“You should sleep,” I said. “This ends soon.”
I left and locked the bunker. Halfway up the stairs, my phone buzzed once with an encrypted alert. I checked the display and felt my pulse settle into something cold and inevitable.
Andrey had finally given me everything. There was nothing left for him to negotiate with now. But I wasn’t a fool in thinking he didn’t have plans in place to get out of this unscathed. He just didn’t know what his fate truly was. Even if I wasn’t going to kill him for my selfish, personal reasons, I’d been paid by Viktor to end him.
The underbelly would remain stable. Andrey Ivanov would die by my hand.
It should have been clean. Deliver the body, collect the balance, then hunt down the men who killed my mother and bury them six feet deeper than hell.
But the moment I closed my phone, my mind didn’t go to Ivanov. It went to Zoya.
She wasn’t part of the contract anymore. She wasn’t leverage or collateral or insurance. She was a problem I didn’t want to solve and a woman I had no intention of letting walk away.
When I killed her father, she would have nothing. No cage, money, or home. But she’d still have me. And I’d already decided that was enough.
Chapter 11
Dmitry
Ishould’ve been planning nothing but Andrey’s death. The timing, location, disposal, and how much mess I could afford to make before Viktor told me to end it already.
Instead, all I could think about was killing him. Tonight. I knew what I was going to do, what I had to do to prepare. But instead, I found myself standing outside the bunker door.
I unlatched it and told myself I wouldn’t lock her in after I left. She wasn’t my prisoner, not anymore, not when she wanted her father’s blood spilled as much as I did.
She’d moved since I left. The blanket was still around her shoulders, but now she sat cross-legged on the cot, hair loose and falling over one eye, fingers wrapped around a bottle of water and a pack of crackers. The heater hummed beside her, turning the cold bunker into something almost livable.
Her gaze lifted the second I entered. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t scramble back. She just watched me as if I were both judge and executioner.
“You’re back sooner than I assumed,” she whispered.
“I have to leave and handle business,” I replied.
I’d stopped at one of the few late-night corner stores after leaving the mill and bought some fresh items for her. I set thebag I’d brought on the small table. A few slices of dark bread, cheese, cured meat, and tea bags.
“Eat something more than protein bars and crackers,” I said.
She hesitated a fraction of a second, then slid off the cot and walked to the table. She didn’t hover or try to look grateful. She just picked up a slice of cheese and placed it on some bread before taking a bite.
“Is it weird knowing that blood money paid for all of this?”
I huffed a sound that might have been a laugh if I’d been a different man. “All money is evil and corrupt.”
She looked small and breakable, but I’d seen the way her hatred shifted in the office when she realized how her father had used her. That kind of quiet was never a weakness. It was the pause before a trigger was pulled.
“Did he send it?” she asked. “What you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Enough to end this,” I said.
She nodded once. “Is that where you’re going tonight?”
It wasn’t phrased as a question to me, but I answered it anyway. “Yes.”
She stared at the table, at the neat little line of bread and meat, then back up at me. “What happens after all of this?”
