LOGINArianna pov It had started as a sneeze.One sneeze, then two, and I had thought nothing of it. Children sneezed. Noah sneezed all the time. I had handed him a tissue and gone back to making dinner.Then he sneezed again, and again.By the time I had cleared the kitchen and gone to check on him properly, he was curled on the couch with a blanket pulled up to his chin that he had gotten himself, which was how I knew he felt genuinely bad — Noah only went for the blanket when his body was already telling him something was wrong. His cheeks were flushed. When I pressed my hand to his forehead it was warm. I took his temperature, and it was thirty-eight point six.I gave him water and sat with him and told myself it was nothing. Children got fevers. It happened. By morning it would be down and he'd be asking for cartoons and refusing to eat breakfast and I would have lost a night of sleep over nothing.Thirty minutes later it was thirty-nine point two.He had stopped drinking the water. I
NIKOLAI PovFLASHBACKI couldn't speak. It was not because I didn't have anything to say. I had too much — the problem was that everything trying to come out at once had jammed in my throat and left me standing there in the middle of my father's kitchen, completely useless, staring at a woman I had not thought about in eight months standing with her hand inside my father's jacket like she belonged there.Mira.I had spent three months convinced I was in love with her.She was staring at me. I was staring at her. My father was staring at both of us with a look that was cycling rapidly through confusion, recognition, and something harder that I recognized as the beginning of anger.Arianna had gone very still beside me."What," I said finally, "is the meaning of this."My father said nothing. He looked at Mira, then back at me, then at Arianna. Then his jaw set."Why," he said, his voice dropping to the tone he used when he wanted people to understand they were in trouble, "is Viktor's
NIKOLAII watched my father's face.That was the thing about Konstantin Morozov — he had spent forty years building a face that gave nothing away. He has been in rooms where men who were better at reading people than most had walked out with nothing. I had watched him all my life and learned exactly two things: first, that the face could be trusted about ninety percent of the time, and second, that the ten percent it couldn't be trusted was always the part that mattered.He was looking at me now with the expression he wore when something had surprised him and he had decided not to let it."Arianna." He said the name slowly. "Viktor's daughter.""The one and the same."My father frowned. A small thing that was barely visible, just a slight drawing together of the brow that on another man would have meant nothing. On Konstantin Morozov it meant a great deal. "I thought she was dead."My eyes found Viktor's across the room.Viktor was standing near the window, with both hands at his side
NIKOLAI povMy father had been calling the dinner "informal" since he arranged it three days ago, which meant nothing about it was going to be informal.The Morozov definition of informal was: fewer than eight guests, no name cards, and the good china instead of the better china. It still involved a three-course meal, a seating arrangement that was not accidental, and my father at the head of the table in a suit jacket, so I had dressed accordingly and arrived on time, which was itself an act of good faith I hoped he noticed.Arande was in Milan, allegedly. I had not asked for confirmation.My father was in good spirits when I arrived, which immediately made me suspicious. He was never in good spirits at the start of an evening. His good spirits were reserved for the moments when something had already gone the way he wanted, and the evening was a formality he was performing on top of a result he was already satisfied with.I sat down and poured water and waited for the other shoe.It
NIKOLAI POV I had made a decision somewhere between leaving her room last night and waking up this morning.If Arianna refused to give me the truth, I was going to build a situation that forced it out.She had been lying about her death for five years. She had constructed a reason and a story and had stuck to it across weeks of pressure, and I respected the discipline of that even as it made me want to break something. But every structure had a load-bearing wall, and I had been pressing on them one by one long enough to know which one it was.Noah.The boy was the wall. Everything else she had deflected, absorbed, given me partial truths and calibrated lies on — everything except the things that came close to him. The moment the conversation touched Noah, her tells multiplied. Her voice changed. Her body moved differently.She had faked her death to protect something. And whatever that something was, it lived in that child.So I was going to stop pressing on the wall directly and sta
ARIANNA POV I heard him before I saw him.The key in the lock, the door, the sound of his footsteps, I had memorised them without meaning to. I was sitting on the edge of the bed when he came in, and I schooled my face into something that looked like it had been there a while.He stood in the doorway for a second and looked at me."Pack your things," he said.I looked up at him. "Now?""Now. We're going to the cabin tonight."I had been expecting this. He had told me it was coming and I had been dreading it in a low, background way ever since, the loss of the city, of proximity, of any hope that Liam might still find me through whatever thin signal I was leaving in this building. A cabin meant nothing. A cabin meant Nikolai and four walls and no trace."Okay," I said.He paused. I saw the pause register on him, the slight adjustment of someone who had walked in expecting a different response and was recalibrating."No argument?""Would it change anything?" I questioned."No.""Then n
ARIANNA. POV The door opened and Nikolai walked in.He had food. Noah was asleep on the bed, one arm thrown over his face, breathing deep and even. I had been sitting in the armchair watching him when Nikolai came in.I stood and crossed to Nikolai and took the bag from him."Thank you." I smiled
NIKOLAI pov:Rafael stood up and shook my hand. This time the smile came easier, like he’d decided to just move on from whatever had passed between Viktor and me.“We meet again.”“Indeed.”I held his hand a second longer than I needed to, then let go and nodded at the empty chair next to him.“Min
NIKOLAI POV "Nikolai. This is Rafael Moreno."My father said it with confidence, making an introduction like he had made a hundred times before, gesturing between us like he was presenting a gift."Rafael's family and ours go back a long way. His father and I did business together back when you we
ARIANNA POV Rafael I sat on the edge of the bed, turning the name over in my head as panic rolled through me in slow, steady waves.He was close to finding him. Nikolai had said it like it was already happening, like it was inevitable. I'd been lying awake for hours trying to figure out what that







