My children.
Not hers anymore.
I realize, with something like horror, that I can’t give the order.
I can’t kill the mother of my children.
Even if she deserves it.
Even if it’s what every cell in my body demands.
I look past her to Timur and Arseny. Shake my head once.
Suka.Stand down.
Arseny exhales, almost a sigh. Timur tilts his head, unreadable.
Irina sags in place, the fight draining out of her like air from a punctured lung.
“Get on the next train,” I tell her, voice a dead thing. “Disappear.”
Her hands flutter uselessly at her purse. She hesitates, desperation flashing like a dying light in her eyes.
“You think they don’t still need me?” she rasps. “The children need their mother.”
The words are the final straw.
Before she can suck in another pathetic breath, I move.
My hand snaps out, fisting the front of her coat. I shove her back against the nearest pillar—not hard enough to knock her out, but hard enough to feel the concrete crack against her spine.
She gasps.
I squeeze—fingers digging into the fragile column of her throat—not choking her fully, but just enough to make her feel it. Just enough to show her how close she is to dying right here, under the cold buzz of fluorescent lights.
“You’re not their mother,” I snarl, low and lethal, inches from her face. “You’re a ghost. A stain they learned to live without.”
Her hands claw weakly at my wrist. Useless.
I lean in closer, tightening my grip another fraction.
“Get the fuck out of my city,” I breathe against her ear, “before they fish your bloated corpse out of the fucking Sacramento River.”
She gurgles a half-sob, half-whimper—her last shred of pride shattering.
I release her with a shove, letting her crumple against the pillar like the pathetic wreck she is.
“And if I don’t?” she manages, voice barely a whisper.
I step into her space again—so close she can taste the steel in my breath, the death in my voice.
“Then next time,” I say, soft and final, “you won’t see me coming.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. No words.
Only the frantic scrape of her shoes as she stumbles toward the waiting train.
Arseny watches her board without blinking. Timur doesn’t move.
