Page 76 of Beautiful Ruin

It still amazes me, even now, how well she’s handled this sudden transition in her life.

I lean back slowly against the headboard, staring at the embossed wallpaper while the tension inside me rearranges.

What does interest me now is how easily Sofia had been directly fed to me. Calling up another Bratva leader, let alone a member of the Iron Pact, is not as simple as picking up a phone and dialing their number. It is much more complicated than that. There are switch points and official channels all calls must go through, systems put in place within each secured residence where verification is solidified before the call can be sent to its proper recipient.

You do not simply ask for a Pakhan and get transferred because your voice sounds pretty on the other side of the line. Not in this world when they have all spent decades surviving assassination attempts, infiltration from outside entities, government surveillance, debts bought, favors sold, bloodlines buried.

Considering Nikolai knows enough now about what is happening at the Kuznetsov Bratva, I find it interesting he’s allowed a message of any kind to reach my room without personally intercepting it.

Which means one of two things. Either Malyshko’s household is looser than it looks, which I doubt, or this call was allowed for some other outside reason.

Nikolai is not Volkov. He does not toy with people for sport alone. Volkov would allow a call like this because he’d enjoy the intimacy of it, the chance to watch what spills from the mouths of allies once the pressure builds high enough.

In this case, Nikolai wanted to know if Sofia would reach out to me without bothering to know the context beforehand.

The question is… why?

I shake my head and focus on something else.

If I let myself stay too long dwelling on thoughts of Nikolai’s intentions, I’m going to start breaking things in a guest room that doesn’t belong to me. And while that might be satisfying for five seconds, it won’t solve anything.

So I choose the next most immediate threat.

“Have you heard from your father?” I ask.

There’s a pause on the line, followed by a slow exhale that crackles softly through the receiver. I can picture her pinching the bridge of her nose, eyes closing for a second the way they always do when frustration starts to outweigh hope.

“No,” she says. “He’s gone MIA. I think the run-in with Volkov really scared him. I think he’s gone into hiding again.”

Not at all surprising considering his track record.

Though, it does irritate me to a certain extent.

Of course Dmitri Orlov disappears the second things become difficult. The man crawls out of the grave after twenty years drenched in a tragic tale and old promises, hands Sofia a fistful of half-truths, then vanishes the moment he senses smoke in the air.

Coward.

I don’t trust him. I never will. Not because I think every single thing that comes out of his mouth is a lie. That would almost make him simpler to dismantle. Men like Dmitri are worse because they lace truth through their performance just enough to make the poison easier to swallow. They don’t fabricate so much as curate, taking the ugliest pieces of reality and truth and arranging them to patch over old wounds they themselves created and left behind.

Who knows when the next time will be that Sofia will be able to have contact with him again. Not that I would encourage any of that. God knows I shouldn’t. Not when every conversation with Dmitri seems to leave her more shaken than healed. He’s already proven he can turn her need for answers into a weapon against her judgment.

And yet I know how much finding her father has meant to her so far. Sofia has spent most of her life without him, but that doesn’t mean his absence has ever stopped mattering to her. If anything, it has only made it larger.

Fantasies can be built around years of absence.

Questions.

Hopes you hate yourself for still having.

All of which I know Sofia still has.

I return my gaze to the ceiling, tracing the faint pattern of the paint’s brush strokes. “I’m sure he’ll contact you again when he’s ready to.”

On the other end of the line, Sofia is quiet for a moment.

“You think so?”

“I do.”