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He hesitates.

It’s barely perceptible, just a fraction of a second where his mouth opens and no words come out, but it’s enough. That hesitation tells me everything I need to know. It tells me that if the answer would save him, he would give it. Truth, lies, none of it matters to him except in how it serves his survival.

For a brief, terrifying moment, my mind goes somewhere dark.

I imagine stepping forward and closing the distance between us. I imagine the resistance of fabric and flesh as the knife sinks into his chest, the shock that would flicker across his face as the breath leaves him in a wet, rattling gasp. I imagine his hands flying up, slick with blood, fingers grasping uselessly at the wound as he stumbles backward, knocking into the desk, papers scattering like startled birds.

Would he beg me to call for help, his voice small and terrified now that power has finally abandoned him? Would he sob my name the way he did over my mother’s casket despite being the one to put her there? Or would he snarl, furious even with death closing in, accusing me of betrayal, of ingratitude, of ruining everything he’s ever built?

The knife feels heavier in my hand as the thought takes shape, as real and vivid as memory. My fingers flex around the handle, knuckles whitening, my pulse pounding so loud it roars in my ears.

It would be so easy. One moment of violence, one irreversible act to end the man who destroyed my family, who turned my mother into a line item in a ledger and my life into a bargaining chip.

Justice, some would call it.

My feet stay rooted to the floor, trembling but unmoving.

Not because he deserves mercy. He doesn’t. Not because I want to spare him. I don’t. And not because I’m afraid of the consequences, though the fear coils in me all the same.

I don’t move because I refuse to become him.

I refuse to let my life be defined by the same brutality that’s defined his. I refuse to turn myself into another monster who justifies blood with reasons and necessity. I refuse to let this moment carve me into something cold and hollow, the way it carved him, the way it has carved Sasha.

I don’t want blood on my hands. Not his. Not anyone’s.

The realization hurts almost as much as the truth itself because it means walking away without the satisfaction of punishment. It means carrying this pain forward instead of ending it here in a single, violent moment.

My arm shakes as I lower the knife, the metal dipping toward the floor but never leaving my grip.

He watches me closely, breathing shallowly, his eyes tracking every movement like a trapped animal waiting for the strike that never comes.

“You don’t get forgiveness. You don’t get absolution. And you don’t get to decide what happens to me anymore. I’m done with you,” I say quietly, my voice raw but steady.

He opens his mouth, maybe to argue, maybe to plead. I turn away before he can. If I stay one second longer, if I let myself keep imagining how easily this could all end, I’m not sure I’ll keep choosing the person I still want to be.

Lev doesn’t ask what happened when I get back into the car.

He doesn’t turn around or clear his throat or offer platitudes he doesn’t believe in. He simply watches me through the rearview mirror for half a second too long before pulling away from the curb, the engine humming low beneath us.

He doesn’t need to ask what happened. The evidence is written all over me.

My hands won’t stop shaking. I’m still clutching the knife like it’s the only thing tethering me to reality, my fingers locked so tightly around the handle that my knuckles have locked around it.

My cheeks are wet with tears I’m only now aware are falling from my eyes, leaving tracks that itch but I don’t have the energy to wipe away. My chest feels hollowed out, scooped clean by something sharp and cruel.

I stare out the window.

I feel numb and overloaded, empty and brimming all at once, like my body doesn’t know what to hold onto and what to let go of.

My father is a monster.

Not a flawed man. Not a complicated one. A monster who looked at my mother and saw an obstacle. A liability. A problem to be erased so he could keep climbing, keep smiling for the cameras while pretending to be something noble.

Sasha is a monster too. In a different shape with different methods to his cruelty. Quieter and deadlier. A man who makes problems disappear because that’s what the world trained him to do and who did it without hesitation when my father asked.

I am trapped between them, a coin tossed between wolves, each convinced the other is worse, each certain they’re justified in what they’ve done to me.

The car turns onto the long, private road leading back to the estate. Trees crowd closer on either side, their branches bare and skeletal, reaching overhead like ribs. The gates come into view, tall and unyielding.