Page 70 of Beautiful Ruin

“Miss Kuznetsov!”

For one precious, ridiculous second, I almost laugh.

I step into the office and slam the door behind me. The sound cracks through the room like a gunshot. For one bright, reckless second, vindication flares in my chest. My breathing is a little elevated as I stare at the closed door. On the other side, I hear movement, a guard’s low voice as he argues with the others about knocking.

When I finally turn around, I find my uncle sitting behind his desk with a phone pressed to his ear. There is a small pull at the corner of his mouth, the faintest hardening around his eyes. He is every bit a Pakhan calculating whether this sudden breach requires tenderness or correction.

My right hand still throbs from punching that guard, but I ignore it and pull in a deep breath. “I need to talk to you.”

After another pause, he murmurs into the phone before ending the call, setting it facedown on top of his desk. He leans back slightly in his chair, studying me with mild curiosity now. “What do you want, Sofia?”

My throat tightens, but I push away from the door to cross the distance between us. My pulse drums loudly in my ears. “The truth.”

Ivan’s brow lifts faintly. “About?”

“My mother.”

For a moment, he says nothing at all.

His gaze fixes on me with a stillness too calm to be surprised. Or if he is, he hides it well. He exhales slowly and shakes his head, dismissing the hidden accusation with barely veiled irritation.

“Is there a reason you are asking me about this?”

“Why can’t I find any information about my father? I searched online for him and only found his name on my birth record. Other than that, he’s been completely erased from existence. Was that your doing?”

For a moment, I expect anger or a harsh reprimand to remind me of my place within the hierarchy of this household. I prepare myself for the demand to know what I searched and what triggered the sudden curiosity, who helped me, what I found, whether Rowan had any part in it. I expect him to rise to the bait because guilt, if pressed correctly, often comes out wearing rage as a mask.

Instead, he simply sighs at me as if he expected this conversation long ago.

“Your father is a coward who ran the moment things became difficult. He left you behind after your mother’s passing to go pursue other avenues in Germany. Why would I ever encourage you to have contact with a man like that?”

My hands clench at my sides as I step closer to the desk. “That’s not what the information I found says.”

For the first time since I entered, Ivan’s expression tightens. “And what is that, exactly?”

“You killed her.”

I watch him carefully.

I have spent weeks learning how men like him hide behind their silences. Rowan inadvertently taught me that lesson until I became an expert. Every unanswered question inside me surges forward at once when the silence hangs over us, all fingers pointing at the fractures slowly forming beneath Ivan’s carefully crafted façade.

“Whatever you think you discovered, Sofia, I would encourage you to think critically about it. You are making accusations you do not understand the gravity behind.”

It’s then that I realize something important. He hasn’t denied it.

I have learned over the past few weeks that men who live by secrets do not only lie with their words as most people do. They do so with careful omissions that can be spun in a different direction when caught.

Ivan rises slowly from behind his desk.

The motion is controlled, but I still notice the slight stiffness at his side. He is not fully recovered. The wounds from the ambush still leave his body vulnerable no matter how elegantly he dresses over them.

Once, that would have made me soften.

Perhaps in a way it still does, somewhere deep down. I hate that even now with all of my unanswered questions and my mother’s ghost haunting us both, part of me still looks at him and sees the only family I have left.

“Tell me the truth of what you did to her.”

“Careful,” he warns.