“Is that all you’ve got?” I ask. “I’ve heard better from you, Bogdan. At least when you used to threaten me in person, you had the spine to hit me where it hurts.”
Pyotr stares at me. Boris stares at me. Even Tony sucks in a breath on the other end of the line.
“You ungrateful?—”
“Ungrateful?” The word comes out of me like a bullet. “For what? For the cracked ribs I told the ER doctor I got from falling down the stairs? For the black eye I covered with foundation before Kira’s preschool dropoff? For the anniversary dinner, when you smiled at the waiter and held my hand across the table while the bruises on my wrist turned yellow under my sleeve?” I’m breathing hard, but my voice doesn’t waver. “For the three years I spent running from city to city with our daughter, sleeping on borrowed couches because the man who was supposed to protect us was the one we needed protection from?”
My voice is climbing, and I don’t care. Every word I swallowed during our marriage is clawing its way up my throat, and for once in my goddamn life, I’m letting it come.
“You want to talk about destruction? Let’s talk about it. You destroyed our marriage the first time you put your hands on me. You destroyed our family the night Kira watched you throw me into a bookshelf and stood there screaming while you walked away. You destroyed any chance of being a father when you used our daughter as leverage to keep me under your thumb.” I’mpacing the kitchen now. Pyotr tracks me with his eyes, but he doesn’t move to stop me. “I didn’t destroy your empire, Bogdan. You did. The second you decided to forge my name on those accounts, you signed your death warrant. I just delivered it.”
“You think this is over?” His voice is shaking now, and God help me, I revel in it. “This isn’t over, Daria. Not by a long shot. I will find you. I don’t care how many Kozlov soldiers you surround yourself with or how far you run or who you hide behind. You belong to me. You have always belonged to me, and no amount of?—”
“I don’t belong to you.” I say it calmly. “I never did. You just convinced me otherwise because that’s the only way a man like you knows how to keep a woman. Not through love or respect. Through fear.”
“Daria—”
“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
He’s panting on the other end, and behind the sound is the faint mumble of another voice, probably one of the men who fled the warehouse beside him. A year ago, this silence would have terrified me.
But this isn’t his silence. It’s mine.
“You should be,” he whispers.
“No. I shouldn’t. Because here’s what you don’t understand. Yesterday, your people sat in your warehouse cleaning their guns and counting your money while you told yourself you were untouchable. This morning, they’re in zip-ties, giving up every secret you ever trusted them with. Your uncle cut you loose. Your accounts are frozen. You’re driving somewhere with twomen and whatever cash you grabbed on the way out, and you’re calling me because I’m the only person left on earth who youassumedwould be scared enough to listen.”
I stop pacing and plant my feet. “I’m not listening anymore.”
“Daria, I swear to God?—”
“Swear all you want. Threaten all you want. It doesn’t change anything. You’re alone, Bogdan. Maybe for the first time in your life.” I pull the phone from my ear for a second. Pyotr nods once. Keep going. “You called because you needed to hear my voice break. To know you still had power. But my voice isn’t breaking. Can you hear that? Can you hear how steady I am right now?”
Nothing. Just breathing.
“Run,” I tell him. “Run as far and as fast as you can. Because the men who took your warehouse apart this morning are coming for you. This time, they won’t leave empty-handed.”
“You’ll regret this,” he snaps.
“I regret a lot of things, Bogdan. Marrying you tops the list. But this conversation is the first thing I’ve done in six years that I won’t regret.”
I pull the phone from my ear, hit the end button, and hurl it across the room with a scream.
When I walk over to where it landed, my reflection stares back at me from the black glass, and the woman looking back is someone I don’t recognize. I’m no longer the terrified girl who used to answer Bogdan’s calls in the bathroom with the faucet running so Kira wouldn’t hear her cry. I’m someone else. Someone new.
My hands are shaking now. For a moment, the old panic comes to life in my stomach, the instinct to curl inward and make myself small and wait for the aftermath.
But the shaking isn’t from fear this time. I know the difference because my body has spent three years teaching me the vocabulary of terror, and this isn’t it.
This is rage. Pure and clean and mine.
“Tony?” Boris’ voice cuts through the kitchen.
“Still running. Got a partial. Give me another minute.” Keys click on his end, rapid and steady. Then: “Cell tower ping puts him north of Vyborg. He’s headed toward the border.”
“Finnish border,” Boris grumbles, and he runs one hand across the back of his neck before glancing at Pyotr.
Pyotr is already pulling his phone from his pocket. “I need to call Dmitri.”
