“Her condition is inconvenient,” Thomas replies. “But not unmanageable.”
My stomach twists with cold anger. “She has epilepsy, not an attitude problem.”
“She is leverage,” he counters simply. “Nothing more.”
The word crushes something inside me. Hope isn’t leverage. She’s my baby sister, the person I’ve been protecting my entire life. The person who still crawls into my bed during thunderstorms. The one who calls me her safe place.
I swallow hard, pushing the burn behind my eyes back where it came from. “Why are you doing this? What could we possibly give you that is worth all this?”
A slow smile touches his face, sending a chill over my arms. “Revenge,” he answers plainly. “Isaak tried to have me eliminated. Luka inherited his father's sins. My daughters inherited the cost.”
The words feel like acid. “Cost,” I repeat, the word slipping out in a whisper. “That’s all we are to you?”
“You were useful for a time,” he adds with a shrug. “Less so now.”
Hope kicks at the floor, her chair scraping loudly. She’s trying to say something behind the tape, but the sound is muffled and frantic. Her pupils look too large, and her face is pale. Panic surges in my chest.
“She needs her medication,” I insist as I inch toward her. “Untie her, let me give it to her.”
“No,” Thomas answers without hesitation. “We’re not finished.”
His refusal hits me in the gut. “Do you hear yourself?” I ask, stepping forward another inch. “You’re talking like one of the men you used to warn me about.”
Thomas’s eyes sharpen. “I warned you about the Barinovs. I didn’t warn you about myself.”
I freeze at the honesty in his voice. It doesn’t come from care. It comes from certainty.
The man who tucked me into bed at night. The man who lifted me onto his shoulders at the county fair. The man who let me fall asleep on his chest during movies. That man is gone. I don’t know when he disappeared. Maybe the day he faked his death. Maybe earlier. Maybe he never existed at all.
Footsteps echo from the far side of the warehouse before I can respond. One of Thomas’s men jogs into view, his boots slapping loudly against the concrete.
“Pakhan,” he calls out, breathless. “We got confirmation from the lot. The information’s final.”
Thomas turns with a slow pivot. “Which information?”
“Ray,” the man answers. “He’s dead. They found the body.”
Hope jerks at the name, her eyes widening behind the tape.
Thomas’s expression twists into a colder version of what I thought possible. “My brother,” he mutters. “Useless to the end.”
My heart stutters. “Ray… Ray is dead?”
Thomas turns his gaze back to me. “Your uncle served his purpose. Luka handled the rest.”
A strange wave of relief and terror knocks through me. Relief that Ray can never hurt Hope again. Terror that the only barrier between us and Thomas just disappeared.
Thomas exhales through his nose, a simmer of anger riding underneath the sound. “Everything I built. Everything I planned. And he ruined the order of it.” His eyes land on me again, colder, harder, and crueler. “But I suppose you and your child can make up for the inconvenience.”
My breathing turns shallow in an instant. “My what?”
His mouth curves with icy satisfaction. “I know you’re pregnant. Surveillance works both ways.”
Hope screams against the tape, her body trembling.
My hand flies to my stomach without thought, covering the small flat space that holds a life I haven’t fully understood yet. A life Thomas wants gone.
“You’re out of your mind,” I tell him, my voice shaking. “My baby has nothing to do with you.”
