His words hang heavy, aimed to wound. To suggest that Ivy is not only my vulnerability, but my undoing. For a moment, silence reigns on our side of the room, save for the harsh rhythm of my breathing.
Mysovetwatch me closely, waiting for me to unleash what they know is coming.
My shoulders roll. I drag a long inhale into my lungs, clearing the fog that’s been clouding my mind since the alley. When I let it out, a cool, focused calm settles over me. My mask is being fit back into place. Control is coming back to me.
“Anton. I’ll give you one chance. Release her, or I will dismantle everything you’ve built, brick by brick, until there is nothing leftof whatever empire you think you’ve created. I will have you begging at my feet for death.”
“I look forward to seeing you try.”
The call clicks dead, leaving only the hiss of static and the weight of silence pressing against the walls.
A muscle jumps in my jaw.
I know Anton well enough to understand he isn’t about to back down from this. He isn’t bluffing. He doesn’t flinch at threats. He feeds off them. He willneverback down because he believes he’s already won by showing me the ace he has in his hands.
I see it, as clear as blood on fresh snow. Ivy will be his weapon against me.
She will not simply be kept locked in some room with no way out. She will be used. Broken. Fed back to me in pieces—finger by finger, bone by bone—until all I have left of her is what Anton deems enough to remind me of my failure. Until I kneel. Until I surrender everything my father built, everything I clawed back from the grave after I buried him.
My chest aches with the weight of it, a raw, dangerous kind of ache that makes it hard to breathe through.
Ivy is an innocent.
She had no hand in this world. I brought her close enough to taste it, and now she’s been dragged into the center, trapped in the crossfire I told her I’d never allow to touch her.
My knuckles tighten around the side of the table until my knuckles ache. There’s no other path.
No other way around this.
“I’ll have to do it,” I say.
The air in the safe house goes still, every head snapping toward me.
The silence is so sudden, so absolute, it’s as though the city outside has gone mute with them. Even the radiator’s low groan seems to fall quiet, as if the walls themselves know better than to speak against what I’ve just said.
Katya actually chokes when she speaks, eyes wide. “You’llwhat?”
I don’t look at her. My gaze stays fixed on the grain of the table, the faint scars carved into its wood from knives and guns dragged over its surface hundreds of times. “Step down. Give him what he wants. Meet him at a neutral location to make the exchange. As long as he brings her, he’ll have what he wants.”
They stare at me in disbelief. When I finally raise my eyes, Roman is frozen, jaw slack, like he’s staring at a stranger. Katya’s hand is pressed to her mouth, holding back whatever bile is threatening to rise from her throat.
But it’s Lev who moves first.
It’s Lev who always does.
His chair screeches back against the floor as he surges up onto his feet, shoulders squared, eyes burning holes through me. His voice tears through the silence with a snarl. “Have you lost yourfucking mind?”
The force of his anger reverberates through the small room, rattling off the plaster walls.
His fists are clenched so tightly the veins stand out like cords, his jaw locked so hard I can almost hear his teeth grind. He looks at me like I’ve just betrayed not only him, but every oath we swore together in blood.
In a way, I have. “No. I haven’t.”
Katya’s hands are trembling as she fishes her half-finished cigarette out of the ashtray, frantically flicking her thumb over her lighter to get it going.
The flame finally catches, flaring too bright for a second before settling. She drags in the nicotine like it’s oxygen, exhaling in one harsh gust. “You’re talking about handing over our entire organization because of some girl, Maksim. You understand that, right? She doesn’t matter.”
My fist slams down so hard on top of the table, the ashtray jumps, scattering gray dust and embers across the wood. “Don’t. Say that.”
