“Mikhail, save Tony.” Sophia’s voice cuts through my panic. “Please. He’s my brother. He’s all the family I have left.”
“Sophia, no.” I move toward her, but Lorenzo raises the detonator.
“Ah ah ah. Stay where you are, nephew. Any closer and I press both buttons.”
Tony speaks for the first time, his voice rough. “Don’t listen to her. Save Sophia.”
My mind races through possibilities. There has to be a way. There has to be something I can do. I’ve spent my entire life solving impossible problems, navigating deadly situations. There has to be an answer.
But I can’t see it.
“Forty-five seconds,” Lorenzo announces, glancing at his watch. “Tick tock, nephew.”
“Mikhail, please.” Sophia’s voice breaks. “Save Tony. Promise me you’ll save him.”
My only answer is the grim line pulling at my mouth.
“Thirty seconds.” Lorenzo’s smile widens. “I must say, this is even more entertaining than I imagined. The great Mikhail Artyomov, brought to his knees by an impossible choice.”
I look at Sophia, at the woman who changed everything, who took my world of violence and darkness and somehow made it bearable.
Then I look at Tony, at the brother she mourned for years.
The family she thought she’d lost.
The person she risked everything to save. The person she’ll never forgive me if she loses.
“Mikhail.” Tony’s voice is steady now, resigned. “It’s okay. I’ve made my peace with this. Save my sister. Save your family. That’s what matters.”
“No.” Sophia struggles against her restraints. “No, Tony, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare give up.”
“Twenty seconds.”
My hand tightens on my gun. I could shoot Lorenzo.
Could try to take him out before he presses either button.
But the detonator is a dead man’s switch. I can see it now, the way his thumb hovers over the buttons.
If he dies, if his grip relaxes, both bombs go off.
“Fifteen seconds.”
There has to be something I’m missing. Some angle, some trick, some solution that doesn’t end with me losing everything.
“Ten seconds.”
Sophia’s eyes lock with mine across the room.
She’s already made her peace with dying.
She’s already decided that Tony’s life is worth more than hers.
But I haven’t.
“Five seconds.”
“Wait!” The word explodes from me. “Wait. I’ll do it. I’ll choose.”
