Three months before her death, I come home to find the house in chaos. Windows are broken. Furniture is overturned. My men are unconscious or dead.
I find her in her bedroom, curled in the corner, her school uniform torn, blood on her thighs. She’s not crying. She’s not making any sound at all. She just stares at the wall with empty eyes.
“Nicole.” I drop to my knees beside her, reaching for her, but she flinches away from my touch.
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Please don’t touch me.”
My heart shatters. “Who did this? Tell me who did this, and I’ll kill them. I’ll make them suffer.”
She finally looks at me, and the devastation in her blue eyes nearly destroys me. “They said…they said you owed them money. They were looking for a safe. When they couldn’t find it, they…” Her voice breaks. “They took turns, Misha. All four of them.”
Rage unlike anything I’ve ever felt floods through me. “Did you see their faces?”
She nods slowly then shakes her head. “All I remember is one of them had a scorpion tattoo on his neck.”
A scorpion tattoo. I know exactly who that is. Vincent Moretti, a mid-level enforcer for a rival family. I’ve never owed him a damn thing. This was a message, a power play disguised as debt collection.
“I’m going to find them,” I promise her, pulling her into my arms despite her resistance. She’s shaking so hard I can feel it in my bones. “I’m going to find every single one of them, and I’m going to make them pay for what they did to you.”
“It won’t change anything,” she whispers against my chest. “It won’t make me clean again.”
“You are clean. You’re innocent. This wasn’t your fault.”
But she doesn’t believe me. I can see it in her eyes. The shame has already taken root, poisoning her from the inside out.
I kept my promise. It took me some time, but I found all four of them. Vincent Moretti and his three accomplices. I made their deaths slow and agonizing, but it didn’t bring Nicole back. Nothing could bring her back.
Then I found out about Vincent’s daughter. Sophia. Twenty-two years old, innocent, with her whole life ahead of her. The perfect target for my revenge.
I turn back to Nicole’s grave, my jaw clenched. “I got them,moya malen’kaya. I got all four of the bastards who hurt you. And I got Vincent’s daughter too. She’s paying for his sins now, just like you paid for mine.”
The words taste bitter on my tongue. Because the truth is, Sophia isn’t like her father. She’s nothing like him.
She’s smart, brave, defiant in a way that reminds me of Nicole before those animals broke her.
When I look into Sophia’s blue eyes, I don’t see Vincent Moretti.
I see a young woman who’s terrified and alone, trapped in a nightmare she didn’t create.
Just like Nicole was.
The realization hits me like a physical blow.
I’m doing to Sophia exactly what those men did to my sister.
I’m punishing her for crimes she didn’t commit.
I’m destroying her innocence to satisfy my need for vengeance.
I’m becoming the monster I swore to destroy.
“What would you think of me now?” I ask Nicole’s headstone. “Would you be proud that I’m making an innocent woman suffer? Would you want this?”
The wind is my only answer, cold and unforgiving.
I think about the other night, about the way Sophia looked at me when I found her in the tunnels.
The panic attack that seized her, the way she clung to me like I was her salvation instead of her tormentor.
