I went with him.
Chapter 7 - Rodion
Keira O'Shea.
The name kept repeating in my head as I pushed her through the back stairwell, gun still in hand, blood still warm on my knuckles. Keira O'Shea. Daughter of Ronan O'Shea, the man my brother had put a bullet in six months ago. The woman the Petrovics wanted for a marriage alliance. The target Gleb had warned me about.
My therapist.
The woman I'd been following for a week. The woman I couldn't stop thinking about. The woman whose fabricated identity had set off every alarm in my head, and I'd ignored them all because I wanted her to tell me the truth herself.
Well. Now I knew the truth.
We burst through the service entrance into an alley behind the building. Kolya was already there, engine running, because Kolya was always where he needed to be. I opened the back door and shoved her inside, then followed, slamming it shut behind us.
"Go," I said. "Now."
Kolya didn't ask questions. The car shot forward, tires squealing against pavement, and within seconds, we were lost in Manhattan traffic.
Keira was pressed against the opposite door, as far from me as she could get in the confined space. Her face was white. Her hands were shaking. She looked at me like I was a stranger—which, I supposed, I was.
"Who are you?" Her voice was barely a whisper.
"Not now."
"You just killed four people."
"They were going to take you. Would you have preferred I let them?"
She didn't answer. Just stared at me with those whiskey-colored eyes, and I saw the fear in them. Not just fear of the men who'd come for her. Fear of me.
That shouldn't have bothered me. It did.
I pulled out my phone and made calls. Yegor first—I needed the penthouse secured, every entrance covered, a full team on standby. Then, Gleb in Chicago, because he needed to know what had happened, even if I wasn't ready to tell my brothers. Then my lawyer, because four bodies in a therapist's office were going to require some cleanup.
Through it all, Keira sat in silence, watching me with an expression I couldn't read. The shock was fading, replaced by something harder. Calculation, maybe. She was smart—I'd known that from the first session. She was already thinking, processing, trying to figure out her next move.
Good. I needed her thinking. What I was about to propose would require her to think very carefully.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked when I finally put down the phone.
"Somewhere safe."
"I'm not your prisoner."
"No." I met her eyes. "You're not. But if I let you out of this car, you'll be dead within the hour. Those men weren't alone. There will be more. And they won't make the mistake of underestimating the situation again."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I know how these things work."
"How? Who are you?" She was leaning forward now, fear giving way to anger. "You sat in my office for three weeks. You told me about your mother, your family, your insomnia. You made me think—" She stopped, shook her head. "Was any of it real?"
"All of it was real."
"Your name isn't Zelenov."
"No."
