Uncle Matthew. On Dad’s yacht. The night before the explosion.
My fingers find the gold lighter on the desk, flipping it open. The flame catches.
“The marina’s security system backed everything up to a cloud server,” Wesley continues. “Your uncle paid them to delete the local files. Didn’t think to check for redundancy.”
The time stamp reads 11:47 p.m. Matthew’s wearing dark clothes, leather gloves. He moves with purpose across the deck, disappearing into the cabin. Twelve minutes later, he emerges empty-handed and walks away like he’s taking an evening stroll.
“What did he do down there?” My voice sounds hollow, distant.
“Gas line tampering, most likely. Something that wouldn’t show on the inspection but would fail catastrophically once your father was at sea.”
Now I have proof beyond question.
Murder.
Not an accident. Not a gas leak. Cold, calculated, premeditated murder by the man who’s been fucking my mother behind my father’s back for years.
“Izzy?” Wesley’s voice pulls me back. “You still there?”
“Yeah.” I close the lighter before the heat burns my palm. “Send everything to the police. To the DA. To every news outlet you can think of.”
“That’ll destroy your mother, too. The affair, the conspiracy?—”
“Good. She chose her lover over my father. Over me. She doesn’t get to walk away clean.”
“And Matthew?”
I look at the lighter in my hand. Gold and scorched and all I have left of a man who taught me that everyone deserves grace, even monsters.
But Dad’s dead. And the people who killed him don’t deserve anything but fire.
“Maybe sit on it for a while,” I whisper. “I might have another way to end this.”
I hang up and sit in the darkness of Sergei’s office, the lighter warm in my palm. The footage plays on loop—Matthew boarding the yacht, disappearing below deck, emerging with my father’s death programmed into faulty gas lines.
Behind me, the door opens. Sergei’s presence fills the space before he speaks.
“Wesley called?” He moves behind my chair, hands settling on my shoulders. The touch grounds me, keeps me from flying apart.
“He found it. Security footage of Matthew tampering with the yacht’s gas line. Proof.” I lean back into him, needing the weight of him. “It’s murder, Sergei. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Premeditated, calculated murder.”
His fingers tighten on my shoulders. “Show me.”
I play the footage. Watch Matthew’s face in grainy black and white, watch him kill my father twelve hours before the explosion, without swinging a single blade or pulling a trigger. Clean. Efficient. Cowardly.
When it ends, Sergei’s silent for too long. His hands have gone still on my shoulders, and I feel the violence coiling through him like a live wire waiting to connect.
“Wesley’s waiting for my permission to send everything to the authorities,” I say quietly. “Matthew would be arrested. Prosecuted. He’d spend the rest of his life in prison.”
“That’s too easy.” Sergei’s voice is ice wrapped in gravel. “Prison means three meals and a bed. It means living.”
“It means justice,” I argue, though I don’t believe it myself.
“No,kotyonok. It means waiting. Courts and lawyers and appeals while he breathes free air and plots his next move. I can handle this faster. Cleaner.”
I should say no. Should insist we do this legally, that we let the system work. That’s what Dad would want—justice through proper channels, not vengeance served by The Wolf.
But Dad’s gone. And I’m tired of being the good daughter who plays by rules written by people like Matthew.
