Page 23 of Filthy Lies

Not with my father’s betrayal still hanging over us.

“Can you walk?” I ask.

“I think so.”

I help her out of the car, one arm around her waist, the other hovering near Sofiya. Our daughter doesn’t stir.

“She sleeps like you,” Rowan murmurs. “So still. So quiet.”

The observation catches me off-guard. Under other circumstances, it wouldn’t do anything of the sort. After all, it’s such a normal thing to say. Such a normal moment to have: just two parents noticing traits their child shares with them.

But nothing about any of this shit is normal.

We enter the house through a reinforced door that requires both retinal and fingerprint scans. Inside, the space is open and clean. The valley looms through the windows, green and endless.

“It’s beautiful,” Rowan comments.

“It’s safe.” I guide her toward the sofa. “But I wanted it to feel like a home, not a fortress.”

She sinks onto the cushions and adjusts Sofiya in her arms. “You thought of everything.”

“Not everything.” I sit beside her, careful not to jostle them. “I never imagined finding you like that. In labor. Alone.”

The same old images skip through my head like ripples on a lake that keep spreading, spreading, spreading.

Blood on white marble.

Six digits punched into the keypad.

Screams in an empty hallway.

“But you found us,” she interrupts softly. “That’s what matters.”

I reach out to touch Sofiya’s tiny hand. Her fingers curl reflexively around mine, and another crack goes skittering through the rock of everything I once thought I was.

“I need to go back, you know.” I’m wincing even as the words leave my lips, because they’re exactly the wrong thing to say and yet I can’t say anything but that. “To find them. All of them.”

Rowan’s eyes snap to mine. “You’re leaving?”

“Not yet. But soon.” I open and close my mouth as I struggle to explain the war raging inside me. “Every instinct I have is screaming to hunt them down. My father. The Solovyovs. Everyone who had a hand in taking you.”

“But?”

“But another part of me can’t bear the thought of leaving you two alone.” I look down at our daughter, so small, so vulnerable. “Even for a moment.”

Rowan’s gaze softens, though I can see the worry lingering behind her eyes. For a moment, she just watches me.

Then she moves Sofiya to one arm, her movements still careful, still recovering. “You can’t be in two places at once,” she says quietly.

“I know that. I mean, fuck— logically, I know that.”

“But emotionally?” She reaches for my hand, her fingers cool against my skin.

I squeeze her hand gently. “I want to tear apart anyone who had anything to do with this. But I can’t stand the thought of walking out that door.”

“What about Arkady? Your security team?”

“They’re already working, but…” I trail off.

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