Page 164 of Cruel Juliet

I notice Petyr’s been quiet for a long time. “Everything okay?” I ask.

He nods. “Better than okay.”

His voice is low, uncertain. Like he’s unsure how to bring up a subject. But then he says, “I found her.”

I blink, unsure I heard right. “You…?”

“Your sister. I found her.”

My breath catches. “Lara?”

“Yes.” He nods again. “She’s alive.”

For a second, I forget how to breathe. My mind struggles to catch up, to believe him. All those years of not knowing, of wonderingif she was still out there somewhere, or gone like the rest of them.

It feels impossible that she’s real again. Alive.

I twist in his arms, face him fully. “Where is she?”

“Still with Volkov,” Petyr warns. “But not for long.” His eyes darken. “I have someone on the inside. If she wants to be freed from her marriage, they’ll give her an out. She’ll be safe.”

He doesn’t say how, but he doesn’t have to. I know what his words mean.

Freeing her from that marriage is code. The kind that leaves no witnesses. He’s giving her that choice. Her, and me.

And honestly? I don’t care if it’s wrong to want it.

Timur Volkov was always cruel. He married my sister like he was buying cattle. A man twice her age, and yet shameless in his greed.

If Petyr’s people end him, it’s no more than he deserves.

“She’s really alive,” I whisper again, almost afraid the words will shatter if I say them too loud.

“She is,” Petyr says. “And if she wants to come home, she will.”

I press my hands to my mouth, fight the sob that threatens to break out. All the air rushes out of me at once.

I’ve dreamed of this moment so many times. Waking up to a world where Lara wasn’t just a ghost from a past I couldn’t bury. A world where she could be herself again. Alive again.

But I never thought I’d live to see it.

“Petyr,” I choke, “you… you did this?”

“Of course.” He tilts his head. “You asked me to.”

My heart aches in the best way. I reach for him, my fingers on his jaw, the edge of his beard. My gaze snatches on the long scar across his arm. The one I thought I might lose him to.

He’s here. Whole. Mine.

And now. he’s giving me back the one thing I thought I’d lost forever.

“I don’t even know what to say,” I whisper.

“Then don’t.” He pulls me close again. “You don’t have to say anything.”

But I do. Because this man—this impossible, complicated, infuriating man—has given me everything I ever wanted. A home. A family. And now, the hope that my sister might finally be free.

My heart feels too full.