Chapter 4: Gathering Fire

The house was different. Closer. Everything felt smaller in the aftermath. Hallways stretched, the walls closing in on her. She half expected the Kozlov mansion itself to remember how she’d looked that night.

She didn’t sleep much. She just laid in bed staring at the crackled ceiling of her childhood bedroom and going over the images burned into her memory. Marcus’s hands, his calloused fingers tangled in Elena’s blonde hair. The way his mouth left marks against her sister’s collarbone, how close they’d been from every angle.

The treachery looped in her head on repeat, until all that remained was fury, crackling to consume her heartache.

She was through being the soft daughter. Through pretending weakness protected her.

If Elena was gold, then Anya would burn.

The first step was Marcus’s laptop. He’d left it in its leather case, carelessly abandoned in her family’s study while he was off talking business with her father a few days ago. She would have laughed, years ago, at the thought of rifling through it. Would have shuddered away the image of it in her head, too afraid to be called paranoid.

Now she unzipped the case with cold, clean hands. Her fingers shook, but only from adrenaline.

The password was simple, an insult. His birthday, with an exclamation point at the end. She almost laughed.

Evidence bloomed from it with comically little effort. Hotel bills tabbed “client dinners.” Meetings in nondescript office buildings, timed with military precision. Email confirmations from the Goldcrest Hotel, reservation under Marcus Webb, Suite 1403. The same hotel where Elena had once gushed to her that it had “the best spa in the city.”

Her chest ached, but not from betrayal. From arrogance. They hadn’t even bothered to be discreet.

She haphazardly dragged the open files into a folder and renamed it: TRUTH. Then she slid a flash drive into the port and watched the upload bar creep across the screen.

Done, she closed the laptop and stuck the drive into her purse. The weight of it against her hip was like armor.

The second step had been Elena’s phone.

Elena’s things had always been sacrosanct in the Kozlov house, off limits for her to even glance at. But when Elena left her phone, plugged in on the kitchen counter to charge, Anya had reached for it.

Her sister’s passcode hadn’t changed in years. 1228, her birthday.

Screens of text filled the screen. Dozens, maybe hundreds.

Marcus: I can’t stop thinking about last night.

Elena: She’ll never know. She’s too soft.

Marcus: We’ll have to be more careful until the party’s over.

The bile rose in her throat, but her hands didn’t shake as she took screenshots. Sucked every little sin, every message, into evidence that could tear down her family. Sent them to her email with a tap, then deleted the fact she was able to access the device.

Returned it to its place, her heart drumming in her ears.

The third step had been outside help.

In a simple black coat and her hair pulled back from her face, Anya arrived at the Goldcrest Hotel unchallenged. She’d pawned one of her mother’s forgotten watches for cash, a bribe just enough to stoke the night manager’s greed.

He had eyed her up and down, wariness competing with lust in his eyes, before finally pocketing the envelope. “Suite 1403,” she’d whispered. “Check-ins under Marcus Webb. I want everything.”

Fifteen minutes and an envelope later, she had printouts of bookings, check-in dates matching receipts she’d found on Marcus’s laptop, and grainy stills from the security cameras. Elena, gold coat swirling around her like a halo, and Marcus’s hand on her back as they’d entered the elevator.

Proof on top of proof.

When she returned to the Kozlov house that night, her purse bulged at her hip with stolen records, screenshots, and open files. She unloaded the bounty onto her bed, spreading it like armor across the pristine white comforter.

Each piece of evidence cut, slicing open her flesh and leaving her bleeding with the bitter truth.

Her fingers lingered on a hotel confirmation. The check-in date had aligned with the time Marcus had “overslept at the office,” according to his placating email the next morning. The time she’d cried in her bedroom until her lungs ached, when she was too ashamed to wonder why Elena was enough and she never would be.

She remembered everything now.

And it no longer made her cry.

It made her smile, instead.

She spent the next three days with the flash drive in her purse, secret heavy against her hip with each passing hour. At breakfast, she sipped coffee, letting Elena flutter and her parents conduct strategy in the morning haze. But inside, she was on fire.

Once, she caught her sister’s eyes over the table and did not avert her gaze. Elena smirked, acting as if she still wielded any control. Anya allowed it.

Because now she was holding the truth.

And the truth was patient.

Late at night, she stared into the mirror, flash drive in her palm like a holy relic. She barely recognized her reflection. Dark eyes, straighter back. For years, she had been the Kozlov family’s fragile flower, their expendable daughter. Now, she was cradling the knife that could tear them apart.

She thought of Marcus and his smug, charming smile. Elena and the disdain that dripped from every syllable. Her father’s voice, telling her she would never amount to anything. Her mother’s icy face when she had stumbled through a speech in middle school.

She thought of every moment she had been told she was nothing.

She pressed the flash drive to her lips, a vow.

“Not anymore.”

The gala was three days away.

And this time, Anya Kozlov would not stay silent.