We both burst out into laughter. “We did okay in the end, picking men.”
She holds up her cocktail. “Yes. We. Did.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Drago
The house is too quiet when I step back inside.
Not calm.
Just… hollow.
Like it knows she isn’t here.
Lily is safe, but my body doesn’t understand distance. My body still feels like it should be able to reach her by turning my head.
I slam the door shut behind me and walk straight past the kitchen. Straight up the stairs—not even checking where Lev is—down the hallway to the one place in this house that was built for monsters.
The panic room door is disguised as part of the wall, with matte-black wood paneling and no handle or hinges visible. It looks like a design choice.
I press my palm to the panel, feel the faint vibration of the lock engaging. Then I key in the code.
A battlefield, hidden beneath a home. Everything in here is clean. No clutter. No softness. Guns are arranged like surgicalinstruments. Ammo stacked by calibre. Medical kit. Cash bundles sealed in plastic. Passports in a metal box.
And the safe.
It’s built into the wall, flush and seamless, with a biometric scanner and a manual key override because I don’t trust tech alone. Not with my life. Not with hers.
I crouch, press my thumb to the scanner.
Green light.
Then I enter the second code, the one I never say out loud, the one carved into my spine like a scar.
Inside, velvet-lined shelves hold the things I don’t touch often.
The things that aren’t weapons. The things that have meaning.
My eyes skate across the ring that Lily was wearing the night of her final ballet show. The one that fell from her finger and landed in my car. A piece of her that I always kept with me.
My fingers hover over it for a second before I pull out the small black box containing the necklace.
Simple at first glance. Elegant. Almost delicate. A thin chain. A lock charm covered in diamonds and a key dangling over it.
If you didn’t know what it was, you’d think it was just a father’s parting gift.
A keepsake.
But Lev doesn’t give gifts like other men. Lev gives contingencies and insurance. This necklace isn’t jewellery. It’s a fucking vault.
A storage device disguised as sentiment, built to hold everything Lev has learned over the years… and everything he’s never said out loud. Everything he kept so no one could ever bury him without consequences.
Secrets about Tatiana.
Her family.
Her empire.
