—
Hours pass.I don't move from the floor to wash the blood off my hands or change my clothes. I just sit there, replaying the ambush over and over in my mind. Trying to understand how I got it so wrong.
My father set me up. He agreed to the meeting knowing it was a trap, knowing his men would be waiting to kill Andrei and take me back.Knowinghe would put me in danger.
Without negotiation. Without payment. He was willing to kill Andrei and anyone with him just to get me back. He wants me back that badly… or it was a convenient way to get me and also take out Andrei, who is the focus of all of this—the family he’sworking with, the territory they’ve agreed they want, according to Andrei himself.
I was being used. The thought makes me want to vomit. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, not caring about the dried blood, tears burning at the backs of my eyelids. I don’t understand how all of this works, and I don’t want to.
I want to go back to my life.
A gunshot cracks through the compound. I freeze, every muscle in my body locking up as my head jerks up toward the window.
Someone just died.
I don't know who or why. But that sound—that terrible, final sound—means someone is dead. More of Andrei's men questioning whether I'm worth the trouble? More consequences of my stupid, naive belief that I could fix this?
I press my hands over my ears, but I can still hear the echo of it.
A little while later, I hear footsteps in the hallway, then the sound of the lock clicking open. Andrei stands in the doorway.
"What happened?" I whisper.
He steps inside and closes the door behind him. "One of my men suggested, publicly, that you should be eliminated. That keeping you alive was causing more problems than it solved."
My stomach drops. "And you?—"
"I shot him." The words are matter-of-fact, like he's reporting the weather. "My men think you're making me weak." Andrei moves closer, and I can see the exhaustion in his face. "They think I'm distracted. That I'm making poor strategic decisions because of you. Some of them want you dead so I can refocus on the war with your father."
“So you… you just…”
He crouches down in front of me, eye level now. "So I'm asking you: would that be better? Would you rather I put a bulletin your head right now? End this complication? Let my men stop questioning my leadership? Show them all that you’re not making me weak?” He pauses, his cold blue eyes fixed on mine. “Even I’m not sure that isn’t true any longer.”
The admission makes my heart thump in my chest. I can feel my pulse in my throat, and I no longer know if it’s entirely from fear over what he could do to me, or because of how close he is, and the memory of everything we’ve done together.
“I don’t think anything could make you weak,” I whisper.
He goes very still. There’s a flicker of something I can’t read in his cold blue eyes. "What?"
I lick my dry lips, and I see his gaze flick to my mouth, and back up again. Something cracks in his expression, and for a moment, he’s not the hard man that I see most of the time.
There’s something softer, almost aching, in his eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about," he says quietly.
I swallow hard, my pulse still beating a quick rhythm in the hollow of my throat. "Yes I do."
"Three of my men died today because I let you convince me to arrange that meeting. Because I couldn't say no to you. Because I—" He stops, and looks away. "That's weakness, Liesl. That's exactly what weakness looks like."
His jaw tightens, and I see that muscle tick in his cheek. There’s a long, heavy silence before he looks back at me, and speaks again.
"I should kill you," he whispers. "It would solve everything."
I suck in a sharp breath, and hold it. A heartbeat passes, and then another… and then, without saying another word, Andrei pushes himself to his feet and walks out of the room.
And I’m left there, wondering what the hell comes next.
14
LIESL
