Chapter 166

His gaze drifts toward the window, toward the ocean beyond. “Margaret was…” He exhales slowly. “She was the sunlight breaking through storm clouds. Brilliant, warm, uncompromising. She walked into my restaurant one day, and the world simply rearranged itself around her.”

I bite my lip hard enough to taste blood. “She said you were complicated.”

A dark laugh rumbles from his chest. “That’s a diplomatic way of saying dangerous.” His eyes find mine again. “But she loved me anyway. At least, for a while.”

“Until?”

“Until she discovered what loving me would cost her.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “The same choice you’re facing now.”

The parallels aren’t lost on me. My mother fled from Grigor to protect me. I fled from Vince to protect Sofiya and, ironically, to protect Grigor himself.

History just keeps repeating its fucked-up cycle.

I’d like to get off this carousel, please.

My heart constricts. “Why didn’t you find us?”

“Because she made her choice.” He scrubs a hand across his face. “What kind of father would I have been if I dragged you both back into danger just to satisfy my own selfish desires?”

Isn’t that exactly what I’ve been fearing from Vince? That his need to control would outweigh what’s best for Sofiya?

“So instead, you watched from a distance,” I continue. “Little gifts here and there, like that would make up the difference.”

Grigor nods, something suspiciously like tears gathering in his eyes. “It wasn’t enough. It was never going to be enough. But it was what I could offer without endangering you.”

“And yet, here I am anyway,” I gesture around us, at the gun still in my lap, at the beach house where I’m hiding from my husband. “Neck-deep in the very world she tried to protect me from.”

“Life has a bitter sense of humor,” he agrees.

A soft cry from the other room interrupts us. I stiffen, my maternal instincts flaring. I set the gun aside and stand. “I should —”

“May I see her?” he asks, so quietly I almost miss it. “Properly this time? Not as enemies across a negotiating table, but as…”

“Family,” I finish for him.

He nods like he can’t rely on his voice to do the work for him.

I shouldn’t trust him. I’ve spent too long in Vince’s world to trust anyone easily. But there’s something in Grigor’s eyes—something that mirrors the desperate love I feel for Sofiya—that makes me nod.

“Wait here.”

I fetch my sleepy, fussing daughter, who calms the moment I lift her against my chest. When I return, Grigor stands by the window, bathed in moonlight.

He turns, and I see the exact moment he truly sees Sofiya—his whole face transforms, decades of hardness melting away.

I move closer, still keeping a safe distance. “This is your grandfather, Sofi. Your mother’s father.”

Sofiya blinks sleepily at him, unimpressed by the introduction. Then, without warning, she stretches her arms toward him, fingers grasping at air.

“Papa?” she asks hopefully.

I freeze, blood turning to ice water in my veins. “No, sweetheart, that’s not Papa. That’s… that’s…”

But Sofiya is insistent. Her little face scrunches up in frustration. “Papa! Papa!”

Grigor chuckles, though it’s tinged with sadness. “She wants her father.”

“She’s confused,” I murmur. “She doesn’t understand —”

“She understands perfectly.” Grigor steps back, hands clasped tightly behind him as if to physically restrain himself from reaching for her. “She knows who her father is, and she wants him.”

Sofiya struggles in my arms, her cries growing more insistent. “Papa! Papa!”

“Shhh, baby girl,” I whisper against her hair. “Papa’s not here right now.”

“When did she start speaking?” Grigor asks, visibly trying to change the subject.

“She doesn’t, not really. Just ‘Mama’ and...” I swallow hard. “‘Papa.’ Vince spent hours with her before bedtime every night. Reading to her, talking to her. He was… he was a good father.”

“And yet you ran from him.”

“I found plans—detailed assault plans—for your compound.” I look up at him, challenging. “He was going to kill you, and he didn’t even have the decency to tell me first.”

Whether he knew that already or not, it’s impossible to say. Grigor’s expression doesn’t change. “Would you have stopped him?”

“I—” Well, would I have? Three months ago, maybe not. But now? After meeting Grigor? After reading my mother’s letters? “… Yes. I would have stopped him.”

“Well, I suspect he knew that. Which is why he didn’t tell you.”

I’m quiet.

“You’ve changed him,” Grigor continues. “More than you realize. The Vincent Akopov I’ve known for years wouldn’t have suspended an operation just because his wife discovered it. He would have accelerated it, eliminated the threat, then begged forgiveness afterward. Or, more likely, not begged at all.”

“How do you know he’s really suspended it?” I challenge. “Maybe it’s a trap.”

“Because I have people inside his organization, just as he has people in mine. The order came down three days ago, immediately after your disappearance. Complete stand-down. No one goes near Petrov territory.”

I sink back onto the couch. Sofiya burrows into my neck, her tears dampening my skin.

“If I go back…” I begin.

“You fear he’ll revert. Return to his old patterns.” Grigor sits beside me, close enough that I can smell his cologne—similar to Vince’s but sharper, with notes of pine and tobacco instead of sandalwood. “It’s a valid fear. Men like Vincent—like me—don’t change easily.”

“But you did,” I point out. “You loved my mother enough to let her go. To respect her choice.”

“It nearly destroyed me.” His voice cracks with remembered pain. “Every day I didn’t drag her back to me by force was a day I questioned my own strength, my own resolve.”

“Then how? How did you resist?”

He’s quiet for so long I think he might not answer. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft with a vulnerability I never expected from someone so dangerous.

“Because true love isn’t possession, Rowan. It’s protection, even from yourself.” His eyes hold decades of grief and wisdom. “I loved Margaret enough to become the man she needed me to be, even if that man had to live his life without her.”

The house sighs around us, groaning with the ocean breeze and the rumble of distant tides.

“Vince knows where I am,” I realize aloud. “He must. His resources, his connections… if his man found me at that grocery store, Vince could have been here within hours.”

“He hasn’t come, though, has he?”

“He’s giving me space.” The realization breaks over me like a wave. “He’s respecting my choice to leave, even though it’s killing him.”

“He’s trying,” Grigor agrees. “Whether he can maintain it—whether any of us can truly change the darkness inside us…” He shrugs. “That’s the gamble, isn’t it?”

Sofiya has fallen asleep against me, her face puffy from crying. “Papa,” she whimpers, even in her dreams.

All this time, I’ve been telling myself I left to protect her. To protect Grigor. But the truth crashes through me with devastating clarity—I’ve been protecting myself. From pain. From the possibility of betrayal. From the risk of loving someone who might ultimately destroy everything I care about.

But in doing so, I’ve broken something precious in my daughter. Something I’m not sure I can fix on my own.

“I was wrong to leave like that,” I whisper. “Whatever Vince planned to do, we should have faced it together. Figured it out together.”

“Yes,” Grigor says simply.

“I took his daughter from him.” The enormity of my actions crashes down on me. “The one thing he values above everything else in the world. I… Fuck, I should’ve…”

Grigor stands.

“Where are you going?” I ask, panic rising.

“Back to the life your mother walked away from.” He pauses at the door, silhouetted against the night. “You needed to understand where you came from before you could decide where you’re going. Now, you know.”

I clutch Sofiya tighter. “And what if I make the wrong choice? What if I go back to him and he hasn’t really changed?”

Grigor’s smile is sad, haunted by decades of what-ifs. “Then you’ll do what your mother did. What you’ve already proven you can do. You’ll leave again.”