Page 72 of Beautiful Ruin

ROWAN

Ispend the night wandering the city as a marionette cut loose.

The only money in my pocket is enough to get me a motel room for a single night. I don’t even try to lie down once I finally close myself inside the cramped space. Instead, I pace the narrow room for hours as the city lights bleed faintly through the blinds.

My mind refuses to quiet.

Every path my thoughts follow leads back to the same place. Ivan and Sofia.

If Ivan continues with the plan to infiltrate the government, the consequences will stretch far beyond the Kuznetsov Bratva. Pushing the country toward war just to secure permanent power won’t simply strengthen the Bratva and create a lasting legacy the way Ivan believes it will. It will destabilize everything.

Russia itself could become collateral damage in Ivan’s pursuit of absolute control.

I stop pacing and brace my hands against the kitchen counter, my head lowering as the weight of that realization presses down on me.

If Sofia doesn’t know what’s happened to me by now, she will soon enough. She has never been the type to stay silent, nor has she ever sat around and waited for information to be dropped into her lap. She won’t quietly accept the role her uncle expects her to play once she knows the truth about everything, and she will fight him, whether with defiance or reckless attempts to expose him.

And I know without a shadow of a doubt that Ivan will not tolerate that. He already exiled me for questioning him. If Sofia becomes an obstacle to his plan, Ivan will do what he has always done when something threatens his empire. He will remove the problem entirely.

My jaw tightens.

The thought alone makes my chest burn with panic. I have spent years killing Ivan’s enemies without hesitation. But the idea of Ivan turning that same ruthlessness on Sofia—toward the woman who kissed me, held me, trusted me, believed in me—feels like my insides being torn apart.

I sink into the chair by the window with my elbows on my knees and stare out at the dark skyline peeking through the broken blinds. My life is no longer as simple as I once believed it to be.

By dawn, I know there is only one path left.

There is only one man powerful enough to stop Ivan. Swallowing every instinct screaming inside me that I am committing the ultimate betrayal, I request a private audience with the leader of the Iron Pact.

Within an hour, a car takes me to the other side of Moscow and I soon find myself sitting inside Nikolai Malyshko’s private residence. The room is quiet, guarded only by two of Nikolai’s most trusted men standing silently outside the door.

Nikolai sits in one of the lounge chairs near a grand, ornate fireplace. Flames burn low beneath a carved mantel, gilding the edges of the room with a soft glow. He is composed as always, his sharp gray eyes studying me with calm curiosity.

“Rowan,” he says.

I incline my head out of respect.

He gestures to the chair across from him. “Sit.”

A set of glasses sits on the low table between us untouched. The decanter next to them is full of something amber and expensive looking. Round ice balls glisten in a small dish, a metal scoop laid out perfectly next to them. He does not extend any offer to me, and I do not ask.

For a moment, he simply looks at me. Finally, he says, “I have heard Ivan exiled you.”

There is no question in it.

Of course he knows.

“Yes.”

“For?”

“For refusing to support his current course of action.”

He raises one single eyebrow. “Oh?”

I do not waste time laying everything out. There is no point in stalling when it comes to a man like Nikolai Malyshko. He would see the path I am trying to avoid walking down before I have even finished. I have come here with treason in my hands, and dressing it up as concern would insult us both.

I start with the meeting where Ivan’s proposition had been unilaterally rejected. I recount the events with as objective detail as possible about the car ride in the aftermath of the meeting and the assassination attempt after which we discovered Sofia’s file.