"The vet?" Ivan hesitates. "Konstantin, the vet is for patches. If it's the artery, he needs a sterile operating room. A vascular surgeon."
"Then tell the vet to scrub up, or I burn his clinic down with him inside!" I roar. "Get a van to the east ramp. Get Lev off this bridge. If he dies, the Doctor dies. Understand?"
"Understood," Ivan says. "Five minutes."
I hang up and check his pulse.
"Don't die," I whisper, leaning my head against his vest. "I can't lose both of you in one day."
I sit for a moment beside him, muttering prayers.
Then, my phone rings.
I stare at it.
Unknown Number.
The world stops. I know who is on the other end.
The police are still minutes out. No EMS reports. If she isn’t in an ambulance, she’s in a trunk.
Only the architect of this slaughter would call now.
I answer instantly. I press the phone to my ear, hand shaking with the need to reach through the device and crush the throat of the man on the line.
"Speak."
"Konstantin," Moretti purrs. The voice of a man who thinks he's won."It seems we need to update our files. Your wife was just telling me that her thumbprint is obsolete."
My vision blurs red. "If you’ve touched her..."
"She’s fine," Moretti interrupts. "For now. But she was eager to tell us about the tablet, Konstantin. She screamed about it to save her skin. Your little pet isn’t as loyal as you thought."
The words hit me like a precision strike.
"If she bleeds, Moretti," I snarl, "There’s no hole deep enough for you to hide in. I’ll burn the world to find you."
"Then bring the tablet," Moretti snaps. "The tablet for her. The Old Foundry. Midnight. Come alone. If I see a sniper, if I smell a trap... I’ll finish what I started, and I’ll mail her to you, piece by piece."
He hangs up. My hand tightens until the screen fractures, glass biting into my palm.
"She told him," I whisper.
She told him the tablet is the only way to unlock the shipment. She gave him the leverage he needed. Now he wants the tablet for her life. Twenty years of my life for her.
The realization is poison. She gave up the vengeance I spent twenty years building. She traded my family's justice to keep breathing.
I thought I found a Queen. Instead, I found a civilian who broke the moment she felt the heat.
Tires screech at the end of the bridge as the cleanup van arrives. Men in black scrubs sprint with a stretcher. They’ll have Lev stabilized in seconds. I stand up, turning to the burning wreckage and pulling back my fist.
I punch the twisted metal of the door frame, hard enough to snap bone.
The steel bites into my knuckles. Blood flows, hot and fast, mixing with the soot. The pain grounds me.
She betrayed me, but she’s alive.
I storm into my office at the end of the penthouse hallway. Outside, city lights shimmer stories below, indifferent.
