My hand shook as I answered. “Hello?”
“You did what?” His voice was pure venom, low and dangerous in a way that made my skin crawl. “You let some Bratva asshole into the mansion?”
“Dad hired him. I didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Barbara.” I could hear him moving, could picture him pacing in whatever shithole apartment he was living in this week. “You could’ve talked Daddy out of it. Made up some excuse. But instead, you just rolled over and let it happen.”
“The system was compromised,” I said, hating how defensive I sounded. “They found the loops. I couldn’t stop them from—”
“I don’t give a fuck about your excuses.” His voice rose. “Figure it out. Stall the Bratva guy. Distract him.”
My stomach turned. “Sebastian….”
“I need cash, Barbara. Real cash. And I can’t risk meeting you outside anymore, not with Los Zetas breathing down myneck. Which means you need to make sure I can still get into that mansion.”
“I can’t—”
“You can.” The threat in his voice was unmistakable. “And you will. Unless you want that video to go viral. Unless you want everyone to see exactly what kind of girl you really are.”
Tears burned behind my eyes again. “Please. Just give me some time….”
“You’ve got three days.” He said it like a judge handing down a sentence. “Three days to figure out how to get me in, or I start sending that video around. I think I’d start with Daddy dearest. Let him see what his precious princess was doing.”
I flinched, my free hand gripping the edge of the bed. My eyes fell on the mirror again—on those bruises barely visible beneath my robe. I closed my eyes, trying to block it all out. The fear. The shame. The suffocating weight of it all.
“Three days, Barbara. Don’t disappoint me.”
The line went dead.
I sat there in the darkness, phone clutched in my hand, body shaking with something between rage and despair. Three days. He’d given me three days to somehow circumvent military-grade security installed by a man who could probably hack into government databases in his sleep.
I was suffocating. The walls of my beautiful bedroom felt like they were closing in. The air was too thick, too heavy, too hard to breathe.
I needed help. Knew I needed help. Could feel it in the way my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, in the panic that hit at random times, in the way I’d started flinching at sudden movements.
But I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready to ask for help, to admit what had happened, to face the judgment that would follow.Wasn’t ready for the video to go public, for everyone to see, for my entire life to implode.
Not yet.
Because some prisons didn’t have doors. Some chains were invisible. And some mistakes followed you forever, no matter how desperately you wanted to escape them.
Chapter 8 – Kirill
The parking lot was nearly empty at this hour, the shopping mall behind us already closed, its darkened windows reflecting the neon signs from the street. Red and blue light flickered across concrete while the air smelled like exhaust and rain that hadn’t fallen yet, thick with the promise of a storm.
Illyana walked beside me, her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, blonde hair pulled back in a way that made her look younger than nineteen. But there was nothing young about the way she moved—all controlled grace, like a blade waiting to be drawn.
We’d been grabbing coffee, of all things. A normal activity for normal people. Except we weren’t normal people, and even something as mundane as coffee came with an edge of danger that never quite went away.
“So this Douglas bastard,” Illyana said, her breath misting in the cold air. “How long have you been hunting him?”
“Four years.” The words came out flat, emotionless. Four years of my life consumed by the need for revenge. Four years of chasing shadows and dead ends. “He stole from the Bratva. Made me look like a fool. Nearly got me killed.”
“And Vladimir won’t let you put a bullet in him when you find him?”
“No killing.” I shoved my hands deeper into my jacket pockets. “That was the deal. I find him, I bring him in, and the Bratva handles the rest. But my hands stay clean.”
Illyana snorted. “Your hands were never clean, Kirill. None of ours are.”
