The room goes silent.
The silence isn't peaceful. It’s the breathless, vacuum-sealed silence that happens right before an explosion.
I stop moving. My hand hovers over a scalpel on the tray.
"Repeat that," I say.
Marcus swallows hard, sweat dripping from his nose. He thinks he sees a lifeline. He thinks he’s negotiating. "Ivy. She’s... she’s beautiful. Twenty. Virgin, as far as I know. Clean. Smart. She’s at Parsons. She’s worth way more than two hundred. You can... you can take her. Train her. Sell her. Whatever."
He looks at the Russians, desperate. "She’s prime stock. I kept her away from all this. She’s pure."
Pure.
The word hangs in the air, tainted by the filth of his mouth.
He’s selling her.
My Ivy. The girl who whispers to ghosts in the dark. The girl whose reflection I branded. He’s trading her like a used car to settle a gambling debt with two bottom-feeding Russians.
A red haze creeps into my peripheral vision, similar to what happened in the confessional, but this is colder. This is focused.
"You’re offering your daughter," I clarify, picking up the scalpel. The light glints off the surgical steel. "To settle your debt with the Bratva."
"Yes!" Marcus nods frantically. "Alexei said they’d take her. It’s a fair trade, right? A life for a life."
I turn to Alexei. "Is that true? You’d take her?"
Alexei shrugs, smirking. "Why not? A pretty American girl? We could have some fun with her for a few weeks, break her in, then ship her to the houses in Dubai. We’d make our money back in a month."
Break her in.
Ship her.
Dubai.
I nod slowly. "I see."
I move so fast it doesn't even register as movement.
I step forward and drive the scalpel into Alexei’s eye.
He screams—a guttural, wet sound that echoes off the tiled walls. I don't let go. I twist the handle, severing the optic nerve,pushing deeper into the brain matter. He drops to his knees, thrashing, hands clawing at his face.
Dmitri roars and reaches for his waistband, but Luca is faster. Two shots ring out.Pop. Pop.Dmitri drops, a hole in his forehead and another in his throat.
Alexei stops twitching. He slumps to the floor, dead, the scalpel still protruding from his socket like a grotesque antenna.
The room is quiet again, save for the ringing in my ears and Marcus’s hyperventilating sobs.
I pull a handkerchief from my pocket and wipe a speck of blood from my cheek. I look down at the bodies. It’s messy. I hate messes.
"Luca," I say calmly. "Clean this up. The usual disposal."
"On it," Luca says, holstering his weapon. He doesn't even blink. He knows the rules. No one touches what is mine. No one eventhinksabout touching what is mine.
I turn to Marcus.
He’s paralyzed with terror. He’s staring at Alexei’s body, then at me. He’s realized, too late, that he made a fatal calculation error.
