“Shut the fuck up, Ricky,” I say, rolling my eyes.
But I’m smiling.
He looks good. Healthier, even. There’s a new tattoo creeping up his throat I don’t recognize. His knuckles are raw. He’s still here, still standing, still doing the job I told myself I should be doing too.
Kay hooks her arm through mine and drags me further in.
“Jace!” she calls out. “Look who finally decided to grace us with her royal presence.”
Jace is at the back, half-hidden behind a stack of boxes, checking labels on plastic-wrapped bricks. He looks over his shoulder.
“Ayla,” he says with a short nod. “You’re alive. That’s unexpected.”
“Nice to see you too,” I shoot back.
I walk closer, Kay still attached to my arm. The markings on the boxes are familiar—same supplier, same codes, but there are too many.
“You take this from Gabriel?” I ask, brows pulling together. “I didn’t think he had another shipment.”
Jace’s jaw ticks.
“We’ve been monitoring the port,” he replies. “He had another one come in. We grabbed what we could before the Russians showed up to intercept again.”
My stomach drops.
Of course they did.
Maksim’s men, carving pieces off Gabriel’s operations, dismantling his routes.
I shouldn’t care. Gabriel’s been terrorizing my life since I was old enough to run errands. But Kay, Ricky, Jace—they’re stuck in the middle, always.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” I mutter.
“Yeah, well you fell off the face of the earth,” Ricky counters from behind me.
The words land harder than they should.
Because he’s right.
I was supposed to be here, shoulder to shoulder, working these runs, stealing what I could. Not sleeping in a townhouse with marble countertops and security cameras. Not swiping a black card that doesn’t bounce, wearing clothes that actually fit.
Survival, I tell myself.
This is survival.
Except every time Maksim presses me into a wall and growlsmineinto my throat, it doesn’t feel like survival. It feels like something else. Something I’m not supposed to want while my friends are over here still working their asses off for crumbs.
The guilt sits heavy, a stone in my gut.
“Thought Korsakov did something to you,” Ricky says.
I open my mouth to answer, but the back door swings open with a metallic groan.
Cold air knifes in, sharp enough to raise goosebumps under my jacket.
Emir steps through.
He’s in his usual dark clothes, jaw freshly shaved. Always neat, always controlled, eyes that never stop measuring.
