Se connecterElara’s POVFor a moment after Axel said the words, I could not move. The harbour ruins blurred in front of me, broken stone and twisted beams dissolving into meaningless shapes as one truth repeated in my head.Milena is gone.The child who had slept in Ruin’s recovery room. The girl who had clung to me in fear. The girl who had helped save us at the docks. Gone, and the guard outside Ruin’s room was dead.The grief I had been carrying since the war ended suddenly changed shape. It became something heavier and far more personal.Guilt.A deep, suffocating guilt that settled inside my chest and refused to loosen. I should have stayed. I should have ignored the need to see the ruins. I should have remained beside Ruin’s bed and beside the child who had already survived more violence than any child should ever know.Instead, I had come here chasing answers through dust and collapsed stone while someone walked into our safe place and took her.Axel touched my arm gently. “Elara, we need
Elara’s POVI stared at the cracked phone screen until the words stopped looking like language and became something colder. For a moment, the quiet recovery room around me lost all shape. The low hum of Ruin’s monitors, the soft whir of the oxygen line, and the muted hallway footsteps outside all faded beneath the hard pulse of dread moving through my body.I turned slowly toward the chair near the window.Mila was still asleep.Her small body was curled beneath a folded blanket one of the nurses had draped over her shoulders, her face softened by exhaustion in a way that made her look younger than the child who had helped save an empire before dawn.Nothing about her looked false, nothing about her felt false. And yet the message in my hand had been left by a man who built his life on secrets that outlived blood.Ruin saw the change in my face immediately. “What is it?”I handed him the evidence phone.His eyes moved over the message once, and I watched the exhaustion in his expressi
Elara’s POVThe phone almost slipped from my hand. For one suspended second, the dawn-lit customs tower, Morozov’s body disappearing into smoke, and the sound of Axel forcing his way through the steel shutters all vanished behind one terrifying sentence.If you want to save the baby. The war had ended, the Bratva was broken, and the final leader was dead. And still, the aftermath found a new way to hurt.My free hand went to my stomach so fast it felt instinctive, protective, and desperate.“What happened?” I asked, my voice shaking despite every effort to steady it.The surgeon on the line did not waste time. “Your elevated stress response, the side wound, and the toxic smoke exposure from the docks have triggered acute complications. We have stabilised Ruin, but we need you here immediately to assess foetal distress.”The words landed in pieces, each one heavier than the last. Stabilised Ruin. There was foetal distress, and I had to be there right away.I forced myself to breathe. “
Elara’s POVThe message on every phone screen turned the fragile relief at the west gate into a fresh wave of dread. Around me, the medics kept working on Ruin, but the men securing the convoy had gone tense again, weapons lifted toward the dark edges of the ruined dock.For one dangerous second, it felt like the entire night had simply started over.Axel took one of the phones from a stunned guard and studied the encrypted signature line beneath the message.His expression changed immediately. “That is not Viktor’s code.”I looked at him sharply. “What does that mean?”His jaw tightened. “It means Viktor was never the final Bratva leader.”The words landed like another explosion. I stared at the ruined eastern stacks where Viktor had fallen through steel and steam. Despite everything that had happened—the sacrifice of territory, the dock war, Nadia’s betrayal, and the detonators—he had still only been one piece.Not the head, just the hand.Ruin stirred weakly on the stretcher as the
Elara’s POVThe red targeting lasers cut across the darkness like a cage. They painted my chest, Axel’s shoulder, and Ruin’s blood-soaked body where he leaned half-conscious against me. The emergency floodlights from the eastern stacks turned the ruined dock into a harsh white battlefield, every broken beam and burning container thrown into sharp relief.Viktor stood above us on the upper crane platform, one hand wrapped around the detonator, the other hanging uselessly from the shoulder I had shot.He still looked terrifyingly in control. But I had spent too long surviving his traps to mistake posture for power.Ruin’s weight sagged harder against me.His blood was warm through my clothes, and every second I could feel him slipping further from me.I tightened my hold around him. Not again, not after everything, not when we had finally seen the heartbeat of our child.Axel moved closer, keeping himself half between us and the upper platform. “Elara,” he said quietly, “he needs pressu
Elara’s POVThe moment I saw Ruin’s hand move beneath the collapsed crane tower, the world narrowed into one brutal truth. He was alive, but not for long if Viktor reached him first.The upper signal platform no longer felt like an advantage. It felt like a prison made of height and distance, forcing me to watch the man I loved bleed beneath steel while the monster who had hunted us all night walked toward him with a gun.Mila grabbed my sleeve. “Auntie, what is happening?”I forced myself to look at her. “Stay low and do not move from this platform.”Her eyes widened with fear. “Where are you going?”I looked back at the burning dock below, at the twisted skeleton of the collapsed crane, and at Viktor closing the distance.“I am bringing him back.”Before she could answer, I pressed the comm into her hand. “If anything happens, stay hidden and speak only to Axel.”She nodded shakily, and I was moving. The emergency stairs from the signal platform spiralled down the side of the tower,
Elara’s POVThe night air was heavy with the scent of burning metal and gunpowder. Smoke curled into the sky from the estate’s ruined sections, carrying ash and heat that clung to my skin. My lungs burned with every breath, but I could not stop moving. I had to stay with him. I had to stay near Rui
Elara’s POVThe air in the hall felt heavy enough to suffocate. Viktor stood between two armed guards, but he did not look afraid. He looked furious and his gaze burned into Mikhail with open hostility, and for a moment, I forgot to breathe.“You dare accuse me?” Viktor demanded.Mikhail did not fl
Elara’s POVThe gunshot shattered the world, and the sound returned in fragments before my vision did. I heard shouting, boots striking tile, and the metallic crash of furniture overturning. My ears rang violently, and my lungs refused to pull in enough air.“Ruin!”My voice tore out of me before I
Elara’s POVThe alarms did not stop. They went through the underground hallway in sharp, mechanical waves that made my nerves feel tense and uncomfortable. Red emergency lights flashed along the reinforced walls, turning every face into something harsher and more suspicious. Dante was gone. The det







