“Drop it,” I instructed in Italian.
“Fuck you!”
I shot him in the shoulder. He went down screaming, gun clattering across concrete. I walked over calmly, kicked the weapon away, and pressed my boot against the wound. He screamed louder.
“Petrov,” he uttered as he gurgled blood. Then he went stiff.
“Boss?” Dimitri appeared at my elbow. “Clean sweep. The money’s ours, and no witnesses.”
“Good.” I holstered my weapon, but I was still staring at the dead lieutenant, replaying his final words. “Get everything back to the warehouse. I want the money counted and the trucks stripped for tracking devices.”
Why did he mention Mila’s father?
I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry. I shouldn’t have let the dead man’s words crawl under my skin like that. But something was wrong—I could feel it.
And Mila was at the center of it.
**********
I found her in the hallway outside our bedroom, her hair still messy from sleep. She looked up when I approached, and something flickered in her eyes.
Fear? Guilt?
Both, maybe.
Or was it just my mind?
“You’re back,” she said softly.
“I’m back.”
She should have looked innocent, standing there in the early afternoon light, drowning in my clothes. She should have looked like the psychology student I’d married, out of place in this world of violence. But something in her expression made me pause. Something made that instinct I’d honed over fifteen years of survival start screaming warnings.
I crossed to her slowly, watching her pulse jump at her throat as I approached. When I was close enough to touch, I reached out and brushed my knuckles against her jaw, gentle despite the blood still under my fingernails.
“Has he contacted you again?” I asked quietly.
Her breath caught. “Who?”
“Don’t.” I slid my hand to cup her face, thumb pressing against the rapid flutter of her pulse. “Don’t lie to me, Mila. Your father. Has he contacted you?”
I watched the war play out across her features—the urge to deny, to protect, to maintain whatever fiction she’d been building. But her body betrayed her. The way her pulse spiked, the way her pupils dilated, the slight tremor that ran through her.
She was lying. And I could feel it.
“No,” she whispered. “Alexei, I haven’t—”
“Stop.” My voice came out harder than intended, and she flinched. I gentled my grip but didn’t let go. “I know you’re lying. I can always tell when you’re lying.”
“Then why ask?” Fire flashed in her eyes suddenly, her chin lifting in defiance. “If you already know, why make me say it?”
“Because I want to hear you choose me.” The admission scraped out of my throat. “I want to hear you choose us over him.”
“He’s my father—”
“He’s a dead man.” I stepped closer, backing her against the wall, my hand still cradling her face. “Do you understand that? The Italians are looking for him. Others too, probably. And when they find him—and they will find him—anyone near him dies.”
Her eyes were wet now, tears threatening to spill. “So what, I’m just supposed to let you kill him? What happens to me if you kill the only family I have left?”
