Lila inhales sharply through her teeth, but she doesn’t push my hands away.
“Stay with me,” I mutter.
Her lips press together as she nods. “I’m still here.”
Ivan observes us both with mild curiosity, as though we’re part of an experiment that has unfolded differently than anticipated.
“Arkady believed he was building something permanent,” he says after a moment.
Neither of us responds. He doesn’t seem to expect an answer.
“In reality,” he continues calmly, “Arkady was building a distraction.”
My eyes lift toward him. A faint trace of amusement lifts the corners of his mouth.
“He had money, influence, and just enough ambition to believe he could control both. That made him useful.”
Lila stares up at him, anger pushing through the pain visible in her expression. “You killed him,” she snaps.
“Yes.”
The confirmation is delivered with the same calm certainty as everything else he’s said since entering the warehouse. He glances briefly toward Maria again before returning his attention to Lila.
“Arkady was useful while he believed he was in charge.”
The statement fills the room with a heavy silence.
Lila lets out a short, disbelieving breath. “You think you’re better?”
“I know I’m more patient,” Ivan says matter-of-factly.
He studies her face for a moment. “If you were anyone else,” he continues calmly, “you would already be dead.”
Lila’s jaw tightens.
Ivan tilts his head as he watches her absorb that. “Unfortunately,” he adds, “blood occasionally has uses.”
The coldness in the remark sends a faint ripple through the guards standing nearby.
Lila exhales slowly, anger and disbelief mixing in her expression. “You dragged Rowan into this.”
“Yes,” he confirms.
“You set me up.”
“I presented an opportunity,” he replies evenly. “You accepted it.”
Her eyes burn with rage. “You used me.”
Ivan doesn’t bother denying it. “I did.”
The honesty is brutal. The silence that follows is deafening. Then Ivan adjusts the cuff of his sleeve as though the conversation has already begun to lose his interest.
“My father moved between cities when he worked for the Volkovs,” he says calmly. “Your mother was one of the women he left behind.”
Lila goes completely still. The information itself is not new, but hearing him reduce it to something so clinical strips away whatever distance she had been holding between herself and the truth.
“You knew about me for years,” she says. “And you waited.”
