Chapter 3

3-Past Isn’t Past

Eva was still holding the note. The paper was delicate paper with knife-blade handwriting.

We all belong to someone—even you.

She didn’t say anything; she didn’t need to. That note was a message, a strong message from her cousin. Eva only looked like that, spine rigid, jaw tight, body vibrating with the kind of rage that could turn fatal, when she was about to burn someone to the ground.

“She’s not here to help,” Eva finally muttered.

God, he missed her like this. She had a baby in her arms, someone else’s blood drying on her shoulder, and the same cold fury in her eyes that made grown men flinch. They used to call her Groza. Destruction, in heels. He watched her like an idiot, wondering why the hell he still remembered the way her mouth felt on his.

“Katerina?” he questioned.

She turned just enough to glare at him. “She doesn’t leave notes. She leaves bodies.”

“Maybe she wants to warn us.”

Eva snorted. “That bitch doesn’t warn. She taunts.”

Sophia made a soft noise on the couch beside him, not a cry, not even a fuss, just a weird little huff, like she was judging them both. She hadn’t cried once, not when the intruder crashed through Eva’s window. Or when Katerina had slit a man’s throat mid-scream. Not even now, surrounded by tension so thick you could cut it with a damn spoon.

Sophia reached up and grabbed his pinky like she wasn’t touching a man who’d once snapped a spine with his bare hands.

Alessandro froze. His breath caught halfway through his throat. His fingers went rigid. A warmth curled around his pinky, and for one horrible second, it felt like mercy.

What the fuck was she doing? Why did this feel like a bullet he didn’t see coming?

Eva didn’t miss it. Her stare flicked to the contact, then to his face. “You okay?” she asked.

No. “Yeah.” He quickly answered.

“You look like someone handed you a live grenade.” She concluded.

“She kind of is.” He looked away because he couldn’t look at her lips and the kid in her arms at the same time without feeling like a goddamn hypocrite.

Then Eva broke the silence.

She crossed the room, tank top stained with dried formula and blood that wasn’t hers, and knelt beside the couch.

Sophia was still lying there, small and silent, curled against the cushions. Eva leaned over and tucked the blanket around her like she’d done it a thousand times, like it wasn’t breaking her.

Alessandro didn’t move.

He watched her the way a man watches a storm roll in — too stunned to run, too stupid to take cover.

Eva stood in his penthouse barefoot, blood drying on her shoulder, cradling a baby like she was born for war but had been handed peace and didn’t know what the fuck to do with it.

The Glock on her hip said killer, the formula bottle in her hand said mother, and the scar just below her collarbone said he still wasn’t over her.

Alessandro tried not to look at it. Tried and failed. He remembered the way she shivered when he found it.

The way she gasped as if she hated needing him. And now? Just seeing it again was too fucking much.

Back in that hotel in Manhattan — the night of Luca and Hanna’s wedding. The night she threw back two shots of soju and kissed him like it was revenge.

Later, she made him green tea the old Korean way, bowing slightly when she handed him the cup, like her ancestors were watching.

It wasn’t a submission. It was respect and coming from her that meant more. She didn’t give that to anyone willingly. Now she looked at him like she was calculating the cleanest way to kill him without waking the baby.

“Put her down,” he said, quiet but firm. “You need sleep.”

Eva’s arms locked tighter around Sophia. Her jaw clenched like it was wired shut.

“You need to stop pretending you know what I need,” she said.

Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t crack.

It was too level. Too precise.

Like someone trying not to scream through their teeth.

Alessandro watched her fingers. They betrayed her — the smallest tremor running through them like a warning.

“You’re shaking,” he said quietly.

“I’m not.”

But she didn’t look at him when she said it.

He stepped in — slow, measured. The kind of movement that made people back up.

“Let me take her.”

“No.”

Her grip tightened. Not protectively, like if she let go, she might fall apart.

“I’m her co-guardian.”

She didn’t blink. “And I’m the one she reaches for when she stirs.”

Sophia stirred, now not crying but watching, always watching them.

“You don’t trust me,” he said.

She met his eyes. “Do you blame me?”

He didn’t, but it still hurt because he didn’t regret sleeping with her. He regretted using her.

But even that wasn’t the whole truth. He regretted not staying; he never apologized for choosing her over power.

She moved past him, heading toward the nursery he had designed, a custom cradle, bio biometric monitor, blackout drapes, the works.

She paused at the threshold.

He knew what she was thinking. He could feel it.

This room was too clean. Too perfect. Too full of things she hadn’t picked.

“She’s not staying here,” Eva said, eyes scanning the room like it was enemy territory.

“She’ll be safe here,” he replied.

“I don’t want her safe in a cage.”

“It’s not a cage, it’s a fortress.”

“You would know.” He stepped behind her closely without touching, but not far enough to ignore the heat. “She’ll have guards, a panic room, and twenty-four-hour surveillance.”

Eva turned to him slowly, her expression unreadable but her eyes furious. “That’s what you think children need?” she said. “Steel and silence and secrets?”

“I think they need to live.”

Sophia let out a soft breath and a little whimper. Eva instinctively rocked her, murmuring something in Russian — too soft to catch, too intimate to question.

And fuck, that did something to him.

He wanted to strip her down and worship every scar, then shake her forever, leaving. He wanted to kiss the memory of him off her lips and replace it with now. “She’s better off here than in your shoe box apartment with busted locks and Bratva ghosts.”

“I trust my ghosts more than your guards.” She replied.

“Because your ghosts didn’t betray you?”

The silence that followed was deafening.

“I was a kid,” she whispered. “I thought you saw me.”

“I did.”

“You saw what you could use.”

“I saw you,” he said, stepping into her space. “Nineteen, brilliant, with blood on your hands and fire in your veins. And I knew—if I got close, I’d burn.”

“Then why did you fuck me?”

“Because I wanted to burn.”

Her breath hitched. Just for a second.

Then she shoved past him, laying Sophia in the bassinet.

He watched her. Always watched her. The way she adjusted the blanket. The way she lingered a moment longer than she needed to. The way her eyes dropped to Sophia’s face with something like awe, she’d never admit.

Then the hallway sensor blinked.

He went statue-still.. “Stay here.”

She didn’t listen. Of course, she didn’t. She followed because that’s what she always did, even when it broke them both.

The driver was waiting just outside the hallway console, face unreadable. In his gloved hand, he held something small.

A bug.

Tiny. Matte. Pulled from the vent above Sophia’s crib.

Alessandro stared at it like it was radioactive. “Above the crib?” he asked, voice low.

The driver nodded once, certainly, and just like that, the hallway felt colder like the air itself had teeth.

Alessandro’s stomach twisted. “Where the fuck did this come from?”

“Inside job,” his driver muttered. “High-end. Audio only. Long range. Might’ve been here before she even moved in.”

Eva reached out, plucked the bug from his palm, and turned it over in her hand — like she was holding something holy. Or cursed.

Her mouth stayed shut. But her eyes cut to him — sharp and surgical.

No drama. No raised voice.

Just the look of a woman who knew exactly whose fault this was.

Alessandro could feel it radiating off her, that quiet, surgical kind of fury that didn’t shout. It executed.

She handed him the bug, fingers brushing his palm.

“You’re slipping, Bianchi.”

He didn’t argue. Just stepped in, slow and deliberate, until he could smell the blood drying on her collar, the faint whisper of tea leaves in her hair, and something sharper underneath.

“Then maybe,” he murmured, voice dark, low, and way too close, “you should keep a closer eye on me.”

Her lips twitched.

Sophia let out a soft coo behind them, the only sound in the room that wasn’t charged like a live wire.

Eventually, Eva looked away — not because she was backing down, but because holding his gaze any longer felt too much like giving in.

“Fine,” she muttered. Clipped. Bitter. Like the word scraped on the way out.

“I’ll stay.”

Alessandro didn’t smile. But it was there, just beneath the surface — a flicker of something sharp and sour that tasted too much like victory.

“We’ll talk about Sophia,” she added, already bracing for war. “But don’t mistake this for routine.”

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