“Looked for her?”
“No.”
“Good.” Aleksei settles back in his seat and nods. “Because she was a distraction, wasn’t she? A liability. You’re better off without her.”
Say it. Just fucking say it.
“She was irrelevant,” I force out. “A distraction. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more,” Aleksei echoes. “Right. As it should be.” He nods again. “The Korean situation. Don’t disappoint me,bratishka.”
I leave without another word, the folder tucked under my arm, and the door closes behind me with a sound like a coffin lid sealing shut.
The Korean warehouse has a single guard stationed at the back entrance, smoking a cigarette and scrolling through his phone. He doesn’t see me coming until my hand is already on his throat. I squeeze, wrench once, and then he’s as dead as I am.
I stoop down to fish the keys out of his pockets. Then I drag him behind a nearby dumpster, go to the door, and let myself in.
The warehouse interior is exactly what I expected: rows of shipping containers, forklifts parked in neat lines, an office in the back with lights still on. I can hear voices—two, maybe three men. They’re all cackling about something.
I move through the shadows between containers, checking as I go to be sure that my knife is sharpened and my gun is loaded. The office door is unlocked. Sloppy work, this. I push it open and the laughter stops.
Three men sit around a folding table inside. When they see me, one reaches for a gun on the desk, but I’m faster. My pistol is aimed at his head before his fingers touch metal.
“Don’t,” I say in Russian, then repeat it in Korean.
One of them—the oldest, gray at the temples—raises his hands slowly. “We don’t want trouble,” he says carefully.
“Then you shouldn’t have been moving product through O’Hare.” I keep my gun steady, my voice deadened. “That’s Bratva territory now.”
“We had an agreement with?—”
“You had an agreement with people who don’t run things anymore.” I gesture with the gun toward the warehouse floor. “You have two choices: Pack up and leave Chicago, or stay and find out what happens when you ignore a warning.”
The gray-haired man’s jaw tightens. “And if we refuse both?”
I don’t answer. Instead, I shoot the computer on the desk. The monitor explodes in a shower of glass and sparks. All three men flinch.
“That’s your inventory system,” I say. “Next, I burn your product. After that?” I shrug. “The Izotovs get creative.”
I watch the Koreans scramble to gather their things. Their faces are pale in the low light. One of them is already on his phone, probably calling someone higher up to report what just happened. I let them all live, unscathed. Fear spreads faster when there are witnesses to carry the message.
I holster my gun and walk out the way I came. It’s the dead heat of summer, a time of year when the sweat comes as soon as you step foot outside, but I’ve never felt colder. My skin is pure goosebump. As pale and cold as a corpse’s.
This is my life now.
Eliana is gone. She saw what I am and she ran, and she was right to run. I don’t blame her. I don’t blame anyone except myself for ever believing I could be anything other than this.
Sage is leverage now, insurance against my disobedience. Every night I don’t come home, every order I don’t follow, Aleksei will make my brother pay for it.
And resistance? Resistance would only make things worse. For Sage. For everyone.
So I don’t resist. I get in my car, check my phone for the next assignment, and drive toward whatever fresh horror Aleksei has planned. The dead don’t dream, and the dead don’t hope.
The dead just do what they’re told.
I drive to her apartment without meaning to.
It’s three in the morning when I pull up across the street, engine idling, watching the dark windows that used to house her. Her lights haven’t been on in seven weeks. I know because I’ve done this damn near every night since she left.
