She sat rigid on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, still drowning in my coat like it was the last shield she had. Her pale eyes locked on the glowing screen as if staring hard enough could erase what was happening. The wool blanket I’d left beside the cot days ago sat untouched. She wouldn’t take anything that smelled like acceptance.
The camera panned. The mirror caught him. Andrey. Steady hands adjusting the tripod, the same hands that once smoothed my mother’s hair before he sold her to be torn apart.
“Drag it out,” his voice crackled through the tiny speaker. “The client pays extra for tears.”
A sound tore out of Zoya. It was small, broken, barely there. It hit me harder than it should have, like a dull blade sliding under my ribs. Her fingers disappeared into the coat sleeves, knuckles tight, white against the dark wool.
I reached forward and paused it. Andrey’s half-smile froze on the screen. It was satisfying and sadistic.
“I knew he was cruel,” she whispered, voice scraped raw. “I knew he hurt people. I didn’t know… this.”
I crouched in front of her, close enough that my shadow swallowed her lap. Her breath came shallow and fast, skin too pale against the wool, pupils blown wide in the cold. She looked small enough to snap. Fragile in a way that clawed at something dead and useless inside my chest. I hated noticing. Hated that I couldn’t stop.
Tomorrow, I’d bring another blanket. Thicker and warmer. This wasn’t kindness. It was just cold calculation. A hostage who shivered lost her edge, and I needed her razor-sharp.
“You’re going to help me destroy him,” I said.
She lifted her eyes. Wet but not broken. “How?”
“He already knows The Death Dealer has his little investment. What he doesn’t know is where you’re bleeding… or how long until the first actual piece comes off.” My voice dropped low, rough, meant to sink into her like the edge of a blade she’d never see coming.
But even as I said it, something sour twisted in my gut. I could see it too clearly. The knife in my hand, her pale wrist turned up, the first thin line of red opening against her skin. And the picture didn’t bring the clean rush of vengeance. It burned wrong. Like acid. I’d gutted men without a second thought. Ended lives for pocket change. But her?
I wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
Not like that. Not when every scar I carried was payment for someone else’s sins, and hers were already written in the same blood I wanted to spill. The threat would terrify Andrey. It would make him hand over everything. But the act itself… it died at the edge of my mind, blade refusing to bite bone it couldn’t bear to break.
I swallowed the truth before it could show on my face. Let her see only the monster. Let her feel the weight of the lie I needed her to believe.
“Next time I let you speak to him, you’ll describe it. Every detail. The exact spot I chose. The way the knife parts flesh. How slowly I make it. You’ll tell him I’m carving one piece of his pretty property every week. Skin. Tendon. Whatever I decide until he sends me every name, every safe house, every video he still hoards like dirty secrets.”
I let the words hang between us, heavy and wet as fresh blood.
“Until his empire is ash… and his favorite commodity is nothing but what I allow to remain.”
Her breath hitched. The sound was sharp and involuntary. Her gaze flicked to the phone, then to the scars on my knuckles,then back to my eyes. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t beg. She just stared. The expression was stubborn, glassy, and defiant, as if she were already measuring how much pain she could swallow before he wrote her off as a bad investment.
It was beautiful.
And fuck if that didn’t twist something vicious and possessive inside me. This wasn’t about pity or mercy. This was something darker. Hungrier.
No one. Not Andrey, or another client, and not the fucking highest bidder would ever touch what was mine to ruin… or to keep.
She was leverage to Andrey. To me, she was already something else.
Something I’d kill to protect… even as I promised to destroy her.
Chapter 8
Dmitry
The burner buzzed exactly forty-seven minutes after I’d pressed it to Zoya’s lips and made her speak into the void of his voicemail.
“Papa… it’s me. I’m still alive. Please, just give The Death Dealer what he wants.” She’d delivered it like she was reciting a grocery list, her voice flat, detached. The hatred in her eyes as she stared at me already carved so deep it had nowhere left to go but toward her father.
The fucker never answered the first call. He waited until his people traced the signal while his anger sharpened itself into something usable. When he finally called back, I let it ring three full times, each trill filling the dilapidated office walls like a warning shot before I answered.
His voice came through calm but cold. It was the voice of a man who still believed he held all the cards. I put the cell on speaker and set it on the center of the table so Zoya could hear it all, too.
