And I broke.
I stood there, frozen in the wreckage of her words. Her absence. The empty closet. The damned divorce papers still sitting on the dresser like a death certificate.
My lungs burned. My fingers curled around the phone so tight I heard it crack, and I didn’t stop. I slammed it against the wall. Once. Twice. A third time until shards rained to the floor like glass rain.
“She left,” I muttered, as if saying it would make it less true. “She fucking left me.”
The drawer flew open and I grabbed the divorce paper, staring at her signature like it was written in blood. My name—the line beside it still blank. Untouched.
I never signed it.
I never fucking let her go.
With a roar, I tore it in two, then again, until the pieces scattered like ashes at my feet.
My breath turned ragged. My vision blurred.
The lamp on the nightstand went flying next. Then the chair. I dragged the sheets off the bed we used to share, that still smelled like her. The mirror cracked when my fist went through it—my knuckles split, blood smearing the glass like war paint.
“You were mine,” I rasped, staring at my reflection fractured into pieces. “You are mine.”
But she wasn’t here.
She was in Bogotá. Alone. With her evil father—And now she was willingly under his roof. Willingly out of reach. Willingly done with me.
I staggered back, chest heaving. My knees hit the floor and I let them. Let myself fold, fists clenched in my lap like they could hold me together.
She said I couldn’t love her the way she needed.
And maybe she was right.
But I still loved her. In the only way I knew how. Brutal. Obsessive. Consuming.
And now I was choking on it.
The walls of the Pakhan’s palace closed in on me like a tomb. My crown. My throne. My fucking empire. All of it felt like a curse now. Like I’d traded her love for this cage of power.
They said stepping outside Russia meant death.
But what did it matter?
I was already bleeding in a thousand places no bullet could reach.
I had to get her back.
“Luna,” I whispered. “I’ll fix this. Even if it kills me.”
Because if I didn’t, I was already dead.
Chapter 27
LUNA
Two months.
That’s how long it’s been since I walked out of Yakutsk. Out of that house. Out of Misha’s life.
And yet, I never really left him. Not entirely. Not in my mind. Not in my body. And not in this strange, stifled corner of my soul that still turned sharply at the sound of boots on marble or a rough laugh carried by the wind.
