Chapter Four
1387 Words
The name sat between them like a ghost.
Your mother.
Noah stared at Viktor, his breath catching in his throat. He hadn’t heard that name his mother spoken aloud in years. Not since the funeral. Not since the fire that had taken her and his father in the middle of the night, leaving him orphaned and empty at seventeen.
Now Viktor was saying it like it meant something. Like it explained something.
“You knew her?” Noah asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Viktor didn’t look at him. His jaw was tight, his hands clenched on the balcony railing. “I did.”
A long silence stretched between them, charged and heavy.
“You said you’ve watched me for years. Are you stalking me, Viktor?”
“No.” A pause. “I was protecting you.”
Noah let out a shaky laugh. “You keep saying that, but from what? I’ve been living a normal life until two men tried to kill me in an alley.”
“Not normal,” Viktor murmured. “You just didn’t know the truth.”
Noah stepped back from him. “What truth?”
Viktor turned toward him then, and for the first time, Noah saw it guilt. Real, raw guilt written across every hard line of his face. A crack in the mask.
“Your parents weren’t just random people, Noah. They were involved in something. Something they tried to escape.”
Noah’s heart pounded. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Viktor hesitated. “They knew things about my world. Things that could’ve gotten them and you killed. Your mother came to me pleaded with me to keep you out of it. She made me swear.”
Noah’s voice broke. “You knew her and you never said anything?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
Viktor looked at him, eyes dark. “Because I wasn’t just her friend, Noah. I was the reason she ran.”
The room spun.
Noah sat on the edge of the bed minutes later, silent. Shaken. He didn’t know what to believe. His whole life he’d thought his parents were just normal. Loving. Working. Struggling. And then one night, gone.
“You were the reason she ran?” he repeated, numb.
Viktor leaned against the doorframe, eyes shadowed. “I was younger. I was already deep in the Bratva. Your father crossed someone he shouldn’t have. There were consequences.”
Noah looked up sharply. “Did you kill him?”
Silence.
The room went still.
Viktor didn’t answer.
“I asked you a question.”
Still no answer.
Tears burned Noah’s eyes, but he held them back. “So that’s it? You destroy my family, and now what? You feel guilty so you stalk me like some broken savior?”
Viktor stepped into the room, his voice tight. “You think I don’t know what I’ve done? You think I don’t carry it every damn day?”
Noah stood up. “Then why keep me alive?”
“Because I owe you. Because I owe her. And because somewhere along the way, watching you became more than a promise.”
Noah’s breath hitched.
“What does that mean?”
Viktor took a step closer. “It means I don’t just want to protect you anymore.”
He reached out and touched Noah’s face again, and this time Noah didn’t pull away.
“I want you,” Viktor whispered.
Noah’s heart betrayed him with how hard it thumped. “This is messed up.”
“I know.”
“We’re not, this can’t happen.”
“I know.”
But neither of them moved.
Later that night, Noah lay in bed in one of the guest rooms, staring at the ceiling, wide awake. He could still feel Viktor’s touch on his cheek. Still hear his voice.
And more than anything, he could feel the storm coming. Not just between them but around them.
He was already in Viktor’s world. There was no going back now.
Downstairs, Viktor lit a cigarette in the darkened study. His hands were steady, but his eyes betrayed him.
The past was catching up.
And he had just lied to Noah.
Because the truth wasn’t that he watched Noah’s parents die.
The truth was worse.
He killed them.
Viktor stared at the smoke curling from the end of his cigarette. It reminded him of the fire that night. The way it ate through the walls of their small home like it had been waiting, hungry. He could still see Noah’s mother’s face her screams, her eyes full of betrayal as the flames rose. She had begged him.
“Take my son. If anything happens to us, protect him. You swore, Viktor.
And he had sworn. But not before pulling the trigger.
He exhaled slowly, letting the guilt settle over him like an old coat. One he wore well by now.
He’d done it. He’d followed orders. They had tried to run with secrets Noah’s father had stolen information, tried to blackmail the Bratva, and his mother had covered for him. There had been no choice. No negotiation. Just a silent hit called from the top. And Viktor, younger and more obedient back then, had followed it through.
But he hadn’t known about Noah. Not until it was done. Not until he found the boy seventeen , fragile, angry, lost.
He had watched him from afar for years, intervened when things got too dangerous. A fake scholarship here. A job offer for a landlord who was about to evict him. Anonymous deposits. He had kept Noah afloat just as he’d promised her.
And still none of it changed the truth.
Upstairs, Noah was pacing.
Everything in his world was now cracked, like a mirror struck at the center. His mother and Viktor. His past. The man standing in the shadows of his life, pulling strings without ever showing his face. Until now.
What bothered him more was the way he felt when Viktor looked at him.
Seen. Desired. Owned.
And that was the real danger.
Because somewhere inside all that fear and confusion, something in him wanted to belong to Viktor. To be chosen. Held. Possessed. He hated himself for it.
He opened the door and walked out into the dark hallway.
Viktor looked up as Noah entered the study, barefoot, arms folded, hair messy from sleeplessness. He looked like someone trying to pretend they had control over anything.
“You lied to me,” Noah said quietly.
Viktor’s face didn’t change. “About what?”
Noah walked to the edge of the desk and planted his hands on it. “You said my parents were killed because they knew too much. But you didn’t just know them. You were involved.”
“I was,” Viktor admitted.
“You killed them.”
It wasn’t a question.
Viktor didn’t speak.
Noah’s hands curled into fists. “Tell me the truth.”
Viktor stood up slowly, rounding the desk until they were inches apart. The silence between them stretched taut, like a wire on the verge of snapping.
“I pulled the trigger,” Viktor said finally, voice low. “I followed orders. I didn’t know about you until it was too late.”
Noah’s face crumbled for a moment, pain flickering behind his eyes. “So now what? You think saving me makes it right?”
“No,” Viktor said. “It doesn’t.”
“Then why am I here? Why didn’t you just let me die in that alley like your men wanted?”
Viktor stepped even closer, the air between them thick with emotion. “Because I would burn this entire city to the ground before I let anything happen to you.”
Noah swallowed, his body trembling from rage and something dangerously close to want. “You don’t get to care about me. You don’t deserve to.”
“I know,” Viktor said. “But I do.”
And then Noah kissed him.
Hard. Angry. Desperate.
Viktor froze for a secondthen gripped the back of Noah’s head and kissed him back with enough force to break them both.
It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t gentle.
It was punishment. It was confession.
It was the start of something they could never undo.
- Writer
