I step inside before the thought can settle.
She doesn’t lift her head, but I can feel her attention sharpen the moment I enter. She’s alert. Calculating. Bratva, without question. I still don’t know what convinced her towork with Rinaldi—money, leverage, or revenge—but I can feel the shape of something personal lurking beneath the surface.
I pull out the chair across from her and sit, leaning forward, with my forearms braced against my knees. “You know who I am?”
A rough laugh scrapes out of her throat. “Asher Redmont.” She spits at my feet, saliva pinked with blood.
“Good,” I say calmly. “Then you know what comes next.”
She rolls her shoulders despite the restraints, slow and deliberate. “Torture. Maybe a show. Then death.” Her voice is flat. Unconcerned. Like she’s discussing the weather.
“Not yet.”
Her brows lift, just slightly, but she doesn’t speak. Mav shifts beside me, restless, with barely contained violence vibrating under his skin. Nyx steps forward without waiting for permission and slaps the woman hard enough to snap her head sideways. The sound cracks through the room. Blood blooms at the corner of her mouth.
She grins.
I lean closer. “Tell me about Rinaldi.”
Nyx grips her chin and forces her face up before delivering a backhand that sends another streak of blood across her cheek. The woman blinks slowly, eyes flashing with something sharp and amused.A challenge.
I let the silence stretch, watching her breathe through the pain. “Why did you give Alessandra Moore the laced drugs?”
Recognition flickers across her face. Brief. Gone just as fast.
“Americans are soft,” she sneers. “You think this scares me? Your father was feared once. Now you sit here asking questions like a clerk.”
The words crawl under my skin, dragging old ghosts with them. Richard Redmont’s shadow has always been long. Heavy. I spent my childhood learning exactly what kind of man he was—and exactly what I refused to become. And yet, sitting here and watching blood pool on concrete, I can’t help wondering how much of that choice was ever really mine.
“The Bratva trained me for worse,” she hisses.
Nyx presses her knuckles into a nerve just below the woman’s ribs and twists sharply. The reaction is immediate—a sharp gasp, and a hitch of breath—but no scream. Just that same infuriating grin, blood dripping freely now.
“That all you’ve got?” she taunts.
Nyx grabs her jaw, forcing her to look at me.
I lean in closer, my patience thinning. “Why did you help Rinaldi?”
Her lips curl. “Because your family destroyed mine.”
Nyx drives her fist into the woman’s stomach. A wheeze tears out of her as she folds forward, coughing hard, but she still refuses to scream. She spits blood again, closer to my shoe this time. Defiant even on her knees.
Nyx yanks her upright by the hair, controlled and precise, and that’s when it hits me—the sharp line of her jaw, the fire in her eyes, and the fury she refuses to let go of.
It’s Violet.
Not her. Never her. But close enough to make my chest tighten.
I clench my teeth and force the thought away. This woman is not Violet. But every blow Nyx lands sends a phantom echo through me, twisting something I don’t have time to examine.
“Tell me again,” I say, my voice steady despite the pressure building inside me. “Why did you help Rinaldi?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she snarls. “You grew up in power. You’ve never had to crawl for anything.”
Nyx twists one of her fingers back until it pops. The sound is sharp, final. The woman gasps, breath stuttering, but the fire in her eyes doesn’t dim.
Then she speaks. “My father died on his knees,” she says hoarsely. “Richard Redmont had him slaughtered like an animal. I was a child when they dragged his body through the streets like a warning.” She laughs, broken and bitter. “Rinaldi gave me purpose. And if I can’t have justice, I’ll take revenge. I’ll burn The Order to the ground.”
