Chapter 14 — The First Real Conversation

POV: BEATRIX

Once the last car pulled away, the whole house sank into a heavy silence. We just stood there, not ready to call it a night.

Nikolai poured two glasses of wine, didn't even ask if I wanted one, just handed me one, and instead of saying goodnight, I followed him out to the terrace.

I probably should've gone to bed, but there I was.

I kept telling myself I was staying up because my hands still hadn’t quite stopped shaking from dinner. That was true, yeah, but it didn’t explain everything.

If I were honest, part of me just didn’t want the night to end. I tried not to think about why.

We had the whole city stretched out beneath us—lights, traffic, people. None of it reached this high. It was colder than I liked, but I didn’t go in for a jacket, and he didn’t make a move either.

We just sat there, a polite foot of space between us. For a while, neither of us said a word.

“You survived,” he finally said.

“Barely.” I kept fiddling with my glass, too distracted to take a sip. “You were right, you know—about wanting to see for yourself. Well, now you know.”

“Now I know.”

Not sure what made me start talking next. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe I was just so tired that keeping my guard up felt pointless. 

The kind of tired where you can't be bothered to prop up the walls anymore.

“I was with Julian for four years,” I said. 

“Everyone thinks it all started going wrong at that party, but that wasn’t it. Things had been unraveling long before. He just finally made it obvious, out where everyone could see.”

Nikolai just listened, as he always did, never jumping in. He seemed at home in silence.

“I gave up my place to move in with him the first year. From the start, he controlled the budget. There was always some reasonable excuse. New shoes, a night out, even twenty bucks from my own paycheck turned into a whole conversation about money.

By the third year, I was checking with him before buying anything for myself. My friends eventually stopped calling; every outing turned into an argument, or worse, a slow freeze.

He never really raised his voice. That was the strange part. He just made every conversation into this quiet, loaded test. 

It became easier to just agree and stop asking for anything at all. I told myself that meant we were healthy—no arguments, no mess. Now I understand that silence isn’t the same as peace.”

“That’s not love,” he said. “That’s a leash. Fancy bow, maybe. Still a leash.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is. Just not while you’re the one wearing it.”

I let that sit for a second. Funny, nobody had ever put it quite like that before.

When I tried to explain Julian to people, they either doubted me or said I was blowing things out of proportion. 

Nikolai just said it as fact and kept going, as if believing me didn’t require proof.

“I get that now,” I told him. I kept my eyes on the skyline, not on him. “It took my mother slapping me in my own doorway to realize it, which is pretty pathetic.”

I let out a laugh, but it came out broken—a sound you make when something is too sad to say outright.

“It’s not pathetic.” His voice had softened. “You can’t see a cage from the inside. Only when someone opens the door and lets light in.”

“So is that what this is?” I asked. “You opening a door?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe you were already halfway out before I found you. I was just there.”

I didn’t know what to say after that, so I stayed quiet. I just sat there, feeling—strangely—like I was actually being seen for once, instead of being picked over or measured.

“My mother and your uncle could be the same person,” I said when the silence stretched a little. 

“Sorry, your uncle’s Arthur, right?”

Something flickered across his face, sharp and gone in a blink. “Word for word, some nights,” he said.

****

POV: NIKOLAI

I don’t talk about my uncle. Not to my board, not to the press, not to the women my publicist used to parade in for dinner before I told her to stop. 

Usually, I keep my distance. But something about that night—the dark, the fact that Beatrix had just given four years of her life without asking for anything in return. It just came out.

“Arthur raised me more than my father did. 

After my mother died, I was nine. I don’t remember much about her now—just small fragments, maybe her laugh, though sometimes I think I made that up because I wanted to remember.

Arthur made sure I knew what I cost him: school, clothes, a roof over my head. Sometimes he’d go through it at dinner like an itemized bill, then ask what I was doing to pay it back.

The first time, I was twelve. I sat there, working out in my head how many more years I’d owe him. I didn’t stop doing that math until I was twenty-five.”

Beatrix reached out and laid her hand gently on my arm. I looked down at it like I wasn’t sure how to react, but I didn’t pull away.

“That’s not family,” she said. “That’s just a loan with extra paperwork.”

I almost smiled. “I thought it was normal. I figured every family kept score. It took me ages to understand that most people don’t grow up being told they only count if they’re useful.”

“I thought that too,” she said.

“For years. Every September, my mother would list my school expenses—every uniform, like clockwork. I guess it was supposed to make me grateful.”

“Did it?”

“For a while. Then I just got tired.”

We let it sit. No grand statements. Nothing to fix. Just two people realizing we’d both grown up being measured, and that someone else finally understood it without needing any more words.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “you were never a leash to me. Or a number.”

She looked at me—careful, maybe a little bit open. Like she wanted to believe me, but didn’t quite know how.

“I’m working on that,” she admitted.

“That’s fine. I’ll say it as many times as you need.”

That earned me a smile—a real one, just for me.

We fell back into silence, but it wasn’t heavy or awkward. It was just... comfortable.

The kind of quiet I hadn’t shared with anyone in years. I didn’t feel like I had to fix it. I just stayed there.

The terrace door slid open. Ivy came out in pajamas, hair all over the place, a bunny tucked under her arm. 

She didn’t say why she was awake or why she wanted us; she just crawled up on the couch and squeezed herself into the gap between us as if she belonged there.

She didn’t ask about our conversation—she never did on nights like this. She just wanted to be close.

“Can’t sleep?” Beatrix murmured, brushing stray hair off her forehead.

“Nope,” Ivy mumbled, already drifting off to sleep. “Too quiet without everyone.”

“It is quiet,” I agreed.

Nobody moved her. Beatrix put her arm around her as naturally as breathing, the way she’d done a hundred times. My own arm rested along the back of the couch, just close enough to feel them both.

It struck me how easily the three of us fit into this space, when for years it had never seemed to belong to anyone.

I didn’t look directly at them. It felt too honest somehow. But I sat there, listening to Ivy’s breathing slow into sleep, Beatrix warm beside me, and realized that whatever we’d started here hadn’t been that for a long time now. 

I didn’t know what this was yet. I only knew I didn’t want to leave.

The city kept humming below us, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to sit there, in the quiet with the two of them as long as the night would let me.