We leave cash on the table. The café noise swallows us as we step outside, the cold air biting at my lungs. Nikolai moves ahead toward the car.
Selene falls into step beside me, close enough that it feels deliberate. “You look like hell,” she says softly.
“Don’t,” I reply.
She hums, amused. “You’re worried about the wound or about her?”
I don’t answer. I keep walking. My shoulder aches, fever simmering under my skin.
Selene keeps pace. “If Irina thinks you killed Kirov, she’s going to make sure everyone else thinks it too. That’s the point. It isolates you.”
“I know,” I say.
“And if the item is missing,” she continues, voice still light, “someone else has it. Someone who can use it. That makes this less about revenge and more about control.”
I stop near the car and turn on her. “Why are you really coming with us?”
Selene’s smile disappears. For once she looks almost tired. “Because it was my plan to get Kirov onboard.”
We drive toward Brighton, the city blurring past. I watch the streets, the intersections, the faces at crosswalks. Normal people, normal lives. The contrast makes my teeth grind.
My phone buzzes once. A message from home security. Bella is in the living room. Lily is awake. For a second, I imagine Bella at the window again, trying to make sense of what she’s fallen into. Trying to decide if she should run.
Selene’s voice cuts into my thoughts from the back seat. “You haven’t told her everything.”
I don’t look back. “No.”
“Good,” Selene says. “She’s not ready.”
Nikolai’s eyes flick to me in the mirror. A warning. A question. I give him nothing.
My hands curl into fists on my knees. A storm is coming, and I don’t know how we’re going to survive it.
21
BELLA
I tellmyself I’m not going to do it.
I tell myself it’s none of my business, that I have no right to dig through a world that is not mine. I tell myself I should read Lily a book, pretend this is a normal apartment and not a fortress with secrets sealed behind closed doors.
But the moment Lily goes down for her nap, curled on her side with her bunny under her chin, the silence presses in.
And the door in the hallway might as well be humming.
The one Nikolai closed in my face earlier.
I stand next to Lily’s bed for a long second, watching her chest rise and fall. I adjust the blanket, tuck a curl behind her ear.
The hallway feels longer than before. I pass the studio door, the one I found by accident, and I don’t look at it. I can’t handle that room right now. Not the drawings, not the proof of how deep this goes.
The office door is at the end, slightly recessed, the kind of placement that makes it feel deliberate. Hidden. Private.
I reach for the handle.
It’s locked.
Of course it is.
