Dimitri wheels on him.
“Oplo. TÓRA!” he shrieks.
The guard falters. His gaze flicks to me, then back to Dimitri. His Adam’s apple bobs hard. He doesn’t want to give up the weapon.
Then Dimitri backhands him so hard the kid stumbles into the wall.
“TÓRA!”
The second scream rattles the windowpanes.
The young guard shakes but finally hands over the gun.
Dimitri snatches it like it’s a trophy he’s earned through rage alone. He waves it wildly as he stalks back toward me.
“Oh fantastic,” I mutter under my breath. “Give the unhinged drunk a firearm. Genius-level thinking there, guys.”
One of the men actually winces.
Good. They should be afraid.
Dimitri presses the barrel of the gun under my chin so hard the cold metal digs into my skin.
“Do you know what he did to me?” he rasps.
“Let me guess,” I whisper. “He existed.”
His face twists.
“Everything should have been mine. Everything. I was the eldest. I was the one meant to inherit. But your pretty little prince? His whore mother ruined everything. He ruined everything just by being born.”
The bile rises in my throat—not because of his words, but because of the hatred burning behind them.
It’s bottomless. Sick. Consuming.
“You’re going to be the first to suffer,” he says, voice low, deadly calm now. “The first piece he loses. The first thing I break. Because that boy?—”
He lowers himself until we’re eye level.
“—that boy cares about you.”
Fear punches through my chest like a crowbar.
My heart stutters.
Stops.
Screams.
Not for me.
For Atlas.
Because he’s right.
Atlas is going to come for me.
And Dimitri wants him to.
