"So I am going to make this very simple for you." He squeezed harder. "Konstantin has just arrived from Moscow. If you have not resolved this in one week, he resolves it for us. And his methods make mine look gentle. You have one week to prove she is not the problem. Find me proof she is clean, or I will find proof she is dirty. And if I find it first..." He released me. Smoothed his jacket. "Well. You know what happens to rats in restaurants."
He walked to the door, but he paused with his hand on the handle.
"And Milo? If you get in my way when the time comes..." He looked back. Smiled. "I will kill her first. So you can watch what we do to her before you die. Slowly."
The door opened, and warm air rushed in.
Viktor was gone.
I stood in the freezer with blood on my face and ice creeping through my veins.
One week.
Fuck.
***
I stayed until closing.
My nose had stopped bleeding, but the ache had settled into my sinuses. Viktor had pulled the hit perfectly. No broken bones, no visible damage that would show past an hour. Just pain to remind me who was in charge.
Raven finished her set at 10:30. I watched her navigate off the platform, and the thing that used to pique my interest—that bird-tilt of her head, the way she paused between pieces to absorb the room—now made my stomach drop.
Because I knew exactly what she was doing.
She'd told me everything—the names, the dates, the shipments, Judge Whitmore, Yuri's Galveston routes. She'd handed me her loaded gun and I'd kissed her and called her terrifying and never once asked the question I should have asked.
Who else did you tell?
She'd said it was for herself. Insurance. Power. Proof that the blind girl was smarter than they thought.
I'd believed her because all I could think about was being inside her at the time. Because her hand was on my chest and her lips were on my throat and she smelled so sweet and tasted like the only real thing in my hollow fucking life.
But Viktor's words were crawling through my skull like roaches.
Someone is feeding them information.
Someone who hears things.
Someone we have dismissed as harmless.
I watched her walk past my table. That slight turn of her head acknowledging my presence. The same subtle tilt she'd just aimed at the back booths where Viktor's crew had been discussing routes all night.
She heard everything. She'd told me so herself. Proudly, defiantly, like it was a badge of honor.
And I'd accepted her word that she wasn't doing anything with it.
My jaw ached from clenching.
She wouldn't.She had no contacts. No FBI connection. No journalist on speed dial. She was a blind pianist who lived in a studio apartment and rode the 42 bus and let me fuck her until she cried.
But.
She was also the woman who'd cataloged an entire criminal organization from a piano bench for hundreds of nights without anyone noticing. The woman who remembered conversations verbatim. Who could identify a man by his breathing pattern and smell the bleach on my hands after I'd washed them twice.
If Raven wanted to feed information to the Feds, she was more than capable of figuring out how. And she was more than smart enough to make sure I never found out.
She told you her secret. She trusted you.
