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I can’t keep running between shadows, spitting venom at the only man who has ever looked at the real me. I can’t keep sleeping with one eye on the door, waiting for Anton to corner me in the hallway.

I will go home in the morning.

I will walk into Vladimir Solovyov’s office, put both hands on his desk, and tell him the truth about Anton. If my father refuses to hear it, I will take Alya, strip off the family signet, leave the succession in the gutter, and walk out the front gate.

And then I will go back to Kento.

On my own feet.

Ilya

I stand just inside the Morozov estate. Alexei wants to talk to me, and I’ll give him twenty minutes and then head straight to the Solovyov estate to put an end to Vladimir’s bullshit once and for all.

Dimitri is pacing a trench into the parquet floor behind Alexei’s chair. The bruise under his eye is barely an hour old. Alexei’s knuckles, without a doubt. Did they fight?

Alexei is watching me with that clinical calm he only ever pulls out right before he puts a bullet through someone’s head.

“Why are you so quiet, Lex? Why did you call me here?” I drag my eyes to Dimitri. “And am I correct in assuming you’re responsible for the rather extensive renovations to his facial structure?”

Alexei tilts his head. Without breaking eye contact, he reaches down beside his leg, picks up a matte-black laptop, and slides it across the glass surface.

My laptop.

“You left here last time. I was going to bring it back to you. I’d like to ask… you’re supposed to be our hacker, Ilya. Why wasn’t the drive locked?”

My stomach drops straight through the floor. It is a custom build. When it shuts down properly, the CIA can’t crack the partition without drilling the motherboard. But last time I used it, I was so disoriented because I thought Kento was ignoring me that I slammed the screen shut on the kitchen counter and left the root terminal wide open.

“I forgot,” I say, forcing my jaw not to clench. “Why? You went digging through my shit?”

“You showed up covered in fresh bruises you lie about,” Alexei counters, his green eyes narrowing to cold slits. “Yes, Ilya. I looked through your shit. I thought I might find out who was hurting you.”

I cross my arms, scoffing. “You had no fucking right—”

“I found something far more interesting than your bruises,” Alexei interrupts. “You changed my compatibility test.”

Every muscle in my back locks into solid stone. That’s right. When Marco was at his worst, before he started getting better, Alexei had a compatibility test done. He wanted to be the donor for Marco’s transplant. The results came back positive. He was a match. But I changed them to negative. “I expected this kind of reckless stupidity from Dimitri,” Alexei says. “But from you? Marco is your friend.”

“And you’re my best friend!” I fire back, the words tearing out of my throat.

Alexei’s jaw jumps, and a violent tick pulses in his cheek. “He almost died, Ilya. I could have saved him.”

A humorless laugh rips out of my chest. “Right! By dying on the fucking table instead of him!”

Alexei surges to his feet, and his calm shatters into a million pieces. “Yes! That was my choice to make! You had no right to alter the lab files!”

I slam both palms onto the table, leaning in until we are inches apart.

“Alexei, I asked him to do it!” Dimitri yells, stepping up beside the table with his hands out. “He only did it because I said it!”

“Shut the fuck up, Dimitri!” I snarl, not taking my eyes off Alexei’s face. “I would have done it without you asking! I would have done it ten times over, and I’d do it again right now!”

I round the table, getting right into Alexei’s space. I can see the twitch in his right shoulder. He wants to hit me. He wants to split my lip the way he blackened Dimitri’s eye.

“You want to know why, Lex?” I hiss, jamming a blunt finger hard into the center of his chest. “Because you’re a dumb fucking bitch!”

Alexei’s nostrils flare, his chest heaving against my finger.

“How the hell do you think Marco would have lived with that, huh?” I scream. “You think he wakes up with your organs inside him and goes on with his life? You think he smiles? He would have spent every waking second of the rest of his life drowning in your ghost! You wouldn’t have saved him, Alexei. You would have handed him a fate ten times worse than death!”