Success.
The elevator doors opened. Empty. Waiting. We stepped inside. The doors closed.
Twenty stories up. To confront Viktor Kozlov and Bianca Lombardo and whatever hell awaited us.
The elevator rose, smooth and silent.I checked my weapon. Piero did the same. Giulio and his team readied positions.
Paola's face was pale but determined. Her hand found the panic button on her belt loop, confirming it was there. Rocco's voice crackled: "Wait. I'm seeing movement. Viktor's floor—someone just entered the main living area."
"How many?" I asked quietly.
"Three signatures. No, four. Fuck—boss, you've got company. Viktor's not alone up there."
The elevator continued rising. Floor fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
"Can you identify them?" Piero asked.
A pause. Then Rocco's voice, tight with concern: "One of them is moving wrong. Erratic. Could be injured or... boss, I think one of them might be Bianca. And she's not moving on her own. Someone's carrying her."
Paola and I exchanged looks. Carrying her?
Floor eighteen. Nineteen.
"They could be moving her out. Transporting her somewhere," Giulio said.
"Or she's hurt. Or dead," Piero added grimly.
Floor twenty. The elevator slowed.
"Weapons ready," I commanded. "We don't know what we're walking into."
The elevator doors began to open.
And on the other side: Viktor Kozlov, standing in his penthouse foyer, arms crossed, smiling like he'd expected us all along.
"Cesare. How wonderful of you to join us. Please, come in. We have so much to discuss."
CHAPTER 11
Paola
The elevator doors opened fully, and my heart stopped.
Viktor Kozlov stood in his foyer like he was greeting dinner guests—composed, immaculate in a charcoal suit, arms crossed. Like us, he hadn’t gone to sleep. Behind him stretched a living room of leather and chrome and windows overlooking the river, a dark vein in the pre-dawn light.
And on the couch, slumped and barely conscious, was Bianca.
My breath caught. My sister. My identical twin. A broken mirror image of myself.
Her face was bruised, lip split and swollen. Designer clothes torn and stained with what looked like blood. Two of Viktor's men flanked her—not holding her up, just guarding her like property.
The emotions hit me in waves—horror at seeing her hurt, fury at what she'd done to me, guilt that I still cared despite everything. She'd drugged me. Stolen my life. Disappeared without a word. Then came back to destroy what I'd built with Cesare, to reclaim the position she'd thrown away.
And now she was beaten, broken, being used by Viktor like a discarded tool.
I should hate her. Part of me did. But she was still my sister—still the person who'd shared a womb with me, who'd been my other half for twenty-eight years before she became my betrayer.
The conflicting feelings made me nauseous.
