But they could be persuaded.
When—not if—the time came.
I stared at the dark reflection in the window, the lake beyond it swallowing the moon, and felt the familiar, terrible calm settle into my bones.
I wanted the Orlov bloodline erased.
Every last one of them.
Including the woman standing on the other side of my door—still clinging to the delusion that she could thaw a heart that had frozen solid the day I lost Penelope.
Some hearts don’t heal.
They harden.
And when they break, they take empires with them.
Rage surged, hot and directionless.
My hand twitched toward the edge of the desk, ready to flip it, to shatter something—anything—when a knock cut through the room.
“Who is it?” I barked without turning.
“There is news, boss,” Giovanni’s voice came from the hallway—low, controlled, the way it always was when something had gone very wrong.
I frowned. He had taken two bullets shielding Vanya during the retrieval. He should have been sedated, monitored, kept far from stairs and stress.
“Come in.”
The door opened.
Giovanni stepped inside slowly, his movements measured against pain he refused to show.
His face was pale beneath the harsh light, but his eyes were sharp—too sharp for a man who was supposed to be resting. In his uninjured hand, he held an iPad.
“You should be in bed,” I said, forcing my voice into something steadier as I sank into the leather chair and turned to face him. “We’ll plan how to dismantle the Orlovs once you’re healed.”
He shook his head once. Firm. Final.
“This cannot wait.”
That alone set my spine rigid.
Giovanni crossed the room and set the iPad on the desk between us. His jaw tightened as he straightened. “The Orlov ambush was not improvisation. It was timed. Coordinated.”
“I know,” I said flatly. “They wanted leverage.”
“They wanted more than leverage,” he replied. “They wanted confirmation.”
My fingers curled slowly against the armrest. “Confirmation of what?”
Giovanni unlocked the screen and turned it toward me. Surveillance footage filled the display—grainy but clear enough. A roadside camera. The moment of the ambush. The car braking hard. Gunfire. Giovanni pulling Vanya from the backseat, shielding him with his body as bullets shattered glass.
Then the frame froze.
Giovanni zoomed in.
On Vanya’s face.
