"Nowhere." I reach for the whiskey bottle and pour myself another shot. "I was just thinking."
"About what?"
“About my meeting first thing in the morning with Slava tomorrow,” I choose to answer with a half-truth. “About my job.”
Lydia watches me for a long moment before speaking.
"You’re going to go back?" she asks. "After everything that happened tonight?"
“Yes,” I tell her. “Because if you haven’t noticed, Lydia, this job is the only way I have to pay the bills and the only way I have to avenge Luca."
"This job almost got you killed tonight, Bella! And all it has done is deepen your obsession about Slava Romanov.”
"I’m not obsessed about him!”
"Is that so? Because every conversation we have, Bella—every single one—almost always finds its way to being about him. What he did. What he said. What he might be planning. What you hope will happen to him. I swear, if it weren’t for the fact that I know how much you hate him, I might almost start believing that you want to fuck him."
Be a good girl and open your mouth, Ms. Creminelli.
"He killed my brother, Lydia. He took away the last member of my family. Am I supposed to just—what, move on? Forgetabout it? Get a nice boyfriend and a book club membership and pretend my life didn’t go to hell?"
"Yes, Bella." Lydia's voice is gentle, which is worse than if she were angry. "Because what if what happened tonight is the universe warning you that you’ve gone too far. That in your obsessive need for vengeance, you’re actually risking your own life?"
I open my mouth to deny it, only to close it again when I can’t find a convincing enough argument.
She reaches for my hand and takes it. "Anthony needs stability. He needsyou, Bella—present and alive, not chasing ghosts and trying to right the wrongs of a past that wasn’t your fault."
“But it was!” I pull my hand back and stand up. “My dad died because of me. Luca died because of me! I can’t let their deaths be for nothing.”
"They didn’t die so you can follow them to the grave, Bella."
The words land somewhere deep in my chest and lodge there like a knife. I don’t have a response. That’s always been one of Lydia’s best qualities: she can cut right to the chase with pinpoint accuracy and deny me any chance of a rebuttal.
Because she's right, and we both know it.
But I’ve come this far on my stubborn quest of vengeance, haven’t I? I’m so close that I cantasteit. I can’t just give up now.
So, I jut my chin out the way Luca taught me, and the moment I do, I remember Slava’s winter-gray eyes staring down at me and the look of suspicion flitting through his eyes when he looked down at the necklace that Luca gave me.
And once again, unwanted desire slithers its way down my belly and refuses to leave.
“I’ll be fine, Lydia. I promise.”
“You’re getting in way over your head, Bella. And I’m scared for you.”
And she’s right about that. Sheshouldbe scared for me. And if I still had an ounce of sense left in me, I’d take her advice and stop pursuing this madness. Because Iamin over my head.
But I've never been very good at swimming toward shore.
4
BELLA
I’m dreamingthat familiar dream again. The one where I got exactly what I wanted and destroyed Slava Romanov's life.
Every TV channel, every website, every streamer, and every influencer is talking about it because I passed the story to all of them.
Slava Romanov found guilty of murder.
