Page 82 of Married to My Sis’s Bratva Fiancé

No promises. No teasing. And somehow it carried more weight than any pretty line.

"I'll stay a few more days."

"Okay."

He didn't look pleased. He just took my empty cup. After a few steps, he looked back.

"Elena, you are good. Kiryan not knowing how to hold on to something doesn't mean you aren't worth holding on to."

Then he walked away without waiting for me to answer.

The next few days, no Morozov car showed up. No lawyer dropped off papers. No one ordered me to come back.

My old phone stayed off, buried in the deepest part of a drawer. Every night, I imagined the screen lighting up and what I'd see.

Maybe Kiryan's calm, cold command. Maybe nothing at all.

In the end, I pulled the SIM card out and tucked it into the bottom of my paint box.

That was it.

I poured everything into painting, forcing myself to stay busy.

"Just wait for me," I whispered to the baby. "I'll get us a place."

I didn't need Morozov money. I didn't need my father's scraps. I had my hands, my brushes, and the small reputation I'd built submitting work anonymously.

I could feed us.

Yegor didn't hand me cash. He didn't buy my paintings. He just left me a few curator contacts and had his driver take me to galleries when I asked. At the first meeting, he didn't even walk in with me.

"That is your work," he'd said. "They should be looking at you, not me."

I stood by the elevator clutching my portfolio, my palms slick. "What if they say no?"

"Then you try another."

"And if everybody says no?"

"Then you put on your own show." He pressed the button. "When you paint, you know what you are doing better than any of them."

The elevator doors opened. I stepped inside.

Before the doors slid shut, Yegor still stood where he was, not following.

The curator flipped through my portfolio, then went back and studied the first few pages again. "All these anonymous pieces are yours?"

"They are."

I remembered my father saying a Rossi daughter shouldn't waste time on cheap canvas. I remembered Kiryan, in the beginning, throwing my supplies into the rain, convinced I was just performing misery for attention.

But the paintings had survived.

And they'd brought me here.

Chapter 21

Kiryan