“Don’t I?” he asks. “How long before they stop smiling in your face and start thinking clearly? How long before they realize their great, fearsome leader is dragging a weak point around by the hand?”
My grip tightens on the phone. “I’m not weak, and they accept me.”
“Acceptance is cheap,” Gabriel says. “Men like that will tolerate anything their Pakhan puts in front of them until it starts to cost them.”
I swallow hard. “Unlikeyou,Maksim can actually control his men.”
“That isn’t control.”
“Of course you wouldn’t recognize it,” I snap. “You’ve never controlled a fucking thing in your life.”
He hums, unbothered. “It means they do not follow him because they respect him. They obey because they fear him. That is not loyalty, Ayla. That is compliance.” His voice cools. “And compliance cracks the second men think their leader has letfilthtoo close.”
My stomach turns cold.
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Do you really think men like that want someone likeyouin their house?” he asks softly. “In his bed?”
I say nothing.
“You think they want Turkish trash warming their Pakhan’s sheets?”
The word hits like a slap.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that.”
“But that’s what you are, isn’t it?” he says. “Or did you forget where you came from?”
Rage flashes hot enough to make my hand shake.
“He chose me.”
Gabriel laughs under his breath. “For now.”
My jaw locks so hard it aches.
“You really don’t understand men like him,” he says. “Men like Maksim don’t elevate girls like you. They use them. They keep them close until the smell starts offending everyone else in the room.”
My chest goes tight with something ugly and hot.
“You don’t know anything about him.”
“No?” he murmurs. “Then tell me, when he put a bullet in Ali, were you there?”
Everything in me stops. For one second, I forget how to breathe. He hears it.
Of course he hears it.
And suddenly his voice is smiling. “I thought so.”
Ice crawls down my spine.
“How do you know that?” I whisper, before I can stop myself.
Gabriel ignores the question completely. “Ali was the only man who ever bothered showing you kindness, and Maksim murdered him right in front of you.”
“You don’t get to say his name.”
