Alone.
The door shut behind her with a deliberate click, and for a moment, no one spoke. It almost felt unreal to see her there, especially since it had been months since I had last seen her. She looked exactly the same. Composed and sharp-eyed and dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with weapons.
“You look terrible,” she said calmly.
I lowered my gun, and so did Viktor.
“What are you doing here, Ilana? How did your husband let you come here?”
“I am here to clean up your mess, of course.”
Viktor glanced between us.
“Leave us,” Ilana said, her tone filled with an authority she had not possessed before. The Chernykh household and name clearly suited her well. Viktor hesitated, so she turned towards him again. “Now.”
The room emptied reluctantly, with everyone, including the few soldiers scattering about, Viktor and the paramedics leaving at last, and the door closed behind them. Silence pressed in between us as Ilana took in the bandages, the blood, and the stiffness in my posture.
“You let them walk into your home and did nothing,” she said evenly.
“I dismantled the escalation earlier,” I said, knowing how it meant nothing and did not defend me at all. She was right to stand before me and question me.
“You dismantled your own brother, and you walked away from family, from what I have heard until now,” she corrected. “You did not dismantle the Chernykhs.”
“The man is your husband, and you are standing here asking me why I did not kill him? Have you lost your mind?” Her gaze sharpened, but she did not counter my attack.
“Tell me everything.”
I laughed once, humorless.
“You’re not in a position to demand anything out of me after I have just allowed your husband to walk out of my penthouse alive and take my wife with him.”
“I am not here for your anger, Fyodor. I am here to help, so it is best if you tell me because you, for one, are clearly not thinking straight right now. Now start speaking,” she repeated.
Something in her tone cut through the fog, and a part of me did want to tell her. Before everything, when we were still in Russia, Ilana and I had always been close. She had been the one person who understood my emotions and was always there to listen. Even when she knew nothing about the business and ourbratva involvement, she always knew just the right thing to say to comfort me. So I told her everything.
The masquerade. Kliment’s demands. The marriage. The strategic beginning. The shift. Kliment’s plan. My decision to walk away. The port. The confrontation. The confession. The choice. The way Elisse had looked at me when I told her she was no longer leverage. The way she had said she didn’t want to leave. And finally, I told her about the ambush when everything she had said turned out to be a lie because she eventually chose her brothers over me and left with them.
“She was standing with them when I entered, and I could see they had been talking. And after everything was over, she walked out on me,” I finished.
Ilana didn’t interrupt once during my entire story.
“So that is your conclusion? That she chose Iosif and Avgust over you and left you to return home? That she walked out on you without fighting for you and did not want to stay? And that she called them there?”
“It’s the only one that fits.”
“Is it, though? You haven’t given her the benefit of the doubt even once then? That maybe she could be innocent in all of this and did nothing?” Ilana asked, staring at me with barely concealed anger. I did not know what to make of any of it.
“But she is not innocent in all of this. I am telling you what I saw with my own two eyes, and eyes do not lie, Ilana. You know this better than anyone else. I saw what she did, and I saw how she did it. The moment I told her I loved her and that I had walked away from Kliment and had chosen her over everyone and everything, she walked out of me.”
“You’re a strategist, Fyodor. Where the hell is your goddamn brain?”
I stared at her.
“They breached your building with surgical precision,” she continued. “And your intelligence didn’t detect any movements because they had gone dark in the past few days. And you assumed that meant that she had called them to the penthouse and given her your location?”
I clenched my jaw.
“Yes.”
