Page 29 of His Stolen Bride

“Try it,” she says.

I do. For a few seconds, the room disappears. When I swallow, my eyes burn and I blink hard, annoyed at myself.

“It’s not exact,” Lira says. “But it’s close.”

“It’s close,” I manage.

She nods, satisfied. “Eat. It’ll go cold.”

I take another bite, then another. “You didn’t have to do this,” I say thickly.

She shrugs. “I wanted to.”

I look up. “Why?”

Lira meets my eyes. “Because no one here will protect you for free,” she says. “But people protect what they recognize.”

“And you recognize me?” I ask.

She considers that. “I recognize what it costs not to disappear.” She leaves me alone after that. I finish everything on the plate.

At night, I sleep badly, but not out of fear. My body just doesn’t know how to settle anymore. I wake up tense, aware of the bed, the door, the space where Mikhail isn’t. It’s silly, because I was the one who asked for the lock… and yet, I’d like to have him here, beside me. At first, I kept blaming him for my mother’s death, but now that the vision is clearing, I see that only one man caused all of this. My father.

When I do see Mikhail, it’s never alone. He stands at a distance when staff are present. He speaks to Enzo or someone else, never to me. If our eyes meet, it’s brief and unreadable.

It makes me angry in a quiet way.

I didn’t imagine that night. I didn’t invent what happened afterward. He didn’t look like a man satisfied with conquest. He looked like someone who realized he’d crossed a line he’d drawn for a reason.

Knowing that gives me leverage I don’t fully understand yet.

I go back to my father’s history with fresh focus.

I stop thinking about him as a man who made mistakes and start thinking about him as someone who survived longer than he should have. That requires planning. Redundancy. Connections.

I write lists again, but differently this time. I think about who benefited from his silence. Who gained time. Who showed up only when things got worse. I ask Lira if there’s a way to access old deliveries or visitor logs. She hesitates. “That’s not something guests usually request.”

“I’m not a guest,” I reply.

She studies me for a moment, then nods. “I’ll see what I can do.”

It takes three days.

When she comes back, she doesn’t bring papers. She brings names of men who didn’t get along with the Morins. I write them down. One name appears more than once. I don’t recognize it, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Mikhail finally speaks to me four days later. It’s in the hall outside the study. He’s on his way out, jacket on, expression set, phone already in his hand. “Alina,” he says.

I stop.

“Yes?”

“You’ll be having dinner with my mother tonight.”

It’s not a question.

I nod. “All right.”

He hesitates, then adds, “Be careful what you say.”