"Alena." My voice was steady, but everything inside me was screaming. "You understand how I feel. You just said it. You loved my mother. You know what this is."
He tilted his head, considering.
"She's spiralling," I continued, putting everything I had into it—every ounce of desperation, every plea I couldn't let show on my face. "We've been together seventeen years. Together every day. She—" My voice cracked. I let it. "Please."
The word came out raw. Broken.
Klaus stared at me. Moments passed—long, heavy, the oxygen tank hissing softly in the silence.
"No," he said finally. Voice cold. Final.
I lost it.
My fist slammed the table—crystal jumping, wine sloshing over the rim. "You just told me you know what this feels like!"
"I do," he said calmly. Too calmly. "That's why I say no."
I stared at him, chest heaving.
"You are still too raw," he continued, voice matter-of-fact. "You will give away why you are here. You will say too much. You will put her in more danger than I ever could. Because your enemies will see your weakness and use it. I say no to protect her."
I laughed—bitter, broken. "Protect her? By letting her think I abandoned her?"
"By keeping her alive." He leaned forward, eyes burning with something that might have been sincerity. "Once, I imagined it too. You and me on a porch somewhere quiet. Alena with a toddler laughing in the garden. I wanted to be a grandfather. I wanted peace."
He paused, eyes distant again.
"But our blood, son, is violence. Peace is not for us. We take what we want. We protect what is ours. We do not beg for it."
He raised his glass one last time.
"To blood."
This time, I drank.
But not because he was right.
I drank because the vodka burned, and the burn reminded me I was still alive. Still thinking. Still planning. The business card in my pocket felt like a loaded gun—small, hidden, deadly.
Klaus watched me drain the glass and smiled. Satisfied. Triumphant.
He thought he'd won.
But I'd catalogued four potential allies today. Learned the money flows. Identified who was loyal and who was just waiting for Klaus to die. The hacker had given me a lifeline. Sergei was ambitious. Viktor was professional. And Klaus—Klaus was dying faster than he wanted anyone to know.
I set the glass down. Met his eyes.
"To blood," I said.
And inside, where he couldn't see, I made a different toast.
To the last time I drink to yours.
26
ALENA
A week. Or more. Who the fuck knows. Time had turned into a joke with no punchline.
