Her mouth twitches—a crack in the mask.
“You think I don’t know?” I continue. “Monaco. The charity auction.Graham Beckett.” Each word is a scalpel, peeling heropen. “You let him sink his claws into you while our daughter was still kicking inside you.”
Irina’s nostrils flare. That same desperate, spoiled look flickers in her eyes—the one that got her into this mess in the first place.
“At least he offered me a real life,” she snaps, brittle. “Not a prison built on blood and silence.”
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. A train rattles in the distance—loud, ugly, empty.
I smile—not because it’s funny. Because it’s pathetic.
“Offered you a fantasy,” I correct her, stepping closer. “You traded loyalty for lies. Traded a family for a con artist who only needed your last name to rob you blind.”
Her face tightens.Good.I’m just getting started.
“You had everything,” I go on. “Protection. Status. Power. A seat at the table most women in this life would kill for.”
A gust of dirty station air whips between us, hot and stale. It smells like piss and regret.
“And you pissed it all away for a crypto-broker with a fake Rolex and a dick full of promises.”
She flinches.
I lean in until there’s no air left between us.
“You didn’t just screw yourself, Irina. You left three kids behind like yesterday’s trash.”
Her lip trembles. She’s breaking—too little, too late.
“Alya. Lev. Nikolai,” I finish, each name a punch. “You left three kids sitting by a door you were never planning to walk back through.”
I let the noise of the station swallow the moment—the grinding brakes, the squeal of old metal. The sound of another train she’s not smart enough to catch before it crushes her.
“You forfeited your place the second you opened your legs for him,” I say, voice flat as concrete. “And don’t think crawling back changes a damn thing.”
She flinches like I struck her. Tears flood her eyes, mascara bleeding.
“I was scared—”
“You were selfish,” I cut her off. “You wanted Paris and diamonds. You wanted freedom from a life you never deserved in the first place.”
Irina’s mouth trembles. She looks smaller now. Hollowed out.
“I made a mistake—” she starts.
“You made a choice,” I snap.
The silence that follows is deafening.
Timur’s voice crackles in my earpiece. “Clear shot. Orders?”
I stare at her—the ruin of the woman I once married. The ruin she made of herself.
And I realize something bitter:
I could nod. Let Timur end it. It would be justice.
But when I close my eyes, it’s not Irina’s face I see. It’s Lev, rolling his eyes at me over breakfast. It’s Nikolai, grinning like a wolf after sneaking sweets. It’s Alya, asleep with her stuffed bear clutched to her chest.
