“I love you too,” I whisper back.
Then the line goes dead with a sharp click, and the machine voice asks for ten more cents to extend the call.
But I hang up, slowly, my hands still shaking, because I don’t need the line anymore. I know him.
He is coming for me.
20
ALEKSANDR
When one believesdeath is coming, do they ever stop calling for it?
Does a grown man learn not to sniffle, or cry, or ask for God, when a stronger man brings him down? Does he not know this is the will of gods—that one man is made to hunt, and another to be hunted?
The man sniffles, a thick glob of snot spilling from his nose, clinging to his upper lip as he tries to breathe through his mouth. A pathetic display of what could very well be his last moments.
I sit in the chair across from him, silent, hands resting loosely on my knees. The single overhead bulb swings with a lazy rhythm, cutting a circle of light through the basement. For a moment, he tilts his face up toward it, like the heat of that bulb might hold salvation.
“Is this how you want to spend your last minutes?” I ask, my voice quiet, flat.
His eyes dart to me, wide and bloodshot, wet with fear. He looks like he can’t decide whether to beg or vomit. “Please. I didn’t?—”
“You did,” I interrupt, not raising my tone, watching as the shakes start to take him over.
I am not like Nadia or Nik. They enjoy the spectacle—the mess, the blood, the sound of bone giving way. I don’t. I prefer precision. I prefer a method that leaves no trace but still takes everything from you. My tools are poisons: slow, inevitable, a certainty you feel creeping through your veins while you sit there and beg. Cleaner than blood. Harder to detect—if you know what you’re doing.
I know this isn’t the right way. In fact, Gwen practically screamed that at me while I was packing my materials. But her way? Her way is slow. Her way means the NYPD is still circling us, and she’s still sitting in a cell for sixty more hours. I can’t stand for that. I can’t let her sit there that long.
Tyler blubbers something, his head ducking, eyes glued to his knees like the sight of his own shaking legs will protect him.
“Oh, so you…” I reach to my right, take the folder, and flip it open, my fingers calm and deliberate as I trace the pages until I find the name. “…Tyler Richards. Newly elected New York District Attorney. You’re telling me you didn’t start an investigation into the Petrov family after being paid by Takeda Matsumoto?”
Nadia is going to have a field day with this.
The Yakuza. Of all people. Trying to take us down with subpoenas, indictments, bribes—like paper and ink could ever replace blood. And all because she refuses to do the one thing Takeda has been screaming for: to hunt down his son and hand him over like a gift. Sho. The heir.
Instead, Nadia stands in his way. And so now he’s chosen to come at us from every angle—legally, criminally—thinking he can choke us in court where he couldn’t break us in the streets.
He has no idea what kind of war he has started.
Takeda thinks that if he can’t break her with force, he’ll strangle her with the law. He doesn’t understand that Nadia’s stubbornness is carved into her bones. She cannot be moved. And after what he has done—after the stunt that put my girl in danger?
Takeda should be grateful I haven’t already flown to Tokyo to take his head off with my own hands. The only thing stopping me is Nadia. And, to a lesser degree, Sho.
“Please,” Tyler whispers, “just… my daughter?—”
“Your daughter,” I cut in, my voice like ice, “is upstairs. Excited to start junior high. Ignoring the faint scent of carbon monoxide that’s been seeping through your house for the last two hours.”
His head snaps up, color draining from his face.
“She thinks it’s the stove. Maybe a pan burned. She opens a window. Turns on the fan. And she keeps going with her morning. She thinks she has time—while my wife sits in a prison cell because of you.”
“W-who?” he stammers.
I turn a page. The rasp of the paper is loud in the silence. I glance at him over the folder. “Do you think your daughter smokes, Tyler? Maybe she fell in with the wrong crowd? Tried a little weed? Or maybe your wife will make tea tonight. Maybe pancakes in the morning. All it takes is a little flame. One spark.”I click my fingers. “And your beautiful upstate estate goes… boom.”
His lip trembles.
