Yet as her sobs echo against the cold concrete, none of it feels like victory.
24
HELENA
Konstantin’s hands are under my arms, pulling me up from the bloody concrete floor. I don't remember him gently prying my father’s body from my hands or him wrapping his wool coat over my shaking shoulders.
My ears are ringing with a high pitch that drowns out the sound of the fires and the soldiers shouting around us.
Konstantin keeps an arm wrapped around my waist, holding me up as he guides me out of the control room. We walk back out through the huge processing plant.
For the first time, I see the real scale of the violence my husband unleashed tonight. The walls are scorched black. The ground is covered in shattered concrete, twisted metal, and bodies. There are so many of them. Dozens of Italians lie still in the debris with their blood pooling on the cracked asphalt.
Konstantin ordered a massacre, and his men didn't leave anyone alive.
When we reach the freezing air in the courtyard, the armored SUV is already waiting with the engine idling. Konstantin opens the door for me, but he stops before getting in.
He turns to Ivan and speaks in a low, fast voice. I can't hear what he's saying over the ringing in my ears, but I see the serious look on his face and the way Ivan nods back at him.
Then Konstantin climbs into the back seat beside me. The door slams shut and seals us in the dark.
The blood on my hands is starting to dry. It coats my palms in a dark crust that settles into my skin and flakes under my fingernails.
I sit in the back of the SUV and stare at my lap, completely hollow.
The doors block out the sound of the cars rushing through the dark city. Inside, the silence is so loud it rings in my ears. I'm staring at my hands, but I'm not seeing them. Every time I blink, I'm dragged right back into the nightmare.
I can still smell the sulfur from the flashbangs in the vehicle. I feel those massive hands yanking me backward into the dark tunnels. I feel the freezing bite of the knife pressed so hard against my throat that I didn't dare breathe.
But the image that keeps looping in my mind, the one that really shatters me, is Konstantin.
The most dangerous man I've ever met, staring down the barrel of Moretti’s gun. I saw the exact second he gave in. The moment he dropped his weapon, surrendering himself to keep a bullet out of my head.
And then there was my father.
A violent shiver runs through me and rattles my teeth. I wrap my bloody hands around my stomach and lean forward as the reality of it all finally hits me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and the image of my mother flashes in my mind. For five years, I've stared at that photo of her laughing on the deck of a ship. She was so happy and carefree.
She was untouched by the world. She had no idea the man she loved was caught up with the Italian mafia.
All this time, I've been mourning a tragedy that never actually happened.
My mother wasn’t a victim of fate. She was executed.
The rain and the slick road were excuses for a murder. I thought my father was a man broken by loss, but he was hiding from the blood on his hands.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and the first tear breaks free, burning as it tracks through the soot on my cheek.
My father sold out Konstantin's family for money. My mother was murdered to break my father and show him what happened when he tried to walk away. And the millions in debt he couldn't pay weren't business losses. They were protection payments. He paid them every single month to keep the Italians from killing me, too.
Everything I thought I knew about my life was a lie. A sob claws its way up my throat, finally breaking the twenty minutes of silence in the SUV.
"Helena." The deep voice pulls me out of the spiral. I slowly turn my head.
Konstantin is sitting right beside me. He's covered in gray dust and splattered with blood. His tactical vest is on the floor, leaving him in his combat shirt. Through a tear in the fabric, I can see a deep gash on his arm. Fresh blood soaks his sleeve.
"You're bleeding," I whisper, my voice cracking as I stare at the wound.
