"And?" I whisper. "What did you do?"
"I went to the meet," Silas says. "I found him in a warehouse in Montauk."
"And you made the trade?"
"No."
Silas pushes off the table and walks toward me. He stops in front of the bed, looking down at me with eyes that are dark and ancient.
"I don't trade what is mine, Ivy. Not for anything. Not for anyone."
"So... where is he?"
"He’s dead."
I flinch. Even expecting it, hearing it out loud is a physical blow.
"Did Nikolai kill him?"
"No," Silas says. "I did."
Silence descends on the bunker. The hum of the air filtration system seems to get louder.
He killed my father.
The man who stood in the kitchen making pancakes when I was five. The man who taught me to ride a bike before the gambling took his soul. The man who looked me in the eye and lied about the rent money. The man who offered me to the Russian mob to save his own skin.
Silas put a bullet in him.
I look up at Silas. I search for regret in his face. There is none. There is only a brutal honesty. He isn't asking for forgiveness. He is stating a fact.
"He was a liability," Silas says. "As long as he was alive, he was a weakness. He would have sold you again. He would have told them how to get to you. He was the leak."
"You killed him," I repeat, testing the weight of the sentence.
"Yes."
I wait for the anger. I wait for the hatred to come rushing back, the hatred I felt when he first kidnapped me.
But it doesn't come.
Instead, I feel... light.
A weight I have been carrying since I was twelve years old—the weight of my father’s failures, his debts, his pathetic neediness—is suddenly gone. The cord has been cut.
"Good," I whisper.
Silas blinks, surprised. "Good?"
"He sold me," I say, my voice gaining strength. "He sold me to you. Then he tried to sell me to Nikolai. He didn't love me, Silas. He just wanted to cash out."
I stand up. The towel slips a little, exposing my shoulder.
"You’re the only one who paid the price and kept the receipt," I say. "You’re the only one who actually wantedme."
I step closer to him. I place my hand on his bare chest, right over his heart. It’s beating steady and strong.
"He’s gone," I say. "I have no one left."
