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“She was unhappy,” Viktor says.

I know I should keep walking.

Whatever they are talking about has nothing to do with me, and I have already made enough mistakes in this house without adding eavesdropping to the list. But then Nikolai says something too low for me to hear, and Viktor answers in a voice I have never heard from him before.

“You knew she was unhappy. You just didn’t want to admit it.”

My fingers tighten around the cardigan.

Who are they talking about?

And then I realize. The pain in Nikolai’s voice… it has to be Sofia.

I take one step back, but then Nikolai speaks again, and this time I hear him clearly. “Did she love you?”

The silence after that feels long.

“No,” Viktor says.

Nikolai says nothing.

“She loved you,” Viktor says, sounding bitter now. “Even when she hated you, she loved you.”

I move away before I hear anything else.

My face is hot by the time I reach the end of the corridor. I should not have heard that. I should not know that Viktor had feelings for Sofia, or that Nikolai suspected it, or that Sofia had been unhappy enough for both brothers to still be fighting over it years later.

It makes me feel strange.

Not jealous. That would be ridiculous. Sofia was his wife. She was Anya’s mother. She belongs to this house in a way I never will.

But I still feel uncomfortable.

Maybe because I slept with Nikolai last night.

Maybe because I’m walking around his house with his marks still on my body while his dead wife’s photographs are on the walls and his brother is still hurting over her.

And what was the other thing they mentioned? Bratva?

It sounded like family business, but I know there’s more than that. I look it up online, and it gives me exactly what I thought I found find.

Russian organized crime.

I almost laugh at how incredulous it is. Of course, I knew the mafia existed. But I never existed it to be the man who can make the Earth drop from under my feet anytime he’s around me, or the intense things he makes me feel.

He’s a bad man.

I keep walking.

Near the back staircase, I hear Irina.

She’s standing by the window on the landing below, speaking into her phone. Her back is partly turned, and her voice is low.

“I said I’m sorry,” she says. “It didn’t work out.”

I stop again.

This time, I know I’m listening.