Page 44 of Beautiful Ruin

“Two on the northeast balcony. Rotation is every fifteen minutes.”

Sofia’s pen scratches across her notebook with each new piece of information.

“Third-floor window… someone’s watching the street below. Possibly waiting for a drop-off.”

And on and on it goes.

I don’t know when watching criminals through cracked windows became its own kind of intimacy, but strangely, it has. The quiet rhythm of her pen catching up to my murmured insights, the subtle alignment of our bodies as we track movement in unison, feels like partnering. Real partnering. The kind I’ve never allowed myself to have with anyone before now.

I keep my gaze trained on the apartment complex long after we’ve gathered all the intel we need. But the truth is I’m no longer watching the building. I’m watching her out of the corner of my eye.

Sofia’s honey-blonde waves are tucked behind one ear, her blue eyes narrowed in concentration as she scribbles more notes. She absorbs everything without flinching in a way that is beginning to impress me. At the coroner’s office, she didn’t recoil when I threatened him into handing over the file, nor did she pale when I promised if word got out to anyone, I would be coming back for him. Now, sitting in a forgotten alley observing an armed cell, she remains completely focused.

Most people raised far from this life would have crumbled by now. Even seasoned allies sometimes blanch at the gritty machinery that keeps Moscow’s underworld running. But Sofia? She takes it in stride.

If she were driven purely by obsession or grief, I would see her the same way I do her uncle. But her composure isn’t desperation. It is instinct.

A true Kuznetsov.

The realization settles heavily in my chest. Ivan sent her away to keep her sheltered, to protect her from the violence that forged the rest of us. Yet here she is, walking through the same darkness we all have like she has always belonged. It seems the empire her family built recognizes its own blood and has done everything it can to welcome her home.

She is a woman who hasn’t just stepped into my world by accident. She walks through it like she was born to rule it.

By the time I start the engine and carefully pull out of the alley without being spotted, the sky has dimmed to a soft gold.

We make it onto the main road before she finally finishes whatever she’s writing. Her hand slaps the paper in her lap as she straightens up in her seat.

“Okay, hear me out. There are at least three possibilities—no, four—that make sense, given what we’ve seen and what we learned from our stakeout.”

I glance at her from the corner of my eye. My lips threaten to twitch upward. “I’m listening.”

She grins at me.

As she talks, she gestures around with her pen. I sift through her ideas one by one as she replays them, quietly testing them against my knowledge of Moscow’s underbelly. Some are off-base, some are good, others are uncomfortably accurate.

I hear myself offering small hums of agreement and low, thoughtful grunts when she hits on a detail I overlooked. Still, beneath my calm exterior, unease coils tightly in my gut. While Sofia’s logic is sound on most points, the core assumption unsettles me. A rival syndicate upending the status quo.

A mid-tier outfit targeting Ivan just as he suspected in the beginning? Committing an assassination attempt on a well-connected Pakhan with the full weight of the Iron Pact behind him?

It’s practically suicide. Not to mention statistically unlikely, as I already told him.

“Even if the evidence points that way, the motive doesn’t,” I tell her. My finger flicks the turn signal on to merge as I guide the car back toward the estate.

Sofia tilts her head at me. “What do you mean?”

I lift one shoulder. “Starting a war with the Kuznetsov syndicate isn’t just reckless. It’s suicide. Especially when he has the Pact behind him. No mid-tier gang would risk that. The cost outweighs the gain a thousand times over.”

Sofia falls silent, absorbing that.

I don’t say what I’m really thinking, though. That everything we uncovered today could be intentional misdirection. That we might be chasing a carefully planted lie, and the real threat could be much closer than either of us realizes.

Though what the actual threat is, I can’t even begin to guess at this point.

When the estate gates appear ahead, the guards at the front wave us through without question.

I barely have time to pull the car into the garage and park it before enforcers swarm us. No one speaks as we are both escorted inside and through the halls, past watchful staff who pretend not to stare and straight toward Ivan’s private wing.

I feel the weight of what’s coming in every step.