All I see is fury.
Her gaze drops to the gun I still have in my hand, then returns to me. “You did this,” she hisses.
Behind me, Dmitri lets out a sound of surprise, mirroring my own confusion. “Eva, what the hell are you talking about?”
“You did this,” she hisses again, her hands balling into fists. “I know Jordan owed money to Tsepov. He called and said he’d told a secret to the guy he owed money to. It was about you, wasn’t it?”
“Eva, what?—”
But she’s not done. “He was scared. I could hear it in his voice…” Her words drop into a sob, but she swallows it, rage replacing the grief. “What secret did he tell? That you’re using me to get information on him? That we’re sleeping together?”
“People already saw us together.”
“I wish I’d never met you!”
A sob makes her jerk, and she has to put a fist to her mouth to stop it.
I step toward her, holding out my hand. “You’re in shock, Eva. You’re not thinking straight. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. You know that.”
“I don’t know shit,” she bites out as she backs out of my reach, tears streaming down her cheeks again. “I don’t know who the fuck you are. I don’t know why I ever thought you were anything other than a monster. I don’t know how I ever saw any good in you. Vasya and my father were right about you.”
She wipes viciously at the tears on her cheeks. “I should have listened, and now my brother is dead because of me.”
I reach for her arm, curl my fingers around her wrist. “No, Eva. Don’t blame yourself.”
Eva rips her wrist from my grip and backs away from me again. She’s ferocious, her hair a wild halo around her in the dusty light, the look in her eyes an inferno of pain and fury.
“Get away from me, Evgeny. I swear to God, and all that is holy, if you try to contact me again or do anything to my family, I will go to the FBI with everything I know. I willendyou like I should have before.”
Her words and the viciousness with which she says them freeze me in my tracks, and I can only stand there as she runs past me, her footsteps fading away. Vasya gives me an odd look I can’t read and turns on his heel to follow.
He is her ride, after all.
Only when I see my driver lift his gun in Eva’s direction do I move.
“Pull that trigger and you forfeit your life,” I snarl.
“But Boss. She knows too much about you?—”
I have his throat in my hand a heartbeat later, my gun pointed to his temple, and I can feel his pulse against my palm as hestares at me in fear. “You fucking touch her, and you willprayfor death.”
“Aren’t you going after her?” Dmitri demands, gripping my shoulder, and I let the driver go.
I hesitate. I never hesitate, but my entire being is screaming at me to go after Eva, to rip her from Vasya’s car and make her listen to reason. To not let her go until she knows I would never have touched Jordan.
But a small part of me knows this was always how it would end. My life is no fairy tale and, more often than not, it’s a nightmare.
Eva has become a part of me over the past months in a way I never thought possible, and my heart is crumbling even as I hear the sound of an engine start up. I love her and would have done anything to prove it to her, to show her I would never hurt her or her family.
Except I didn’t. Not in the ways that matter. I realize that now. If she believes I’m truly a monster, then she’s far better off away from me.
26
EVA
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
The knife slices cleanly through the peeled potatoes and strikes the cutting board, the pile shrinking with every pass.
