“It is,” I replied and kicked up my chin.
His lips curved faintly, but there was no humor in it. “No,” he corrected. “This is emotion. And emotion is a weakness that needs to be purged from the body.”
His presence had always filled a room in a dark, ominous way. As a child, I’d thought it was authority. As a teenager, I’d thought it was the strictness of a parent. Now I understood it for what it was. Control.
“You embarrassed me tonight,” he continued. “You shot me. In front of hired men. Do you understand what that does to perception?”
I said nothing.
“You think he loves you?” my father asked quietly. “Men like Dmitry do not love. They possess and consume. And when you are no longer useful, they discard. They are exactly like every other man in this world, in the Organization.”
When I stayed silent, my father turned slightly, speaking to his guards without looking at them. “Take her upstairs.”
One man stepped forward immediately. I didn’t fight because I knew it would only end up hurting me. They guided me toward the back of the house, down a narrow corridor I recognized too well. The concrete walls felt colder here. As a child, I’d been told this wing was for “private meetings.”
I knew better now.
The guard opened a steel door at the end of the hall. The room had no windows. Just reinforced concrete and a single overhead light, a table and a few chairs. My father appeared behind us before I was pushed inside.
“You’ll stay here,” he said calmly. “Until I decide what your existence is worth.”
The words should have broken me, but they didn’t.
“You’re bleeding a lot,” I whispered, the only way I could fight back right now. I pointedly stared at the dark stain spreading across his side.
His eyes sharpened.
“And you’re locked in a room with no exit,” he replied.
The guard shoved me fully inside, but I kept my footing. The door slammed shut with a heavy metallic echo, and a lock clicked into place as silence settled immediately. All I could hear was the hum of electricity from the single lightbulb, and the distant murmur of male voices beyond the door.
He thought this was control. He thought he had me again. But this time, I wasn’t the girl waiting to obey orders from my father. I knew Dmitry would find me. I knew he’d come for me.
And when he did… Andrey would finally understand what it meant to lose everything.
Chapter 20
Dmitry
Ilya hadn’t wasted time.
Three minutes after I ended the call, my phone lit up with a secure file transfer and a set of coordinates tied to a river property along the Volga bend. Then came the breakdown, delivered in his usual calm, clinical tone.
Andrey’s SUV had triggered the city grid when he blew through a red light near the east corridor. The plates were fake, like I’d assumed, but Ilya was a fucking genuine hacker and found it again twelve minutes later when it was caught on a forestry service camera.
Only Ilya could dismantle a man’s escape route in a matter of minutes.
He sent me still images of the structure, which was all concrete and glass built low against black water. There weren’t any neighbors, and the street access branched off from a private road that curved through trees.
I recognized the place the second it came into view on the satellite pull. One of Andrey’s retreats that was off-the-books and built for “private negotiations”.
I called Ilya back as soon as the image locked in. “He’s there?” I asked.
“Last known stop. Assuming he didn’t go on foot to another location, that’s where you’ll find him,” Ilya replied, voice level as ever. I could hear keys moving in the background, quiet and rhythmic.
After we disconnected the call, the drive felt endless and too short at the same time. My bullet wound burned from the earlier round that had passed through my shoulder, and every turn of the wheel sent heat down my arm. The pain didn’t matter. Zoya did.
The access road narrowed to packed dirt long before the river came into view. It wound between the birch and pine. There were no streetlights or houses. It was completely isolated. And because of that, I didn’t drive the car all the way in.
