My hand tightened on the glass, just barely. Not enough to be seen. Not enough to shatter the glass.
But Damian noticed. Of course he did. His eyes darted to my hand for a while before he returned them to my face.
I flattened my voice. “No. Nothing yet.”
He nodded slowly. “Didn’t think you’d stop looking.”
“I haven’t stopped looking.” I ran my free hand over my hair. “Yulia was family too.”
And I wouldn’t even if the rest of them had. I’d been occupied with my new life as a husband, but that didn’t mean I would give up on finding out the truth behind Yulia’s death.
Rurik had given up.
He hadn’t said the words, but I’d seen it in his walk. Quiet. Reserved. Guilt had seeped through his pores like rot.
He blamed himself for ignoring her. For shutting her off. For loving her on paper and never in real life.
He thought she died of heartbreak.
He thought it so intensely that he never once questioned how her death was wrapped up and sealed so effectively.
But I had.
Because grief was noisy. But guilt—real guilt—was silent. Paralyzing. And I knew my brother all too well.
The quiet things he did were always the worst.
The real autopsy report hadn’t been released to the family. I’d had to buy it quietly through proxies.
It didn’t say heart failure.
It didn’t say stress or suicide or anything else the family doctor had murmured to cushion the truth.
“She didn’t die of stress or natural causes. Her heart failure was induced.”
A dose measured with accuracy. Introduced into her bloodstream hours before she was found. A killer-med-shot. Untraceable to someone who had no clue where to search.
It was murder, and it was premeditated.
But by who and why was a mystery I had yet to solve.
I took another sip, let the whiskey burn through the chill still underlying my skin.
Damian leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You think it was someone on the inside?”
I didn’t answer immediately. Instead, I stared into the dark horizon, into the Yezhov crest hanging above the main hall. “Yes.”
That was all the answer I could offer for now until I found out who had the freaking guts to kill a Yezhov bride right under our noses and under our roof.
An outsider wouldn’t dare, not even our biggest rivals. It had to be someone on the inside, someone who could’ve easily gotten to her.
I had no idea who it was yet, but I would find out soon enough. And when I did…nothing would save them from me. Not even death.
Damian leaned forward, elbows on knees, eyes angled beneath his dark eyebrows. “You sure it wasn’t Rurik?”
The question wasn’t meant to accuse or offend me. It was calculated. Clinical. Meant to eliminate possible options.
I locked eyes with Damien. “My brother is an asshole, but he would never go as far as killing his own wife. That I’m sure of.”
