Semua Bab Once His Wallflower, Now His Biggest Mistake : Bab 141 - Bab 150

Chapter 141The night was a symphony of agony, and I was the captive audience.Every time I managed to drift into a shallow, grey sleep, a low, guttural grunt would vibrate through the mattress, dragging me back to the freezing reality of Murmansk. Yamelyan was a restless engine of pain beside me. We were sharing the same bed, a necessity of the cramped communal flat but the distance between us felt like a tectonic rift. Every time he shifted, his broken ribs clicking or his breath hitching in a sharp, wet hiss, I felt the phantom heat of his body.I lay there, staring at the ceiling, my mind a jagged loop of the previous day. No. Your real father would never hide from you. I had said it to protect Leo, but the lie felt like a layer of ice over my heart. When the first grey sliver of dawn bled through the grime-caked window, I didn't wait for the household to stir. I rolled out of bed with a quiet, lethal efficiency, my joints stiff from the cold. "Leo, Luna," I whispered, shaking

Chapter 143The word "Sister" didn't just hang in the air; it poisoned it.It was the final fracture in a world that had been cracking since the moment I stepped off the plane in Murmansk. I looked at the man, the stranger with my eyes, my bone structure, my very essence and the sheer, suffocating weight of the impossible became too much. My brain simply refused to process another syllable.I didn't scream. I didn't demand an explanation. I didn't even wait for Yamelyan to move. I bolted.My boots skidded on the icy moss as I shoved past Yamelyan with a strength born of pure, unadulterated panic. I ran. I ran like the Wolf was at my heels, like the shadow of Silas Sterling was trying to pull me back into a Manhattan grave, like the very ground was trying to swallow me whole."Evelyn! Stop!" Yamelyan’s roar echoed over the thunder of the waterfall, but I didn't listen. The Tundra was a blur of skeletal white trees and grey slush. My lungs screamed as the freezing air burned its way

Chapter 145The words hung in the frigid air, heavy as lead. Sergei Prokofiev. The name was no longer just a figure in a story or a ghost from a past I didn't recognize. He was a living man. A father. A monster who had ruled the Russian underworld while I was sipping mimosas in the Hamptons.I felt a sudden, sharp tremor start in my hands, spreading up my arms until my shoulders shook. The tundra, which had felt like a refuge for a brief, delusional moment, suddenly felt like a cage. "I can't," I whispered, the words barely making it past my frozen lips. I looked at Nikolai, seeing my own eyes reflected in his, and I felt a wave of nausea. "I’m not ready to meet him. Not yet.""Evelina, time is a luxury we don't have," Nikolai said, his voice urgent, pleading. "Sergei has spent decades looking at a cold stone in Moscow. He needs to see you. He needs to know that the blood of the Prokofievs still flows in the West. More importantly, he needs to protect you from what is coming.""What

Chapter 147The world didn’t end with a bang or a whimper. It ended with a single syllable falling from Yamelyan’s lips.Yes.I didn’t scream. I didn’t slap him. I didn't even have the energy to feel the sting of my split lip anymore. I just stood there, my boots sinking into the grey, polluted slush of Murmansk, feeling a strange, clinical detachment from my own body. For a full minute, the only sound was the distant hum of the port and the ragged, shallow breathing of the man who had just admitted to building a new life on the ashes of ours.What am I to these people?The question looped in my mind like a broken record. To Silas Sterling, I was a stolen trophy, a piece of leverage hidden in plain sight. To Nikolai, the brother who had appeared like a ghost in the trees, I was a long-lost asset, a bridge back to a father I wasn't ready to face. And to Yamelyan Radov...To Yamelyan, I was a liability. A memory. A woman he shared a bed with out of necessity while planning a union with

Chapter 149Yamelyan stared at the burner phone in his palm as if it were a primed grenade. His silver eyes darted from the device to the pale, still faces of our children, his chest heaving with the exertion of holding back his own collapse. "Evelyn, if I call him... if we bring the Prokofievs into this fully... there is no going back to your former life. There is no going back to the life we knew. Do you understand that?""There is no life to go back to if they don't wake up!" I snapped, my voice cracking the air like a whip. "Look at them, Yamelyan! Every second you stand there weighing the consequences of your pride, their blood is cooling. Call him. Now!"He didn't hesitate a second time. He punched in the numbers with a trembling thumb and pressed the phone to his ear, pacing a small, frantic circle in the slush. "Nikolai? It’s Radov. It’s happened. Volkov’s men... they used some kind of chemical agent on the children. They’re unresponsive. No pulse. Cold. We need…." He paused,