Page 90 of The Pakhan's Captive
“Lena,” I say, and her name feels like glass in my throat. “I didn’t…I wasn’t the one.”
“Don’t lie to me!” she barks, a harsh, jagged laugh tearing out of her. “Don’t you dare lie to me now. You were there. You led them. You took me. You own the blood on those floors just as much as you own this house.”
She tries to storm past me, her shoulder hitting my chest, but I reach out and grab her arm. I’m forceful, my grip tight enough to keep her rooted to the spot. My heart is hammering against my ribs, but it’s not from anger. It’s from the realization that she’s been living a lie—a lie that I allowed her to believe because I was too blinded by my own family’s narrative.
“Look at me,” I growl, my voice vibrating with a dangerous intensity.
“Let me go!” she shrieks, clawing at my hand.
“Look at me, Lena! Look at the mark!” I yank up the sleeve of my shirt, exposing my forearm. I point to the black serpent tattooed into my skin—the Volkov blood mark. It’s intricate, dark, and unmistakable. “This is the mark of the direct Volkov bloodline. Every man in my family carries it. Viktor carries it. I carry it.”
She freezes, her eyes darting to the tattoo. Her breathing is shallow, her chest heaving in short, panicked bursts.
“The men who came to your father’s house that night, they wore the suits. They carried the mark. But it wasn’t my hit, Lena. It was Viktor’s.” I let out a breath I’ve been holding for months. “I didn’t even know your father had died until my uncle came back and broke the news. He told me he killed the ‘traitor’ in the same breath he told me my father was gone. Viktor killed your father, Lena. Not me.”
The silence that follows is deafening. I watch the shock ripple through her face, the anger vanishing so quickly it leaves her features hollowed and raw.
She doesn’t move. She just stares at the tattoo, her brain visibly trying to reject the words. She begins to hyperventilate, her gasps coming so fast they sound like a wounded animal. Her eyes go wide, darting around the hallway as if searching for a way to rewrite the last three years.
“No,” she whispers, the word catching in her throat. “No, you’re lying. You have to be lying. I saw…I saw the serpent. I saw the tall man in the shadows. It was you. Ithadto be you.”
“I was at the docks, Lena. I was half a city away when the door was kicked in,” I say, my voice low and steady, trying to anchor her even as she unravels.
“No, no, no…” Her voice rises into a fractured monologue, her words spilling out between jagged, desperate breaths. “If it wasn’t you, then I hated you for nothing? I spent every night… I made myself cold. I pushed you away because I thought… I thought I was honoring him. Papa, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Viktor? Viktor killed him?”
She starts to shake—a violent, full-body tremor that rattles her bones. It’s the sound of a foundation cracking. She looks likeshe’s dying, her face turning a ghostly, translucent white. The relief of knowing I’m not his murderer is there, but it’s being crushed under the weight of the betrayal she feels toward her own memory.
“I loved you,” she gasps, the words coming out as a strangled cry of agony. “I started to love you and I felt like I was killing him myself…and it was all a lie? He’s gone and the man I’ve been punishing is…is…”
Her knees buckle. She doesn’t just fall, she crumbles. I catch her before her head can hit the stone, lowering us both to the floor. She doesn’t lean into me yet. She stays rigid in my arms, her hands flying to her face, a deep, gut-wrenching wail of pure, unadulterated agony tearing through her.
I pull her against my chest, my arms wrapping around her like a cage, like a shield. I don’t say a word. I just hold her while the lie she’s been carrying—and the burden of hating the man she was secretly longing for—collapses into a heap of broken, beautiful wreckage on the floor.
“I thought it was you,” she gasps through her tears, her fingers clutching at my shirt. “He was an innocent man, Razvan. He wasn’t a traitor.”
“I’m going to find out the truth,” I murmur, my hand finding the back of her head, pulling her closer. I don’t care about the Pakhan’s dignity anymore. I don’t care about being the monster. I just hold her as she falls apart. “I’m so sorry, Lena. My uncle…he told me your father killed mine. He said it was justice. But I knew your father, and he wasn’t that kind of man. I’ve had my doubts, and I promise you right now—I will get to the bottom of this. I will find out exactly what happened that night.”
“I hated you,” she cries, her voice muffled against my heart. “I spent every day telling myself you were the devil. I thought I was a traitor for wanting you. I thought I was spitting on his grave.”
“I should have investigated it the moment it happened,” I say, my own eyes burning. “I let my uncle’s word be law because I was grieving. I let you suffer because I thought I was the one who deserved the justice. I was wrong.”
“You let me believe it was you,” she says, pulling back slightly to look at me, her face a mask of grief and confusion.
“Because I was a fool,” I admit. “I thought that even if I didn’t pull the trigger, the blood belonged to me. He’s my blood. My uncle. And I let him walk into your home.”
“But you didn’t order the kill?”
“No, he acted on his own. I didn’t even know until he reported it me.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long time. She just sits there in my arms, crying until she’s empty. The solarium is quiet, the sun beating down through the glass, but the world outside doesn’t exist. There is only us. There is only this terrible, beautiful truth that has finally changed everything.
I shift her so she’s sitting in my lap, her legs draped over mine. She doesn’t pull away. She leans her head against my shoulder, her breathing slowly evening out. Her hand reaches out and traces the serpent on my arm—the mark she used to fear, the mark that kept us apart.
“I’m going to make this right,” I say, my hand cupping her cheek. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it right. Viktor willanswer for this. If he lied about your father, he’ll wish he’d never been born.”
She closes her eyes, a single tear sliding down her cheek. “I just want to know why.”
“I’ll get you the answers,” I promise.
