Page 155 of Nemesis

There’s no way I’ll play along. Like hell am I going to be a quiet little Bratva wife. I already have my way out. All I have to do is find my window.

I frown. What way out?

Dropping the journal, I pick up the next and flip through the pages even faster than the last. I can’t believe Dad never told me about these. Were they really sitting here every time I walked into his study, collecting dust on the floor?

Sasha isn’t as horrible as I expected. I could almost call him handsome, if it weren’t for his last name. It doesn’t matter. I’m not going through with this wedding. I have dreams. Dreams that don’t involve these ugly syndicates or arranged marriages.

I wonder if Dad kept these for sentimental value, the way a normal man holds onto his wedding ring. Or maybe he read them to punish himself for the past.

In another world, we could have made a great partnership.

Weren’t those his words, uttered in this very room?

I set down the current journal, grabbing another. This one is the most recent. I follow the dates with my finger, noting the inky drawings scrawled across the pages.

Father wants to meet Annika tomorrow morning. Sasha has to leave for California tonight, so I must go alone. I have a bad feeling about it. I don’t trust any of these bastards. Not with my baby girl. I’ve known it was time to run for a while now. Maybe I was waiting until after the birth. Maybe I should’ve run a long time ago.

Father’s getting more paranoid than ever. He keeps asking for more and more intel on Sasha’s compound, but I’m no longer willing to give it. Not with Annika here. I wish I were strong enough to kill him myself. Every time I look at her, I feel a wave of adoration so powerful it borders on sickening. How could I allow such a precious thing to grow in this hellscape? It’s time to stop being so selfish. I have to give her a fighting chance, and that starts with tomorrow. I paved the way out years ago.

I flip to the next page, but it’s blank. Nothing comes after that final, vague declaration. She never wrote another passage again.

What the hell happened that day? Why would Dad allow her to meet with Popov alone? If she knew the meeting would go so badly, why did she even attend in the first place?

I search the book for one of those strange, angular drawings. It takes a moment to understand the measurements and realize what they are. Diagrams. Didn’t Dad tell me she mapped out his entire compound on her first night here? Ruler-straight lines form three-dimensional squares. Arrows draw out careful labels. Corridors. The laundry room. The kitchen. But after a few minutes, I realize it’s not the Siderov compound that I’m staring at. The entryway is in the wrong place, and the guard barracks are a completely different shape. No…

This is Popov’s compound.

I paved the way out years ago.

My finger traces every line in the drawing as something manic fills my blood. Where is it, Mom? The renovation entries from her earliest journal flicker through my mind. This woman had been planning an escape for years. My Dad might have seen a scared teenage girl, but she was obviously a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She knew how to get out of that house, and she did it successfully, even with me in tow.

There’s only one line that isn’t perfectly straight in the detailed diagram. A single pen stroke that curves around the first-floor bathroom and ends somewhere in the box labeled kitchen. Next to it is a label smaller than the rest.

Twenty minutes when the ovens are loud.

I grab the first book, still splayed open on the floor, and flip back to her younger entries where she’d written about her stepmother.

Alessia won’t stop renovating the kitchen. First, she drops into this family and tries to boss me around, and then she decides to tear our house apart again and again. I’d be angrier if it hadn’t given me the perfect way out. The builders left yesterday, and they never caught my addition.

Snapping the book shut, I climb to my feet and rush out the door.

Mom didn’t find a way out.

She made one.

We’ve made no progress in the absence of my wife.

This family takes the too many cooks in the kitchen expression way too seriously. Maybe their dynamic worked when Sasha was alive to preside over their hierarchy, but without him, they’re reduced to an angry mob spouting out competing plans. Octavia sent me down to keep them in line, but I have no idea how to carry out that task.

I’m an interrogator. I do quiet basements and careful slices. If I raise my voice, it’s only to bark out a laugh that lives and dies inside my walls.

“Look, here,” Nik says, pointing at the creased paper blueprint spread wide over the table. “We split our men. Half go in through the main gate, and half will attack from the servants’ entrance in the back⁠—”

Ben’s fist slams against the table, crinkling the paper. “If you don’t quit pitching a raid, I’m kicking you out! It’s too late to attack tonight, anyway.”

“Then we’ll go tomorrow. We still have one more day before he’ll be expecting us.”

Ivan glances toward me with irritation. I shake my head, assessing the room. Ben and Nik hover over the Popov property blueprints, scouring them as if the paper will reveal something vital with enough attention. Alex sits a few chairs down from me, stone-faced. He’s barely spoken since his youngest son’s finger was dropped onto the dining room table, a few inches from where I eat breakfast. Maksim alternates between pacing the room and gazing out the dark window.