Nikolai’s POV:
57%
I’d looked into her,
I looked into her background.
It wasn’t difficult. A few strings pulled, a few files examined under a burner alias. Access wasn’t a problem.
What I didn’t expect… was what I found.
Her hame–Elena Kovalyova. Twenty at the time. Student at Velhaven University. Foster daughter of Beatrix Kovalyova. Adopted. Biological parentage: unknown. Listed under hospital archives as “abandoned at birth.”
But it wasn’t the bureaucratic details that got me.
It was the medical records.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. A rare, genetic heart condition that could go undiagnosed for years. One that could strike at any time. One that had nearly killed her at fourteen. The scan reports. The photos from the ICU. The note from the attending physician recommending an implanted defibrillator that the family couldn’t afford.
And then came the billing records. The debt. The drowning spiral of Omerta Credit Services–my enemy’s company.
S
It took me two days to realize what I was looking at. Two days of pouring over documents, surveillance footage, university archives, photos, until finally it clicked.
Her face.
Anaya’s face.
But younger. Softer. Infused with a fire I hadn’t expected.
My stomach had flipped.
She was his.
Sergei Morozov’s daughter.
Anaya’s daughter.
The child of the man who ruined my mother.
At first, I laughed.
A dry, cold, venomous sound echoing in my empty office at 3 a.m., because it was just so fucking poetic. His own daughter, raised poor. Sick. Fighting every day for a chance at survival. Scraping by on scholarships and part time jobs even when she was sick, while he ruled the underworld with champagne in hand.
It felt like fate was offering me something.
A chance.
A weapon.
And 1–like the bastard I am–1
1/5
-picked it up
4.57%合
13:20 FM, 25 Jul G
Chapter 75
G
I told myself I was just balancing the scales. That this wasn’t personal. That using her was a means to an end. That I wasn’t going to hurt her. Not really.
I was lying to myself.
The next time, I saw the way she smiled. Bright. Curious. Guarded. The way she curled inward when he leaned too close. The way her fingers trembled around her coffee cup. She was shy at first. As much as she tried to act confident.
My thoughts were a cyclone–violent, unrelenting, a storm I couldn’t silence.
They consumed me. Ate through every thread of logic I clung to.
I started having nightmares again. They were violent, brutal. Rage–soaked flashes of my mother’s screams. Of Sergei’s smile. Of Elena’s soft laugh- twisting into a cry I couldn’t stop. Things I just couldn’t forget no matter how much I wanted to because of my Eidetic memory. They were ingrained in me. Nd wake drenched in sweat, fists clenched, jaw aching like I’d been grinding my teeth through the night. I’d stare at the ceiling, choking on the acid of my own helplessness.
And then I’d see her again, she’d walk into a room behind Dmitri, smile–completely unaware–and not even glance at me.
That broke something in me.
I knew my brother. I knew what he did to people he couldn’t control. And sooner or later, he’d break her the way he broke every other woman who thought she could soften him.
But I also knew myself.
And the truth was, I wasn’t much better.
No matter how many therapy sessions I sat through, how many times I told my shrink I was getting better. No matter the mountain of self–help books stacked beside my bed–none of it worked.
Nothing changed the fact that deep down, I was still a fucking monster.
Not just because of what I’d done. But because of what I wanted to do.
I didn’t want to save her. I wanted to take her.
Take advantage of her confusion, her loneliness. Wrap myself around her world before she could ever understand what I truly was. Sweep in and steal her hand in marriage. Make it all public. Loud. Obvious. A performance. A spectacle.
Make Sergei look up from his empire of rot and see it.
See her.
His daughter. His blood. Standing beside the son of the woman he destroyed. Wearing my name.
I wanted him to choke on it.
I wanted to see it in his face–the shock. The panic. The grief.
The same look my mother wore the night she found out Anaya Malik was dead.
She’d taken me to the funeral in secret. I was too young to understand the weight of it all then, but I remember the silence. The way she clutched my hand until her knuckles went white. She didn’t cry. Not there. She stood still, unblinking, watching Sergei from the back of the crowd.
And he was crying.
Real tears. Shoulders shaking. Fists clenched at his sides like if he let go, he’d shatter into pieces.
My mother left before the service ended.
1
13.20 Fri, 25 Jul
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57%1
28)
Chapter 75
That night, she sobbed into her pillow until violence. The way she looked at me likel
her throat went hoarse. She spiraled was both her son and a ghost.
harder after that–her addiction
getting worse.
The
hallucinations. The
That
image stayed with me. Haunted
- me.
But
it also
ignited something
cold
in me. Something
Ifed every
time I thought
of Sergei
still breathing. Still building.
Still
winning.
It wasn’t enough.
That
t grief!
saw at the funeral? It wasn’t enough.
I wanted more.
I wanted him to scream. To wail. To throw things. Break things. I wanted wanted him broken like he broke my mother. Like he broke me.
him drunk. Destroyed.
Curled up
in his
penthouse
sobbing into
his hands. I
wanted
him
addicted. Depressed. Hollow.
I wanted to be the
one
who did that to
him.
So I made a plan.
Step
one, get close to
Elena.
I knew
it wouldn’t t take
long for Dmitri to
fuck up.
He always did. When he did, was there–clean cut,
charming, attentive. I w
I wasn’t pretending. Not really.
I just wasn’t telling the whole truth.
And
she was so
easy to fall
for.
4
God, she was
sunlight
in a city
of ash. She was fire on a
frozen lake. She
things.
was everything I never believed
I could want–because monsters don’t get good
They just
take them.
Step
two,
Marry her.
It wasn’t even supposed to be
real.
A year–long contract. Publicity. A business deal. That’s what I I told office, dropped a grainy old photo of
five–year–old Elena on his desk
her. That’s what I I told myself.
and said:
That’s
what I didn’t tell Sergei
when I
stormed into his
“This is y
is your
daughter.
Don’t you
want to
find her?”
He
time. His face unreadable.
**
stared at it for a long
Then he laughed.
Not a chuckle. Not. even disbelief.
A loud, mocking, echoing laugh.
“You’re like your
mother,” he said. “So
desperate
to be
someone.”
3
I wanted to slam his face
into the glass.
Instead,
I smiled.
Toffered
him a
deal–ha
hande mn
T3.40
4包 57%台
Chapter 75
He did exactly that.
“Anaya had a miscarriage,” he said. “That child isn’t real.”
He was wrong.
She was real. And she was mine now.
I was going to marry her. Parade her around the city. Put her in every newspaper. Make sure his name haunted her like it haunted me. And when she found out? When she discovered her bloodline?
She’d hate him.
She’d curse his name.
And I would win.
Except… that’s not what happened. Only one week into the contract and I knew I was fucked. That I’d made a huge mistake.
What happened was she kissed me like I was the center of her world. She fell asleep with her head on my chest. She made me laugh. She fought with me. Cried with me. She stitched herself into every hollow part of my soul and didn’t even realize she was doing it.
By the time I admitted to myself that I was in love with her, it was already too late.
I had already set the landmine. And all that was left… was to wait for the explosion.
And tonight?
Tonight, it went off.
I watched her crumble. Her face twisted in pain. Her voice broke when she said “Red.”
The safeword.
I’d told her I’d back off the second she used it. That I’d disappear. No questions asked.
She used it tonight.
Not in bed.
Not in play.
But in public.
With my hands on her arms. With my lies dripping down my face, With the truth choking the life out of her.
And now, I sit in the aftermath.
The ballroom is empty. There’s broken glass beneath my shoes. The flicker of dying lights bouncing off crystal chandeliers. The smell of gunpowder and champagne hangs in the air like a ghost.
Elena is gone
415
