“Look…” Hawk stands and follows Cian’s pacing. “I did what I did because I was tired of being overlooked. It must be fate or something that you survived because you are my ticket to the power I want, and I am the ticket to the respect you want. We can help each other. Don’t you see how perfect this is?”
Cian seems to mull it over before he nods. “I do.”
“Then do we have a deal?” Hawk holds out his hand. “Together, we’ll soar higher than Cormac ever did.”
Cian gazes down at Hawk’s hand and then he clasps it in his own. “Sure.”
“Excellent!” Hawk walks back to the table, then he pauses and rotates to Cian. “There’s just one teeny-tiny detail.”
“Which is?”
“Her.” Hawk points at me. “I’ll give you the world, Cian. We will take over the world and all organized crime will be under the Hexagon umbrella, but you have to prove you’re really on my side.”
“How do I do that?”
Hawk slowly picks up his gun and whistles, which brings in an armed guard from one of the nearby rooms, then he holds out the handgun to Cian. “Kill her.”
I leap to my feet immediately. “Cian, no!”
Cian’s staring at the gun as if it’s something that just spawned in Hawk’s hand.
“She lied to you,” Hawk continued. “But I’m not going to persuade you to make this choice. This is your choice, Cian. Are you choosing a future with me where we become the greatest criminal legacies the world has ever seen? Or does your story end here, with her?”
“Don’t listen to him, Cian! He’s using you, can’t you see that? All he cares about is getting an anchor in New York and he can’t do that without you!”
My heart races and a thousand thoughts clash together in my mind. It’s one thing to try and persuade Hawk that Cian is on his side, but killing me to prove that? The guard behind Cian keeps his rifle trained on him at all times, likely ready to fire if Cian tries to do anything other than what’s asked of him.
I try to back away toward one of the doors but the moment I get close, it opens and I’m face to face with another gunman. With nowhere to run, I’m cornered with a gunman to my left, Cian and Hawk in front of me, and a railing behind me leading to the cold, dark abyss of the ocean.
Cian very slowly takes the gun.
“I’m tired, Faina,” he says quietly. “I’m tired of living for other people’s agendas. Tired of chasing after what I thinktheythink I should do. I want to live for me, and how can I trust that you won’t hand me over to the cops the next time I piss you off?”
“Cian,please!” My heart pounds faster and faster, causing my hands to tremble when I press them together. “I?—”
The wordsI’m pregnantrest on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spilled out in front of everyone, but in the end, what good would it do? Either Cian kills me or Hawk does, or worse, he does something to the baby inside me as soon as I reveal it. Praying Cian has a plan becomes a distant thought as Cian slowly walks past Hawk and lifts his weapon to me.
Our eyes meet. “Please,” I gasp. “It can’t end like this.”
“Can’t it?” he replies.
“What a show.” Hawk smirks proudly. “Who knew the cold Russian had feelings?”
“Fuck you,” I snarl. “Fuck you! You think you can just get away with this, but let’s be honest, even if you take him back to New York and try to present him, what’s going to make all the people who overlooked him previously even care to look at him now? Being the sole survivor ten months later only buys a little goodwill!”
“You think they’ll overlook me?” Cian asks slowly. “Is that really what you think of me?”
“No! I didn’t mean it like that! I just?—”
Our eyes meet again while Hawk snatches up the wine bottle behind him. Cian’s left eye twitches faintly and the corner of his mouth ticks upward just a fraction.
Is this part of his plan? What the hell is he going to do? I can’t barely think straight between the pressure building in my chest and the panic that whatever happens next won’t be enough to buy Cian any kind of time.
But I have to trust him. It’s the only chance I have.
“I loved you,” Cian says firmly. “I think part of me always will, but I can’t be a nobody anymore. I can’t be this ghost.”
“Cian—”
