“Good boy,” Razvan says. He picks Theo up and carries him to the small bed in the corner of the room. He tucks him in, lingering over the blankets until his breathing turns deep and rhythmic. Theo is out within seconds, the trauma of the day finally giving way to sleep.
Razvan stands there for a long time, just watching him sleep. The silence of the room is heavy with the ghosts of the men who died today. Mike. The enforcers who stood their ground. My father. His father. All of them victims of a lie that lasted five years.
Finally, Razvan turns toward me. He looks exhausted, his knees buckling as he moves. He doesn’t go to the bed. Instead, he drops to the floor between my legs as I sit in the armchair. He leans forward, wrapping his arms around my waist and burying his face against my stomach.
I reach down, my fingers tangling in his dark, messy hair. I hold him for every night I spent in that dungeon hating him. I hold him for every lie Viktor told.
“I was wrong,” he rasps into my robe, his voice sounding like it’s being dragged over gravel. “For five years, Lena…I believed it. I hunted you. I hurt you. I put you in that cell because I thought I was getting justice for my father. And all this time, the rot was in my own house. My own blood.”
“Razvan, look at me,” I say, lifting his head. His face is pale, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with a dry, searing heat, but his gaze is as sharp as a razor. “You were lied to. We were both lied to. You didn’t know.”
“I should have known!” The roar is low, contained, vibrating in his chest like a trapped beast. “I knew your father. I knew he wasn’t a murderer. But I let Viktor whisper in my ear because it was easier to hate a Sokolova than to look at the traitor in my own lineage. You suffered…your father died…and it was all for a lie. I ruined your life, Lena. I can never take that back.”
“You saved my son today,” I tell him, my own tears starting to fall. “And Mike…he gave his life for us. We can’t change the last five years, Razvan. We can only survive what’s left. It’s not your fault you were a pawn in Viktor’s game.”
“I feel like I’m drowning in the blood of it,” he whispers, leaning his forehead against mine. His grip on my waist tightens, possessive and fierce, the strength of a man who will never let go again. “The deaths…Mike…I had to look into his eyes and…”
He can’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to. I saw the look on his face when he carried Mike’s body—the cold, dead focus of a man who had to perform one last mercy for a brother.
“I know,” I say, pulling him closer. “I know.”
We sit there on the floor for an eternity, grieving in the dark. There are no sobs, only the heavy, rhythmic breathing of twosurvivors. We grieve for the innocent man my father was. We grieve for the father Razvan lost. We grieve for Mike.
Eventually, the adrenaline wears off completely, leaving us both hollow and numb. Razvan stands up, helping me to my feet. He leads me to the large bed on the other side of the room. We don’t undress. We don’t have the energy. We just collapse onto the covers.
Razvan moves to the small bed first, gently picking up the sleeping Theo and bringing him into the big bed with us. He places the boy in the middle. Theo stirs for a second, mumbling something about Superman, before settling back into a deep sleep.
Razvan lies on one side of Theo, and I lie on the other. He reaches across our son and takes my hand, his grip so tight it almost hurts.
“I’m going to make it right,” he whispers into the darkness. “I promise you, Lena. I will fix what’s broken.”
“Just stay,” I say, closing my eyes. “Just be here.”
“Always,” he breathes.
As sleep finally begins to take me, I feel the warmth of my son and the strength of the man I’m learning to love. The world outside is still full of fire and blood. Viktor is in a basement, waiting for a judgment that will be slow and painful. The estate is a graveyard. But here, in this quiet room, the lie is dead.
The truth is heavy, and it hurts, but as Razvan’s thumb strokes the back of my hand, I realize we are finally free. We are a family forged in the worst kind of fire, but we are standing.
I drift off to the sound of two heartbeats—the small, steady one of my son, and the heavy, burdened one of Razvan. For the first time in five years, the ghosts are quiet. We sleep, huddled together in the wreckage, waiting for a morning that will finally belong to us.
31
RAZVAN
“Let us begin.”
The Grand Council chamber is thick with the smell of old wood, expensive tobacco, and the suffocating tension of men who know they are standing on the edge of a blade. Every seat is filled. The heads of the seven families sit in a semicircle, their faces carved out of stone, their eyes tracking my every move as I walk to the head of the table. I can feel the weight of Mike’s death in my bones. I can feel the graze on my shoulder burning like a brand. But mostly, I feel the cold, hard vacuum where my heart used to be.
To my left, Viktor is chained to a heavy iron chair. He’s a mess. His face is a mosaic of purple bruises and dried blood, his breathing labored through a broken nose. He still tries to look like a Pakhan, chin tilted up, but the desperation in his eyes gives him away. He knows this is the end. He knows the council doesn’t forgive a man who kills his own brother and blames it on a loyal friend.
“Razvan,” the elder of the Volkov Council, a man named Mikhail who served my grandfather, speaks. His voice is a dry rasp. “You have called an emergency session. You claim treason within the direct bloodline. This is a heavy accusation. The penalty for a false claim is death.”
“I am aware of the laws, Mikhail,” I say, my voice steady, though my blood is screaming for vengeance. “I don’t make claims. I provide facts.”
The heavy doors at the back of the chamber swing open. The sound echoes off the high vaulted ceiling, and every head turns. My breath hitches in my throat. Lena walks in. She isn’t wearing the silk robes of a captive anymore. She’s dressed in sharp, tailored black, her hair pulled back, her face a mask of regal, icy determination. She looks every bit the Pakhan’s wife, a woman who has survived the fire and come out tempered like steel.
She walks the length of the room, her heels clicking with a rhythmic finality. She doesn’t look at the guards. She doesn’t look at the council. She looks only at me. When she reaches the table, she produces the silver flash drive, the legacy of her father’s pain, and places it dead center on the mahogany surface.