Chapter 74
Chapter 74
Nikolai’s POV:
The first time I ever laid eyes on Elena was in front of a coffee shop.
Ice cold coffee soaked into my shirt. But all I could do was stare.
Not just because of what she’d done. Not just because I was annoyed as hell.
But also because she looked like a ghost.
Not the frightened, transparent kind that lingers in corners. No, she looked like a living echo–like someone had taken a memory and molded it into flesh. Her face. Her voice. Her expression. All of it dragged up a name I hadn’t heard aloud in years.
Anaya Malik.
Only it wasn’t her.
It was her shadow.
Her daughter.
At first I thought it was a coincidence. After all there are many lookalikes in this world right?
But then I couldn’t get my mind off of her. Right when I thought I would finally forget, she showed up in our house, as Dmitri’s girlfriend.
I’d had enough. I needed to make sure. Make sure that I was mistaken and that Elena was just some random beautiful girl.
I researched. I looked into it. But what I got in return…was just more confirmation.
And the moment I realized it, I felt something uncoil in me. Something dangerous. Something I’d buried for too long.
Back then, I didn’t have a personal vendetta against Anaya. How could I? We hadn’t exchanged more than a few awkward words.
I hadn’t thought about Anaya Malik in over a decade. And yet that day, all it took was Elena’s face–those moss–green eyes, the unruly waves of dark brown hair, the dimples that only surfaced when she smiled–and I was transported back to a life I wished I could burn from memory.
My mother, Camila Vetrov, had once believed in fairy tales. She believed in love the way zealots believed in scripture–devoted, unquestioning. She wanted the happy ending. The castle. The prince. The slow dance under falling snow.
What she got instead was Sergei Morozov.
He was nothing like the men in storybooks. No silver armor. No gentle hands.
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He’d saved her once, or so she thought. Protected her from a gang of low–level thugs harassing her after school, rough boys with twitchy hands and cruel laughter. He stepped in, back then, beat up those boys. She’d fallen in love with him that very moment.
She said he was kind.
She said he was misunderstood.
She said he told her to marry someone else someone safe. A rich, suitable man her parents had arranged for her. And she listened. Not because she stopped loving him. But because he told her
I never believed he loved her.
Love doesn’t give up.
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Chapter 74
Love doesn’t abandon someone just because they’re inconvenient. Not if it’s real. And what kind of man lets the woman he claims to love suffer under
someone else’s roof?
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Sergei was never a hero. Never some tragic Romeo in a mafia crown. He was pure rot wrapped in silk. Ruthless. Unrelenting. A cold–blooded shark in the world’s finest suit.
After my mother married, Sergei disappeared for a while. But it didn’t last. Within a few years, he came back with power in his veins. A king of dirt and death, ruling a criminal empire that spanned continents. The kind of empire no soul could build without leaving a trail of blood and broken bodies.
Drugs. Organs. Weapons. Girls.
He sold everything. Owned everything.
I watched him rise through the underground like a virus. In just six years, he wasn’t just feared–he was respected. Worshipped in certain circles.
And then came Anaya Malik.
Another pretty girl swallowed by his empire.
Her story was legend among the inner circles of Velhaven’s elite. The runaway bride from the middle east. Sold off by her family to some aging oil tycoon in exchange for status and silence. She escaped, fled across borders. Only to end up in Sergei’s net.
Some said he saved her.
Others said he bought her.
No one ever told the full truth. No one dared.
Anaya became his wife. A ghost locked in his golden cage.
By the time I met her, she looked like someone who’d forgotten what laughter felt like. We crossed paths once–at a banquet hosted by one of Sergei’s shell companies. I was just a kid, trailing after my mother, watching everything, absorbing everything.
And there she was.
Shoulder–length hair, stripped of its former beauty. Beauty which I’d seen multiple times in posters and paintings. Eyes dulled like glass left in the rain too long. Her skin looked translucent. She walked like she didn’t belong to her own body anymore.
I never saw her again.
She died not long after. The official report said ‘health complications.‘ Some whispered it was suicide, Others said she was punished for trying to escape again.
never found out the truth.
But it was enough to convince me that Sergei Morozov didn’t just break people. He hollowed them out.
And now, years later, I had stumbled into the daughter of the woman he destroyed.
Thated that man. Hated him so deeply it had poisoned the marrow in my bones. My childhood had been collateral damage to his sins. My mother–once bright had withered like a plant kept in shadow. Her smiles turned brittle. Her voice quiet. She’d turned to painting, locking herself in her studio and covering the walls with color she no longer felt.
Sometimes I caught her staring at one of his portraits. She’d painted him more than once. Each time differently. In one, his eyes were burning. In another, vacant. In another, bleeding. Always beautiful Always tragic.
I used to sneak into her gallery at night and stare at them, lists curled, itching to rip them apart. I wanted to shred them until there was nothing left.
But I never did,
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Chapter 74
Because deep down, some sick part of me understood. She never stopped loving him. Not really.
And maybe that’s what scared me most.
I didn’t want to be like him.
So when I first ran into Elena, I tried to walk away. I really did.
But fate had a twisted sense of humor.
How was I supposed to forget about her when she was my brother’s girlfriend?
She was beautiful, brilliant, and everything I wasn’t expecting.
So I dug
