I run my hands through my hair as a heaviness washes over me and I make my peace with what needs to be done. Because I know in my gut that to beat Yegor and Sergei, I’ll have to go just as far as they’re willing to go.
Despite my acceptance of it, the thought sobers me.
Because I’ve been there before.
My hands, unfortunately, are not bloodless. Three times I’ve watched the life drain from someone’s eyes because I stole it.
The first time, I was in college when one of my mother’s stalkers somehow breeched our home’s walls and made it into my parents’ bedroom. My father was gone on business, and I happened to be home for the weekend.
I can still hear my mother’s scream.
Declan and I raced into the room. Declan pulled the man off her before he did anything, but the scene snappedsomething inside me. A rage I’ve never known existed swept over me, and Declan and I went rabid. We beat the stalker to literal death in what must have been less than two minutes.
The second time was only a couple of years later. Sterling was eighteen, but still in high school, when the idiot decided to sleep with one of his teachers. Her husband caught them in bed and attacked Sterling. Being caught so off guard and not as big or bulky as he is now, Sterling didn’t defend himself well. When the man finished, he dumped Sterling in the woods near the boarding school’s grounds and left him for dead.
Sterling had paid his security officer to fuck off for the night so he could sleep with the teacher, and the son-of-a-bitch accepted the bribe, so Sterling was left defenseless. His saving grace was the fact that he managed to send me an alert on his watch before he passed out. I called Declan, and we raced to the school, traced the GPS tracker on his watch, and found him sprawled naked on the forest floor, battered and bloody and barely breathing.
We could have called the police. But we were not about to let our little brother be pulled into a scandal that would have caused irreparable damage. Instead, we handled it ourselves.
We tracked down the husband and the security guard who decided a couple thousand dollars was worth risking our brother’s life, and we took them out into the woods.
Robert helped to make sure no one would ever find the bodies.
After it was over, I promised myself I would never do anything like that again.
But now it looks like I’m going to have to break that promise to myself. Now, I need to fulfill the promise I made to Katrina. I warned her that I would come for her family if they came for mine. I warned her that if her father pushed me to the edge, I wouldn’t go quietly.
Yegor and Sergei think I’m above getting my hands dirty.But that’s because they don’t know what I’m capable of when the people I love are on the line. So, if Yegor and Sergei are only going to listen to violence, then that is exactly what I’ll give them.
I’ll burn them and their lives to the ground.
And I’ll smile while I do it.
15
ELLA
“Thank you,” I say as I step into the conference room, wrapping up my call to a major news organization. Declan put me in touch with them since I’m heading up the Greenspan project. We haven’t told Asher yet because I’m trying to get a feel for interest before I put the proposal together. So far, it’s looking good—but with a caveat. The news organization would love to do a piece on Greenspan, but only if Greenspan is apartof the piece. They want the main focus to be on Asher, me, and our relationship. I told them I’d have to get back to them on that. But at this point, I think it’s a good idea. It gives us both things we’re looking for: positive media attention about our relationship and visibility for Greenspan.
Just as I hang up, Emily lets out a long sigh, peering down at her phone.
“What’s up?” I ask her.
“You may want to sit down.”
I groan as I take a seat next to her at the small meeting table in the corner of the room.
She drums her fingers on the table, seeming to choose her words carefully.
“More photos were leaked of Asher and Katrina.”
My stomach plummets. “What?”
“They’re old photos,” Emily says, reassuringly. “Taken back when they were in a relationship. But the public won’t necessarily know that. And the articles coming out are all painting the story as a reconciliation between the two of them.”
Motherfucker.
“I want to warn you; while some of the photos are public photos from old stories, others are more intimate photos—personal photos. They must have been released by someone very close to Katrina.”
