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She already knows what I am.
What I see instead is fury. Pure. Controlled. Personal.
“You killed him.”
“Yes.”
“He said they would contact him again.”
“They wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“They burned Petros the moment he became compromised. Karras was finished the second we contacted him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He gave us the terminals. The accounts. The access routes.”
“And maybe there was more.”
“There wasn’t.”
Her jaw tightens. “How could you possibly know?”
“Because I’ve spent thirty years questioning men who think secrets make them valuable.”
“You killed the only man who could have taken us higher.”
“He had given us everything.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.”
The words land between us. She looks at me as if I have struck her, not because the answer is cruel but because it is true. Neither of us knows.
That is the point.
Elena looks down at Karras again, then back at me. “He reported Kalliopi.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to turn every answer into a corpse.”
“He helped kill her.”
“He may have helped us find who ordered it.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“You decided that.”
“Yes.”
There it is. The actual argument. Not whether Karras knew more. Not whether he deserved to die. But whether I had the right to decide when the questions ended.
Elena's eyes burn.
