"So I clean up the mess," I gritted out.
"And I want proof when the job is done," Viktor demanded. "Not a report. Not your word. Proof." He held up a finger. "Video. Audio. Her voice on the recording, screaming. Begging. So that when Konstantin sends this to Moscow, there is no question that the leak has been addressed appropriately and a message has been sent."
The words landed one at a time. Each one a nail driven into my chest.
"You take her somewhere private. You make her talk. And then you make her stop talking. Permanently." He leaned closer. "As a matter of fact, I will be there to witness."
I realized I was grinding my teeth hard enough to crack them and forced my jaw to unclench.
"Or?" I said.
Viktor's eyes flicked to Konstantin.
"Or my people handle it," Konstantin said quietly. "And their methods will take days. Maybe longer. They are thorough in ways that you and Viktor are not."
So that was it then. If I didn't do it, men who specialized in extracting confessions from human bodies would take their time with her. And they'd enjoy it.
I stared at Konstantin. He sat perfectly still, unlit pipe balanced between his fingers, watching me the way he'd watched me that first night. Reading me. Waiting to see if the attachment he'd warned me about would make me do something stupid.
I gave him nothing.
"Consider it done," I said.
Viktor studied my face. "Do not try to run, my friend. Because we will find you. And if we can't find you, we will find someone you care about."
There was no one I cared about, except for Raven. "I said consider it done." I stood. "Give me forty-eight hours."
"Twenty-four."
I met his eyes. "I don't normally handle this part of things. I need time to get everything ready."
Viktor held my gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"Forty-eight hours," he said. "Not one minute more."
I walked out of the office. Through the dark restaurant. Past the closed piano.
This time, I looked at it.
I stared at the bench where she sat every night, her fingers finding notes in the dark the way they found the bones of my face and the strings that tugged at the heart I never knew I had.
The platform where she performed for men who wanted her dead.
And even now—standing in the wreckage, wondering if everything she'd ever told me was a lie, if every night she'd pressed her mouth to my chest, her head was full of secrets she'd never share—even now, the only thought in my skull was a single word.
Mine.
Possessive. But also just a fact. Like gravity.
Like death.
Guilty or innocent. Liar or saint. The woman who'd looked me in the eye and promised she wasn't giving information about the Russian fucking mafia to the the DEA…
She was mine.
And they wanted her dead.
I got in my car. Closed the door. Started the engine.
