Page 62 of The Pakhan's Bride
"Worried I'll catch a chill, Vetrov?"
Reaching for a throw on the couch just beside me, I drape it over her shoulders. "I'm worried you'll break before we get a shot at the future."
"Charming," she murmurs. But she doesn't let go of my hand.
My phone buzzeson the table. I ignore it. Instead, I touch the small of her back, gentle, as if reassuring both of us that she is here, that she is, for this one moment, safe. "There's a lot I needto tell you," I say, and I can hear the rasp in my own voice. "Let's sit."
Zoya leans forward, searching my face. She's so close I can feel the brush of her lashes against my cheek.
"Hmm?" Her brows furrow into question marks. I can feel my heartbeat in my throat. We should have been here sooner. I should have told her everything before this moment cracked open. But I couldn't bring myself to harden her with more truth.
I lead her to the couch and pull a chair in front of it. We sit facing each other, and for a while, I study the way the last moonlight lies on her skin. My T-shirt suits her, sleeves rolled just enough to bare her wrists, her hair loose and soft around her shoulders like dusk falling over snow. There's something breathtaking in the quiet of her face, no makeup, no mask, only the exhaustion and tenderness of a woman who's run out of lies to tell herself. It undoes me. The night beyond the window burns mercury-blue, city lights pulsing in slow rhythm with the blood in my ears.
"Zoya," I say, and the sound is soft, her name tasting like salt and iron on my tongue. I want to believe there's a version of this story where we don't end up enemies or corpses. She blinks, lashes spiky with unshed tears, then smiles with the left side of her mouth, the side that says I know you're about to ruin me, but I'll let you.
"Speak, Konstantin. I've spent enough of my life in other men's silence."
I want to reach for her hand, but I don't dare. So I lay it out like a butcher with a clean cleaver.
"You deserve the truth. And you need it, now more than ever." My breath comes white and ragged, even in the warmth of the radiator. "Your father was dealing with the Albanis. Years longer than anyone thought." I don't look away from her, not even as she flinches, barely perceptible. "It wasn't just weaponsshipments or the smuggling lanes. He set up entire shell companies, used the Riccis as a laundering pipeline. They sent priests, bankers, even a bishop, to Moscow. Everything moved through Vatican channels. Everything was clean, at least on paper."
Zoya's hands curl around the arms of the chair, knuckles bloodless. But she doesn't interrupt. I continue. "He promised you to the Ricci heir. Not because of love, or even alliance, but to solidify a permanent merger. He was going to sign over power of attorney to your husband the moment you married."
The moon skims behind clouds and the room goes thin with shadows.
"The Albanis made the first offer," I say, softer now, "but the Riccis sweetened it by promising a kidnapping if you refused. They'd stage it, make you the bartered princess, but once you arrived at their compound, you'd never leave. You'd be their hostage, held as insurance against your father's cooperation."
Her mouth forms a perfect O, but no sound escapes. Maybe she already knew, but not like this.
I force myself to keep going because if I falter, I'll never say it. "They'd planned to move you like cargo." Anger surges inside me as I recall everything Valentin Baranov had done and why I decided he had to be gone. "He planned well ahead. There were other options, other heirs, but he needed to secure the alliance with the Ricci family most of all, and I believe he would have done it regardless of the cost to you."
She's fallen quiet, and I have to ball my palms into fists to stop myself from breaking something. "Your father had ties to the Riccis through the Albani syndicate. I intercepted messages, meeting notes, ledgers in Albani code. They were laying groundwork for a marriage deal. You were the leverage."
She flinches, but I press on. "They meant for you to marry the Ricci heir and make it look like peace. But it was a setup. Onceyou gave them a child, Valentin planned to take Matteo Ricci out. With him gone, your son would inherit everything. And since he'd be too young to rule…"
I let it hang and watch as realization dawns on her face.
"Your father would be the one holding the reins."
Her eyes fill with tears. "That monstrous…" she whispers.
This is the closest I've come to breaking for another human being since losing my family.
She closes her eyes. "Ekaterina… she tried to tell me. She said Papa was trading us. But I thought she was jealous, controlling. I wounded her. I ignored her."
Her voice breaks. She covers her face with her hands. "All this time, I thought I was safe. I blamed my sister. Maybe I chased her away."
I pull her onto my lap like she's still the reckless girl I once watched scale the Pont Alexandre III at midnight, all long limbs and wild laughter. Now she folds in on herself, arms pressed tight to her ribs as if holding her bones together is all that keeps her from collapsing entirely. I wrap her up, both arms around her, and cradle her head beneath my chin. She tries to muffle the noise against my shirt. It's my shirt, and she's soaking it, and I wish I could just take all of it, every sharp edge, every old betrayal, bleed it out into myself so she never had to know.
Her palm finds my chest, flattens against my heart. I feel every heartbeat leap against her fingers. For a moment, neither of us speaks. There's only her tears and the wind outside and the distant, ghostly sound of the city below. Eventually, the storm inside her subsides. She lifts her face. Her lashes are clumped and crystalline, wet black fans under the dim lamp. There's a smear of mascara on her cheek and I wipe it away with my thumb. She takes a breath, then another, finding her footing again. "Why did you kill him?" Her voice is the thinnest I've everheard it, and yet there's steel underneath. She's always had that, the ability to keep a razor under velvet.
The question hangs. She wants something real. Not the story I gave the world. Not the politics. Not the calculation. The truth, stripped raw, even if it wounds. I swallow. My throat is raw.
"Because he was standing in my way," I say, because it's the start, but not the whole. "He was the last obstruction to consolidating Moscow. With Valentin in play, I'd always be chasing his shadow. But that's not why I did it, not really." My jaw aches. "When I tookPakhan, the council needed a show. A clean break from the old bloodlines, a demonstration that the city belonged to the survivors, not the inheritors."
She's watching me with an intensity that scours. I know the look—she's assembling the pieces, testing them for cracks. I continue, unable to look away. "He wasn't just your father, Zoya. He was poison. He built every contingency. When the Albanis reached out, he didn't shut them down. He used them. He thought he could ride them and cut them out when it suited him. But the Ricci family was never going to let a Baranov rule quietly from the shadows. It was a suicide pact, and you were the rope."
She closes her eyes again. I see the muscle in her jaw flex. Still, she doesn't interrupt.
