Where is she?
“Someone tell him where the fuck she is so he stops yelling in my fucking ear!” Oleg yells. “Zakhar, Ilya, you got eyes on Timur?”
“Not yet. I haven’t seen the fucker,” Zakhar gripes.
The fear turns to panic. “Ilya?” I demand.
“We’ve got a problem,” he says, his words icy.
“What kind of problem?” Oleg demands.
“The kind of problem that’s been plaguing me for years.”
“What? Stop speaking in fucking riddles, asshole, and spit it the hell out,” I yell into the line, uncaring who hears me. A bullet barely misses me as we round a corner, and I curse, already firing and taking the shooter down. Serves me right for allowing myself to get distracted.
“She’s on the second floor, near her room,” Ilya answers, completely ignoring my question. “Bodies all over the hallway. She’s got a gun to her back and her father in front of her with one. We need to move.”
“I’m closest,” I state, running faster for the stairs. I have to get there.
“Do not kill the woman holding her hostage,” Ilya orders. “She’s mine.”
Wait, what woman? There’s a woman holding Rori hostage?
A chill skitters down my spine. Tatiana. It has to be her. And I don’t have time to waste.
“Hades, let’s go,” I burst out.
We’re coming, Aurora. Just hold on. We’re coming.
39
RORI
“This wasyour plan all along, wasn’t it?” I keep my voice steady, even. “Get me here, all so you could make it easier for him to take me back, or kill me. No, it’ll be kill me, won’t it? You don’t need the competition being his favorite.”
“Competition? There is no competition when it comes to you and I,” Tatiana replies. I restrain my flinch when she presses a sharp knife to my spine. “I was always going to be the star. I was the daughter he actually wanted.”
“You were the one who embraced every evil thing he taught you. Not because he wanted you, but because you couldn’t stand me being better than you. So desperate for attention.”
“Perhaps, but after you left, I was the best. You weren’t in my way, and you were a disappointment. I thrived. I soaked up everything he taught me, and everything you taught me. You wanted us to be friends, to take him down, but that was never going to happen.”
“He’ll kill you one day.”
“Why would he kill his successor?”
I snort, ignoring the pressure of the knife in my back. “You really think that he’s going to give you anything? You’re his little puppet, and that’s all you’ll be until someone else comes along with promise. Someone with a dick swinging between his legs.”
My mind is spinning, trying to figure out how I missed it. How did I not realize that this is exactly what she was trying to make happen in the first place? I was an idiot thinking that she would be operating on her own. No one ever leaves my father’s clutches. Even me, who and what I am will always be tied to him in some way.
I stare at my father, who is watching this with a gleeful look in his eyes. He enjoys shocking me. What, does he want me to fight her? Prove I’m better?
“We need to move,” Tatiana tells my father sharply, ignoring my words. “We’ve got incoming.”
“I have business to settle first,” Pasha says, turning the gun on Timur. Timur barely reacts, and none of us wince when he kills him with a quick shot to the head. The Belov dynasty officially finished.
I want to feel sadness for that, but I can’t pull it up yet.
“Move,” Tatiana orders. I’m too tired to argue or fight my way out of this. Yet. Tatiana will kill me with one bullet, or simply sever my spine with the knife, making me unable to fight back. A slower and humiliating death. Neither of which is a good option for me.
