxury I can’t afford. That is why truth is a weapon I can’t wield no matter how badly I want to.
I love Maksim but I love my child more.
So I stand in the middle of those two impossible truths and try to find a third way out.
The only way I can think of is to get Maksim to see things himself. But how do you get a man to distrust you without asking you any questions? How do you ask him to check you, to test you, to play the skeptic in order to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes while still trusting you enough in the end not to throw you to the wolves too?
How do I feed Mikhail enough crumbs to get him to understand I’m being blackmailed into betraying him and that the man behind it is using our son’s life as leverage against me?
Part of me thinks there must be small ways I can get Maksim to notice because he knows me better than anyone. Little tests we could do in private without anyone else, namely his inner circle, questioning me too deeply.
But even that could be dangerous.
Mikhail might not have eyes on my face, but he has me bugged twenty-four, seven. He’ll know if I’m trying to prodMaksim into figuring out what the hell is going on or if I start to refuse to gather intel on the operation that’s being run here in order to double-cross and help Maksim take him down.
Then there’s the other temptation… a sick, lucid fantasy of the plan that has been in the back of my mind for a long time now. One that would end all of this cleanly—actuallyconvince Maksim to step down, hand over the Bratva to Mikhail, and walk away with Leo, completely untethered to the Mafia world altogether.
Mikhail never promised tokillMaksim at the end of all this. He simply wants the Bratva. If Maksim agrees to abdicate his position asPakhanfor our child and accepts exile rather than death, then maybe this would all end happily. Maybe Leo will be able to grow up without the stress of being a future heir. Maybe we could be anonymous and raise our little family somewhere stupidly far away from the sins of the Antonov name.
That fantasy is sweet and monstrous all at once. It would require me to ask something of Maksim that might be impossible. For him to give up his legacy, hisfamily’slegacy, and throw it all away for just me and our child. After everything he was forced to do to pull his Bratva out of a civil war, asking him to hand it over to the same enemy is not just selfish. It would render everything he’s done, and the lives that were lost along the way, completely pointless.
I don’t know what to do anymore.
I’ve never been so lost before in my whole life. Even after I believed Maksim was dead and I was carrying the only remaining piece of him. It feels like balancing on a thin wireover a long, dark drop, and every step could be the one that sends us all falling over the edge.
“You planning on standing there all day, or were you serious when you said you wanted to be useful?” Katya says dryly.
I jump.
Three sets of eyes snap toward me—hers, Matvey’s, and Andrey’s.
My skin flushes hot, the shame immediate and reflexive. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just returning this.”
I cross the remaining distance on legs that feel strangely disconnected from my body. My fingers tighten slightly around the burner phone as I hand it back to her. Katya doesn’t move at first. She watches me with the same practiced stillness she always has.