I knew she was asking what happens to her.
When I didn’t answer, a muscle ticked in her jaw. “To him… to me…” She let out a breath. No shifts in the soundscape meant no one had found us yet.
I stepped close enough that my hip brushed the edge of the table. Her gaze flicked to my throat, then to my mouth, and finally settled on my eyes. There was no pretense left in her, no practiced politeness or even fear. Just resignation and intent, as if she’d already burned the bridge behind her.
“Right now,” she said, “I just want you to finish it.”
The words shouldn’t have done anything to me. It was nothing but a request from someone who understood there was no version of the future where Ivanov walked away. But something twisted low in my gut, anyway.
Before I could stop myself, I reached out and caught her chin between my fingers, lifting her face until she had no choice but to hold my gaze.
“You understand what happens when he’s gone?” I asked. “You’ll have no house. No staff. You’ll be penniless and without a support system. It’ll just be you.”
Her pulse fluttered quickly beneath her skin, but her voice stayed steady when she said, “I don’t care about any of that. It’s always just been me.”
“And how do you think you’ll feel after I kill your father?”
She was silent for a long beat. “I don’t know,” Zoya finally said. “I think part of me will grieve the fantasy of who I thought he was. But the rest of me?” Her gaze lifted. Steady. “It’ll feel like nothing,” she said. “Like it was overdue.”
She didn’t look away when she said it.
That same cold certainty that made her say she hoped he’d stall flickered behind her eyes, and I felt something in me answer it. I released her chin slowly, my thumb dragging once along the soft edge of her jaw before I let go. Her breath caught, the smallest hitch, and her pupils dilated.
Bad timing to notice that. Worse timing to care.
“Don’t leave this bunker,” I said. “Not until it’s done. It’s for your protection. But I won’t lock you in.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“If anyone comes looking, they won’t find you here,” I told her. “If something goes wrong, this place keeps you safe.”
“And if you don’t come back?” she asked.
“I’m coming back,” I said.
Her gaze didn’t falter. She held mine, steady and unnervingly direct. “What happens to me after?”
The question punched straight through the professional distance I’d been clinging to. I could have lied. I could have said I’d give her a passport and a new life on the other side of the world. That she could pretend none of this touched her bloodline, and that her father’s empire hadn’t been built on human bodies.
“I’ll help you get out of the country,” I said instead. “Clean and quiet and with enough to start over somewhere his shadow and reputation can’t reach.”
Her brows drew together. “You will?”
“I will,” I said. “If that’s what you decide.”
She studied me for a beat. Then shook her head slowly. “That’s not what you meant.”
“No,” I admitted. “It isn’t.”
She sat there and stared at me, then straightened her shoulders and tipped her chin up a notch higher. “Then say what you meant.”
I stepped closer until the bunker’s air warmed against my chest. My hand found the back of her neck, thumb brushing the pulse at her throat. This was dangerous, wrong, and not in my plans. Yet, Zoya was changing something in me, nudging loyalty and murder into territory that felt personal.
“What I meant,” I said, “is that after this is finished, I’m not pretending you don’t exist. I’m not dropping you in a city you’ve never seen and calling it mercy. You’re not disposable. Not to me.”
Color rose beneath her skin, and she slowly stood, her height minuscule compared to mine as I towered over her. Her lashes fluttered, pupils dilating, and for one long second, the bunker shrank to nothing but the scent and sight of her and theknowledge that I could take her apart without ever raising my voice or touching her.
I forced myself to let her go. “Eat more and rest,” I said. “When I come back, the first part will be done.”
