"What?"
"After you disappeared. Kira." He moves back into the room, closing the door. "I knew her family back then. Saw her at a few gatherings. She wasn't the same for months. Maybe longer. She was destroyed. I honestly don’t know how she recovered. Everyone speculated she would take her own life."
I don't want to hear this. Don't need his observations complicating the certainty I've built.
"People grieve," I say flatly. "Doesn't mean she didn't cause it."
"Maybe." He pours himself another vodka. "It was real. She was broken. Genuinely broken. She lost a lot of weight.”
"Your point?"
"No point." He downs the vodka. "Just an observation. From someone who's been in this life long enough to know the difference between performance and pain."
He leaves again, and this time he doesn't come back.
I sit there with his words echoing in my head.
Semyon said the same thing. Everyone who saw her in those first months after my disappearance said she was devastated.
But grief can be faked. Manipulated. Used as a tool.
Can't it?
I force myself to remember the evidence. Her father's debts. Her rise to power. The perfect timing of it all.
It fuels my resolve to keep going.
I down the rest of my drink and leave the restaurant. Roman asked me to meet him. I’m not sure why, but to say I’m a little leery is an understatement.
I drive my new car, courtesy of Roman, down to the warehouse district.
The place hasn't changed much in six years. I park the car and climb out. The familiar smell of tires, grease and filth greets me.
I stand across the street from the building where I was taken and can’t help but have a flashback.
An SUV with tinted windows pulls up behind me. Roman climbs out of the backseat.
“What’s this about?”
He raises his hand and makes a gesture. Soon, heavy machinery started rumbling down the road. I frown with confusion.
“It goes down. Now.”
“Goes down?”
“This place is nothing but bad memories,” he says. “It’s better to tear it down and build something new. You’re back. We will rebuild.”
I nod.
He gestures once again, and an excavator moves in. The noise of walls coming down fills the street. Dust rises in large plumes.
I watch and try to remember that night with perfect clarity.
The meeting had been called at the last minute. I should have known something was off. There wasn’t supposed to be a meeting.
And I remember Kira’s words. She told me to be careful. Why? Did she know? She never told me to be careful. Dmitri wasn’tthere when I arrived at the warehouse. I haven’t told anyone about the text that pulled me from Kira’s bed—but she did.
Dmitri had been executed days after my disappearance. I wonder if they were working together, and she turned on him.
