Chapter 173
Evelyn's POV
"I know." Nikolai cut me off gently. Not defensive. Not making excuses. Just accepting. "I know what I did. What I made you into. And I know that dissolving Kholod doesn't change any of that. Doesn't undo the damage. Doesn't give you back the years I stole."
He took another step. Slower this time. Watching me carefully for any sign I wanted him to stop.
I didn't move. Couldn't move. Just stood there with one hand on the wall and my broken ribs aching and my mind racing through a thousand different responses and finding none of them adequate.
"But I also know," Nikolai continued, his voice steady despite the emotion I could see in his eyes, "that if I keep Kholod operational, I'm just perpetuating the cycle. Creating more weapons. More damaged people. More—" He stopped. Swallowed hard. "More daughters who will hate me for what I've done to them."
The word 'daughters' hit me like a physical blow. Made me think of all the other young women who'd passed through Vorkuta. All the other broken girls who'd been shaped into killers. How many of them had he trained personally? How many had he looked at with those cold, assessing eyes and seen nothing but potential assets?
How many of them had been someone's daughter too?
"Viktor mentioned compensation packages," I heard myself say. My voice distant. Clinical. Falling back into operative mode because it was safer than feeling. "New identities. Resources for rebuilding."
Nikolai nodded. "Three weeks instead of forty-eight hours. To give everyone time to transition. To give them—" He paused. "To give them the choice I never gave you. The choice to walk away and build something different."
"That's not enough." The words came out harsh. Bitter. "Money and a new passport don't erase the trauma. Don't undo the things they've done. The people they've killed."
"No." He agreed quietly. "It's not enough. Nothing I can do will ever be enough. But it's all I have left to offer."
We stood there in silence. The weight of his admission hanging between us. I wanted to rage at him. To scream about Vorkuta and the ice and the pain and the way he'd systematically destroyed every soft part of me until only the weapon remained. Wanted to make him understand—really understand—what he'd taken from me.
But looking at him now, seeing the genuine anguish in his eyes, I realized he already knew. Had known, perhaps, for longer than I'd thought. The dissolution of Kholod wasn't a sudden impulse. It was the culmination of years of guilt. Years of watching what he'd created and slowly coming to terms with the cost.
"You said Maria would be proud." My voice was barely above a whisper. "On the phone. You said she'd be proud that I survived. That I found—" I had to stop. Breathe through the pain in my ribs. "That I found Julian."
Something shifted in Nikolai's expression. Softened. "She would be. Your mother—" He had to clear his throat. "Maria was the strongest person I've ever known. Not because she could fight or kill or survive torture. But because she could love fiercely even when it wasn't safe. Could hold onto hope even when everything was falling apart."
He looked at me. Really looked at me. And for the first time I saw not the spymaster or the weapons instructor or even the father trying to make amends. I saw a man who'd loved someone deeply and lost her and spent twenty-six years living with that loss.
"You have her strength," he said quietly. "But you also have something she never had. Someone who loves you enough to stand between you and a bullet. Someone who sees all the darkness in you—all the things I made you into—and loves you anyway."
Julian. He was talking about Julian. Who'd taken a bullet for me two days ago. Who'd held me through nightmares and PTSD attacks. Who'd looked at my weapons cache and fake passports and history of violence and hadn't run. Hadn't tried to fix me or save me or turn me into something more palatable.
Had just loved me. Exactly as I was.
"That's why you're dissolving Kholod." Understanding crystallized. "Not just because you hurt me. But because you saw what Julian and I have and realized—"
"Realized that love is stronger than any training I could provide." Nikolai finished. "Realized that the best way to protect you isn't to turn you into an invincible weapon. It's to remove the threats. To dismantle the organization that made you a target in the first place."
He took one more step. Close enough now that I could see the moisture gathering in his eyes. Close enough that if I wanted to, I could reach out and—
And what? Embrace him? Forgive him? Pretend that five years of brutality could be erased by one grand gesture?
But even as I thought it, I felt something shift in my chest. Not forgiveness. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But something softer than the burning rage I'd carried for so long. Something that acknowledged the complexity of what stood between us.
The terrible truth that he was both the man who'd destroyed me and the man who'd given me the skills to survive. Both the source of my deepest trauma and the father who was now trying—however clumsily—to protect his daughter.
"I don't know how to do this." The admission came out raw. Honest. "I don't know how to be your daughter. How to reconcile what you did to me with—" I gestured helplessly at the phone in his hand. "With this. With you trying to make amends."
"I don't know either." Nikolai's voice was equally raw. "I've spent thirty years being a spymaster. A weapons instructor. A man who made impossible decisions and lived with the consequences. I don't know how to be a father. Don't know if I even deserve the chance to try."
He looked down at his hands. Hands that had broken my ribs two days ago. Hands that had trained me to kill. Hands that were now trembling almost imperceptibly.
"But I want to try," he said quietly. "If you'll let me."