She turns to me fully, her eyes traveling over my face slowly, taking in every feature like she’s memorizing me. A faint ripple of emotion crosses her face, softening the hard lines of her stare. “Yes, that’s also true,” she says softly. “In another life, I was your mother.”
In another life? Like I’m a ghost myself, something she left behind when she shed her old skin.
I imagine she knows exactly who I am and that she’s been watching me since I landed in New York.
But the woman standing here in her pristine white suit doesn’t give a shit. My heart fractures, her indifference cutting deep into my soul.
Marina turns away, like I’m nothing more than an inconvenient detail, her attention shifting to Ruslan, who is still on his knees with a gun pressed to his skull.
“Pakhan here used to call me his stupid little Voronin whore,” she says. “Didn’t you, Ruslan? Not very romantic. Maybe that’s why it never worked out between us.”
She circles him, like a shark in deep water circling its prey. This isn’t the woman who kept fresh flowers on our kitchen table, who sang while she cooked. The years have changed her in inexplicable ways.
Ruslan spits blood onto the concrete and glares up at her. “You should be dead.”
“I’m sure that’s what you hoped for. I bet you imagined me rotting in some gutter after I escaped from your house of nightmares. But here’s the thing about trying to break someone—sometimes you just make them stronger.” Her eyes glitter with darkness. “Hardship forged me into something far more powerful than you. And look where we are now. You on your knees. Me, with my own personal army. I built an empire in Mexico that makes your pathetic bratva look like a child’s lemonade stand.”
Ruslan lunges and a soldier slams him back down with a rifle butt to the face. Blood pours from his nose and Marina chuckles, enjoying every moment.
“The last few weeks have been fun and games. Toying with you before I went in for the kill. But I’m done playing. I’m here for your territory. For your city. And then for all of the East Coast.” She drives the pointed toe of her high heel into his shoulder, grinding down until he grunts. “Everything you’ve worked for, fought for, killed for will be mine.”
Kirill meets my gaze, and the cold truth passes silently between us. She’s not only here to get revenge. She wants to take his throne.
She circles behind Ruslan and wraps her arm across his throat, cutting off his air. He claws at her but she doesn’t budge, her face close to his ear as she speaks. “But first, we’re going to spend some quality time together.” Her laugh is cruel. “By the time I’m done with you and your family, there won’t be a single Baronov left to carry the name. Your legacy, your bloodline... it all ends tonight.”
Katya lets out a small whimper, pressing closer to my side. I slip my arm around her waist, pulling her against me.
“We had nothing to do with my father’s crimes,” Kirill says, his voice steel. “We were children when this happened. Leave us out of this.”
She releases Ruslan with a final shove and rises to her full height. “Did you know your father was about to launch another trafficking pipeline? The Voronins—my twisted family—used to be his partners in the flesh trade. But this time he was building it with his new friends, the Morozovs.”
Kirill’s jaw clenches, disgust rippling across his features. His hands curl into fists at his sides. “I didn’t know that. I was a little distracted trying to stop your soldiers from burning this city to the ground.”
Marina shrugs, unbothered. “An eye for an eye. That’s how justice works in our world. And unfortunately your last name is Baronov.”
Fear twists my gut into a tight knot.
She’s talking about killing Kirill. My husband. The man I love more than my own life.
She’s going to take him from me—this woman who I went to the ends of the earth to find, and I might as well be a stranger she passed on the street.
The rejection, the hurt, the abandonment I’ve carried for eighteen years bubbles up inside me, burning hotter than the rage. “After all this time… did you even look for me?” I choke out. “Did you even care if I was dead or alive? If Papa was?”
Kirill’s hand settles on my back, warm and grounding, his thumb moving in slow circles against my spine.
She crosses to me, closing the distance until she’s close enough to touch. Up close, I see the faint lines around her eyes and the hard set of her jaw. She takes a slow breath, closing her eyes for a heartbeat. When they open, the mask cracks just enough for me to glimpse the grief underneath.
“When I escaped from that basement of horrors, there was only one thing to do. Run and never look back. It was the only way to keep you safe.” Her voice is wistful. She gestures at Ruslan. “I knew he’d be watching. Waiting for me to make contact with you or show my face in Russia or the US. As soon as I did, we’d all be dead. His power was far-reaching for a long time. I walked away and never looked back. I did what I had to do for us all to survive and live in peace.”
The pain of hearing her say this splits me open. I understand survival—I know what you have to do to stay alive in this world—but somewhere along the way she lost more than her old life. She lost her humanity. She closed her heart to me and Papa long before any of this.
And with that, she steps back and signals her soldiers.
“Grab the Baronov heirs. We’re moving locations.”
“No.” The word tears out of me and I step directly in front of Kirill, placing my body between him and her soldiers. “You clearly didn’t love me enough to reach out once you had the power to keep us safe, but he does. He’s my anchor in this world, my family now, and I won’t let you take either of them.”
She closes the distance between us and lifts her hand to my face, running her fingers down my cheek in a gesture so tender itmakes my chest ache. “You think you love him, but you’re young. You don’t know what love is yet. Everything I did for you was out of love, even if you can’t see it.”
