"To what?" Semyon stops again, facing me. "Maksim, think about this logically. What did she actually gain from your death? She was going to marry you and become your queen. She was going to have everything. Power, protection, status. Why would she throw that away?"
"Because she wanted more!" The words explode out of me. "She didn't want to be someone's wife, playing second to a man. She wanted power in her own right."
"So she had you killed, knowing it would bring suspicion on her family? Knowing it would destroy her reputation and force her to rebuild from nothing?" Semyon's voice drips skepticism. "That's a hell of a gamble for someone who's supposedly brilliant and strategic."
"She made it work, didn't she?" I resume walking, faster now. "Look at her now. The Ice Queen. Feared and respected."
"Built an empire while grieving," Semyon corrects. "Everyone who knew her then says she was devastated for months. Barely functional."
"Or she's a good actress."
We walk in silence for a block. The rage is a living thing inside me, demanding satisfaction, demanding blood. My need to avenge my death is the only thing that kept me alive.
I can’t let go of it.
"You're not going to listen to reason, are you?" Semyon asks finally.
"I spent six years in hell because of her." I stop at an intersection, watching cars pass. "Six years of torture and planning revenge.I can't—Iwon't—accept that I was wrong about who betrayed me."
"Even if the evidence points somewhere else?"
"What evidence?" I round on him. "Everything I've heard confirms it. Her family needed money. I disappeared. She took over and built power. The math isn't complicated."
"You loved her."
"I did." Past tense. Deliberate. "Which makes the betrayal worse. She taught me a valuable lesson. I will never allow a woman to make me weak again."
He lets out a sigh. “I think you need to talk with her. Ask her. Why would she want you dead?”
"I told Kira everything," I admit. "About wanting to change how we operated. Move away from the brutal tactics. She listened to all of it."
"And what did she say?"
"She..." I pause, trying to remember. "She supported it. Said she was tired of the violence too. Wanted to build something better."
"Sounds like she agreed with you."
"Or she was pretending to agree while planning to eliminate me."
I remember her face when I talked about the future. The hope in her eyes. All of our conversations about raising a family in a life less brutal than the one we'd inherited.
"You're reaching," Semyon says gently. "Creating motives that don't exist because you need someone to blame."
"I need the person responsible to pay." I lean against a brick wall, suddenly exhausted.
"So you'd rather be wrong and get revenge than be right and lose your purpose?"
The question hangs between us like an accusation.
"Tell me honestly," I say after trying to see it from his side. "Do you think she betrayed me?"
Semyon meets my eyes. "Honestly? No. I think she loved you. I think she was destroyed when you disappeared.”
"But you don't know for sure."
"No. I don't know for sure." He pauses. "But neither do you. And you're planning to destroy her based on a theory that has more holes than evidence."
The anger surges back, hot and familiar. “Bullshit. My captors told me it was her that sold me out!”
