I look up at Mikhail and nod. “Break it.”
My husband pounces and snaps her wrist backwards with a sickening crack. A pained grunt erupts from her chest. My stomach twists, but I don’t look away. Not this time.
“What are you doing…?” she asks me through rugged breaths. “You’re letting him hurt me?”
“Again,” I say, and another crack follows. This time, my husband kicks her knee, which bends under the weight of her body. She drops to the concrete, bringing her hand to her chest. “Answer me,” I command.
“Cara mia…please…” Her voice breaks, exactly like I remember it from childhood. It’s the same voice she used when I fell off my bike and scraped my knee, or when my father used to scold me and she tried soothing me.
When she looks up, her eyes are glassy with tears. She blinks, and they roll down her cheeks, one faster than the other. “I raised you. Loved you like my own.”
My breath stutters. What is this?
Her pain…it looks real—too real.
Could she be telling the truth? No, of course not. I’ve seen those documents—I know what she’s capable of. And yet…w-what if…what if I’m making a terrible mistake? What if?—
“Sweetheart?” Mikhail asks.
I blink, and seconds pass, my ribcage rapidly expanding with shallow breaths. I grind my teeth, looking for any sign of deception in her eyes but finding none.
Except, when I glance down at the rest of her body, I see it.
Her hand pressed tightly against her chest beneath the opening of her coat, holding something.
White, round plastic. The faintest glint of a needle cap between her fingers.
My stomach drops. She’s just biding her time, waiting for me to come closer, to let my guard down for a second too long, allowing her to drive that syringe into my throat.
My eyes widen—not because I didn’t think she’d be capable of trying to kill us, but because it’s the first time I’m witnessing the extent of her skillset. Of how good a liar she is.
I wonder how many people trusted her right before she killed them.
“Mikhail—” I whisper.
He moves as she lunges, the syringe flashing under the broken lights, a pale blue liquid swirling inside it. The rest happens in the span of a second. Rodion catches her just in time, as if he already knew what she was hiding. Ms. Donatello screeches, and the object clatters across the concrete, rolling towards me.
“Figlio di puttana!” she curses, thrashing when Niko and Rodion pin her down. The last hint of doubt inside me dies as the frustration in her voice becomes evident, as if we inconvenienced her.
“Mikhail?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
I swallow, nodding. “Please…make her talk.”
His lips flick upward. “Anything for you.”
My husband pulls out a knife, crouching next to Ms. Donatello, and the rest is a combination of screams and bone crushing sounds that fill the empty parking garage.
He cuts through her flesh, tossing two fingers aside as if they’re splinters from a tree trunk. The scent of iron fills my nostrils, a pool of blood gathering around the scene. I force myself to look, chin held high, even though my heart is breaking all over again. I loved her. As a mentor, as a friend…
It doesn’t matter now. What she did to me is unforgivable. I don’t want to be stuck with those dreadful nightmares anymore. I want this very moment to replace them—herscreams,herblood,herpleading. Not my mother’s. She didn’t get to look away when she was stabbed to death.
“I’m asking you again,” I drawl, my voice low and steady this time. “What thehelldid you do that night?”
“I did what I had to do!” Ms. Donatello grunts, her entire face twisting with pain. “I had a son to think about, a son I had to give away so I could clear the path for him later, when your father came to his senses.”
“You mean he fucked you and then he dumped you?”
