MINE

ROMAN’S POV The first thing I learned about power was that it never asked politely. It arrived in the middle of breakfast, in the form of my father’s voice and an order that could turn an ordinary morning into a funeral. “Kill the girl.” I lowered my coffee cup. Outside the dining room windows, the city was waking beneath a thin veil of winter fog. Black cars moved along the streets below, their polished roofs catching the weak morning light. Somewhere beyond the gates, a delivery truck was reversing, its warning beeps irritatingly cheerful for a day that had begun with a death sentence. I glanced at my father. He sat at the head of the table with the morning newspaper folded beside his plate. His expression was as composed as ever, his silver hair perfectly combed, his suit immaculate. He could have been discussing a business acquisition or ordering a new shipment of wine. Instead, he was asking me to kill someone. “Which girl?” He cut into his breakfast without looking up. “The younger Volkov daughter.” For a moment, I wondered whether I had heard him correctly. Everyone in our world knew the Volkov family. Their name was spoken in private rooms, behind locked doors, and in the same breath as words like betrayal, blood, and war. The Devereux family had been entangled with them for longer than I had been alive. Our fathers had inherited a feud that neither seemed interested in ending, and every generation had found a new reason to keep it alive. But the Volkovs were not merely enemies. They were useful enemies. Their patriarch had spent decades cultivating relationships with judges, politicians, bankers, and men whose names never appeared in newspapers. He knew where money went when it needed to disappear, which doors opened with the right phone call, and which powerful people would sell their principles for the promise of protection. A man like that was worth more alive than dead. At least, that was how I saw it. “Why?” I asked. My father finally looked at me. He disliked questions when he believed an order should be enough. He disliked them even more when they came from me, because I rarely asked anything without already having an opinion. “Because the Volkovs have become careless.” “That is not a reason.” “It is the only one you need.” I leaned back in my chair. My father’s authority had been built on the assumption that nobody would challenge him. I had learned early that challenging him openly was rarely productive, but allowing him to believe I agreed with everything he said was even more dangerous. The difference between us was simple. He believed fear made people obedient. I believed fear made people unpredictable. A frightened man could be controlled, certainly. But a frightened man could also make a desperate decision, betray an ally, or burn down everything around him simply because he had nothing left to lose. The Volkov patriarch had too much to lose. That made him dangerous. It also made his daughter an unusual target. “What has she done?” I asked. “Nothing.” The answer came so quickly that my attention sharpened. My father placed his knife beside his plate. “Sometimes, Roman, a person does not have to do anything to become a liability.” I studied him. He was giving me only the pieces of information he wanted me to have, which meant there were other pieces he was deliberately withholding. That was how he operated. He treated information like currency, releasing just enough to make people believe they had been paid. I had grown up learning to recognise the difference between an explanation and a distraction. This was a distraction. “The older daughter is already involved in the arrangement with the Devereux family,” I said. “The younger one has never been seen publicly. If the Volkovs have managed to keep her existence quiet for sixteen years, killing her now would accomplish very little.” His expression hardened at the mention of her age. “You seem to have developed a sudden interest in the matter.” “I have developed an interest in understanding why you want me to eliminate a girl who has never threatened us.” “She is a Volkov.” “So is her father. And I would still prefer to negotiate with him before putting a bullet in his head.” My father’s fingers tightened around his glass. There it was. The small crack in his composure that told me I had touched something important. “You think you understand the game because you have won a few battles,” he said. “No. I think I understand it because I know the difference between winning a battle and destroying the board.” For several seconds, neither of us spoke. I knew better than to mistake his silence for surrender. My father was a patient man, and patient men could afford to let anger settle before deciding what to do with it. Eventually, he pushed his chair back. “Find out what you need to know. Then do what I asked.” He left the room without waiting for my answer. I remained at the table, staring at the untouched portion of my breakfast. A hidden daughter. Sixteen years old. A father willing to conceal her from the world, and another father determined to have her killed. There was a story buried somewhere beneath those facts. I intended to find it. My cousin Dante was nowhere near as difficult to find as he believed himself to be. I found him in one of the guest rooms upstairs, sprawled across the bed with a woman whose name he probably had not bothered to learn. The curtains were drawn, the air smelled of expensive cologne and perfume, and a half-empty bottle sat on the bedside table. Dante lifted his head when I entered. His expression moved through irritation, surprise, and something resembling embarrassment before settling into a lazy grin. “You know, most people knock.” “Most people finish the work they are given.” His grin disappeared. The woman gathered the sheets around herself, clearly uncertain whether she should remain or make a quick escape. I had no interest in her, and I was not particularly interested in whatever arrangement she had made with my cousin. Dante, however, was becoming a problem. He was charming when he wanted something, reckless when he thought nobody could punish him, and remarkably talented at turning a simple assignment into an inconvenience for everyone involved. I had spent years cleaning up after him. Today, I had no intention of making it easy. “Get dressed,” I told him. He glanced at the woman, then back at me. “Now?” I looked at him until the question became unnecessary. A few minutes later, he followed me downstairs. The basement was colder than the rest of the house. The walls were bare concrete, the lights were harsh, and the air carried the unmistakable smell of metal and dampness. It was a room designed to discourage comfort, because comfort had a way of making people forget where they were. Lucky was strapped to a chair in the centre. He had been there long enough for his confidence to begin slipping. Sweat darkened the collar of his shirt, and one side of his face had swollen beneath the beating Dante had apparently delivered before deciding that his attention was needed elsewhere. Lucky looked up when I entered. I watched him carefully. People revealed themselves most clearly when they believed they were about to die. Some became loud, mistaking noise for courage. Others begged, offering information they did not possess because the truth seemed too small to purchase their survival. Lucky looked like the sort who would bargain. I pulled a chair across from him and sat. “Dante tells me you have something useful.” Lucky swallowed. “I already told him everything.” “That would be unfortunate.” His eyes flicked toward Dante. My cousin leaned against the wall with his arms folded, looking as though he had been dragged away from a much more entertaining afternoon. I turned back to Lucky. “Because if you have already told him everything, I have no reason to keep you alive.” The words settled into the room. Lucky began speaking quickly, repeating the same vague details he had apparently given Dante. He talked about shipments, meetings, men who worked for men who worked for the Volkovs. Nothing was particularly interesting. Nothing explained why my father wanted a sixteen-year-old girl dead. I let him talk until he ran out of words. Then I reached into my pocket and removed a small glass container. Inside it was a spider. Lucky went still. It was a subtle change at first. His gaze fixed on the container, his breathing became shallow, and the colour drained from his face. I had seen fear often enough to recognise the difference between a man pretending to be afraid and one whose body had betrayed him before his mind could catch up. Dante straightened from the wall. “What is that?” I ignored him. Lucky pulled against the restraints. “Get it away from me.” I placed the container on the table between us. “You have been very generous with information that means nothing to me,” I said. “Now I would like to discuss something that does.” Lucky stared at the spider as though it were already crawling over his skin. I had learned from one of the men who brought him in that Lucky had an irrational fear of spiders. I did not particularly care whether the fear made sense. People rarely chose the things that frightened them most. They simply chose what to do when confronted with those fears. “Tell me about the younger Volkov daughter.” His eyes snapped toward mine. For the first time since I entered the room, he looked genuinely surprised. I leaned forward. “There we are.” “I don’t know anything about her.” “Then this will be a very short conversation.” I lifted the container. Lucky jerked against his restraints so violently that the chair scraped across the concrete. His fear was almost physical. It seemed to fill the space between us, turning the small room into something much smaller. I had no sympathy for it. Fear was a tool, and tools were only as useful as the hands that knew how to use them. I did not need to touch him. I only needed him to believe that I might. “Her name,” I said. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Audrey.” I waited. “Her name is Audrey Volkov.” The name meant nothing to me yet. I set the container down. “Continue.” Lucky’s words came in uneven bursts. The Volkov patriarch had a younger daughter, a girl he had kept away from public events, family gatherings, and almost every person who might have recognised her surname. Even within his own circle, only a handful of people knew the full truth. She had been hidden since childhood. Not sent away for a few months or kept out of the newspapers until a scandal passed. Hidden. Her existence was a carefully guarded secret. “Why?” I asked. “I don’t know.” I raised my eyebrows. He shook his head frantically. “I swear. I only heard things. People say she’s his weakness. That he would do anything for her.” I considered that. Men like Volkov rarely admitted to weaknesses. They spent their lives building reputations around the idea that nothing could touch them, that family was a possession to be protected and power was a shield against grief. But even the most ruthless men had something they could not bear to lose. Sometimes it was money. Sometimes it was control. Sometimes it was a child who had never been allowed to understand the world into which she had been born. “Who else knows about her?” Lucky gave me two names, neither of which surprised me. He described a handful of people who had been trusted to keep quiet, though he could not tell me how much any of them knew. I memorised every detail. When he had finished, I placed the container back into my pocket. His relief was immediate, almost pathetic. “Please,” he whispered. “I told you everything.” I studied him for another moment. He had told me enough to answer the question that mattered. The younger Volkov daughter was not a threat because of anything she had done. She was a threat because of what she represented to her father. A hidden child could be used as leverage, and leverage was the language our families understood better than any other. But there was another possibility. Perhaps my father knew something Lucky did not. Perhaps the girl’s existence was connected to a secret that had survived sixteen years of silence. Either way, I had no intention of killing her simply because someone had decided she was inconvenient. I stood. Lucky began pleading again. I had heard enough. The gunshot echoed through the basement. Dante flinched. I did not. The sound faded into the concrete walls, leaving behind the familiar silence that followed every irreversible decision. Lucky’s head had fallen forward, and the chair no longer moved. I returned the gun to its holster. Dante watched me with a strange mixture of curiosity and caution. “You were supposed to get information,” he said. “I did.” “And now?” “Now we find the girl.” He frowned. “Your father ordered you to kill her.” “My father has ordered many things.” I moved toward the stairs, leaving Dante to follow or remain behind. He followed. The girl was sixteen. She had spent most of her life hidden from the world, protected by a father who apparently considered her existence dangerous enough to conceal. I had no interest in the sentimental version of the story. I did not imagine a helpless princess locked away in a tower, waiting for someone to rescue her. People who survived in our world were rarely as innocent as their circumstances suggested. Still, I wanted to know what made Audrey Volkov worth so much trouble. I wanted to understand why my father was afraid of a girl who had never stepped into the light. And I wanted to know what Volkov had done that made him believe hiding his daughter would protect her. The city stretched beyond the windows as we climbed toward the ground floor, bright and indifferent beneath the morning sun. Somewhere inside it, a girl lived under a name she had been taught to keep secret. She did not know that a dead man had just spoken her name in a basement. She did not know that her existence had become a question I intended to answer. And she certainly did not know that, in my world, secrets rarely remained buried forever. I would find her. Not because I had been ordered to kill her. Because I wanted to understand why anyone would.