Lila’s lips part in shock. “He… he shot him,” she murmurs.
I don’t respond immediately, because if I speak, I might break. Instead, I press my fingers into Lila’s wrist, reminding both of us that we’re still here.
Outside, something drags slowly along the floor. I hear the scrape of fabric against the ground. It makes my stomach twist, and I swallow hard, a sour taste rising in the back of my throat.
Lila’s shoulders shudder. She lifts her free hand to her mouth again, pressing her knuckles against her lips so hard her skin pales.
“They’re going to…” Her voice breaks. She can’t finish.
I keep my voice low, careful, forcing control into it without pretending I feel it.
“Listen,” I whisper. “We need to listen.”
Because whatever comes next will matter, and the only advantage we have is that they forget we can hear them.
Outside, Ivan speaks again, and his voice is closer now, as if he’s moved down the corridor toward us.
“Arkady’s men,” he instructs calmly. “Separate them. Anyone who hesitates goes in another room.”
A deep voice answers, “Understood.”
Lila’s eyes meet mine, and terror flashes there, followed by realization.
“He’s taking control,” she whispers.
“Yes,” I breathe back, and the word feels like ice in my throat.
The corridor fills with movement. Doors open. Doors close. Orders echo down the hall. Boots pass our door again and again, each time a reminder that we’re trapped in the middle of a takeover.
Then footsteps stop outside our room, close enough that I feel the pause more than hear it. For a moment, everything seems to freeze. A key turns in the lock, the metal clicking softly, and Lila’s grip on my hand tightens until it hurts. The handle moves, and the door begins to open.
It opens slowly, and somehow that makes it worse. If he had stormed in, if there had been shouting or visible adrenaline, I could have answered it with something fierce inside myself. But Ivan steps into the room as if he’s stepping into his own office, completely at ease, his coat still buttoned neatly, his dark hair undisturbed as though nothing outside this door has changed the balance of the world.
The faint smell of gunpowder follows him in.
Lila goes rigid beside me.
He doesn’t look at her first. He looks at me. His eyes move over my face, my posture, and then lower briefly, not crudely and not openly, but long enough that I know exactly what he’s calculating.
I don’t move. I don’t fold in on myself. I keep my shoulders level even though my pulse is still echoing in my ears from the gunshot.
Only after that does he turn toward Lila. The change between them is immediate. There’s history in the space they share, but not the kind she thought she understood.
Her voice comes out rough, anger barely holding itself together over something deeper. “You used me.”
Ivan tilts his head slightly, as if considering the wording rather than the accusation itself.
“I offered you a solution,” he replies. “You accepted it.”
“That wasn’t a solution,” she snaps, taking a step toward him, before I catch her wrist and hold her back. “You told me you could fix Jonathan’s debt. You told me you had people who could handle it.”
“I do,” Ivan answers.
“Then why did they break his arm?” she fires back.
Something moves through his expression then, not remorse and not even irritation, but something closer to impatience.
“Because he continued to gamble,” Ivan says calmly. “Because your brother doesn’t understand restraint.”
