“You’ve been quiet all night,” I said, my voice low, controlled. “Something’s on your mind.”
Mikhail shifted, his grip on the glass tightening, his knuckles turning white. His silence stretched on for another beat before he finally spoke, his voice rough and heavy. “I have to tell you something about that night. The night we killed Rossi.”
I froze.
Rossi.
Even after all these years, the name still stirred something dark and violent inside me. That night had been a turning point—the moment I had taken my revenge for Katya’s murder. The night I had killed the man who had taken everything from me.
Mikhail’s hesitation now told me otherwise.
I set the glass down with deliberate care, my eyes narrowing on him. “What about that night?”
Mikhail swallowed, his eyes finally meeting mine. There was guilt there—guilt and something close to fear. I hadn’t seen that look in his eyes since we were kids, fighting our way through the streets of Moscow. But this was different. This was the guilt of a man who had done something he knew he shouldn’t have.
“That girl,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The one who saw us… Anna.”
Anna.
The name hit me like a punch to the gut, dragging memories I had buried deep back to the surface. I remembered her face clearly, the terror in her wide eyes as she watched me kill Antonio Rossi. She had been a child, barely a teenager. And I had ordered Mikhail to make sure she didn’t leave that house alive.
“She was a witness,” I said, my voice cold, hard. “I told you to get rid of her.”
Mikhail’s jaw tightened, his fingers flexing around the glass. “I didn’t.”
The air between us seemed to freeze, the fire’s warmth suddenly unable to touch the cold fury that surged through me. I leaned forward slowly, my eyes locked on Mikhail’s. “What did you just say?”
“I didn’t kill her,” he repeated, his voice firmer this time, but still tinged with the weight of the confession. “I couldn’t do it, Maxim. She was just a kid. She reminded me of your sister. I just… could not do it.”
My heart pounded in my chest, the rage building with every second. Betrayal. Disobedience. Mikhail had defied me, and not just in any way—he had defied me in a direct order. He had let a witness live. He had allowed the one loose end that I thought had been tied off years ago to slip through our fingers.
“You disobeyed me,” I said, my voice tight with barely restrained fury. “For years, I thought she was dead. For years, you let me believe that.”
Mikhail held my gaze, but I could see the guilt, the shame etched into his features. “I couldn’t do it,” he said again, his voice quieter now, almost pleading. “She was innocent, Maxim. She was just a child.”
“Innocent?” I spat, the word like poison on my tongue. “There is no innocence in our world, Mikhail. She saw everything. She is a threat.”
“She was a child,” he repeated, his eyes flashing with something I hadn’t seen in him before—defiance. “I sent her away. Far away. To some distant relatives, here in Russia. She’s been living there ever since, under a different name. No one knows who she really is.”
The silence that followed was deafening. I stared at him, my mind racing, trying to process what I had just heard. The girl, Anna, had been alive this entire time. Hidden away. Living a life that should have been snuffed out the night we killed Rossi. And Mikhail had kept this from me. He had disobeyed my order. He had lied.
But then, something clicked. A piece of a puzzle I hadn’t even realized was missing.
After Rossi’s death, I had gone through his office, tearing through files and documents, looking for anything that would help me dismantle what was left of his empire. That’s when I found the will. Rossi had a child. A secret heir. The will left everything to that child—all his assets, his businesses, his entire fortune. There was a name: Anastasia Rivera. No other details. Just the knowledge that Rossi’s heir was out there. I had been looking for Anastasia for all these years…
And now, I knew who it was.
Anna.
The girl I had ordered Mikhail to kill all those years ago. The girl who had witnessed everything. The girl who had survived.
Rossi’s heir.
I leaned back in my chair, the fury still boiling beneath the surface, but now tempered with something else. Curiosity. Anna had been living under my radar for years, hidden away, protected by Mikhail’s betrayal. And now, she was the key. Thekey to everything Rossi had left behind. His empire. His fortune. His power.
Mikhail had spared her, and in doing so, he had unknowingly kept the one thing I needed to cement my control over everything Rossi had built. The question now was what I would do with that knowledge.
I stared at Mikhail, the rage still simmering but now laced with calculation. “You kept her from me,” I said, my voice low, cold. “You betrayed me.”