Page 65 of Boardroom Mask

He still doesn’t say anything.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I continue. “I have an email drafted on my phone right now. It’s got everything I’ve gathered. Your name in big fuckin’ red letters, plus the break-ins, what you did to Elliot, the bloody message on my bathroom wall. And then, of course, all the info on Giovanni Ochoa and the bones in Astoria. All of it.”

I pull my phone from my pocket and hold it up so he can see the screen. The email is right there, composed and ready, Doug’s address in theTOfield.

“One tap,” I say. “That’s all it takes. One tap and this goes to a man who will have it in front of the legal team before you make it back to Sixth Avenue. And then it’s not just me you’re dealing with. It’s theNew YorkfuckingTimes.” I take a deep breath. “So you’re going to answer my questions. Every single one. Or I press send and your whole world comes apart.”

He still hasn’t moved or spoken. He just watches me with those gray eyes, and waits.

Until, finally, he speaks. “Put the phone down, Jillian.”

I blink. “Were you not listening to a word I just said?”

He starts to take a step toward me, but I thrust the phone out into the space between us and he stops in his tracks.

“Jillian… I’m saying this for your own good: Put the phone down.”

“‘My own good,’” I repeat. “That’s rich, coming from you. Since when do you give a shit about what’s good for me?”

“Since the beginning,” he says solemnly.

There’s something in his face that’s too torn-up to be lying. Slowly, I lower the hand clutching my phone and squint at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The fact that, if you press send on that email, you’re going to get hurt in a way that makes what I did to Elliot look like a love tap.”

A chill steals over me, raising goosebumps all over. “I don’t understand.”

Kir takes another half-step in my direction. “I’m trying to explain, if you’ll let me. Just put the phone down, alright?” He spreads his hands wide as if to show he’s not holding any weapons. “I swear to God, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m trying to protect you.”

Still frowning, I carefully put the phone on the table. I keep it face-up and within reach, though, just in case. “Explain,” I say bluntly.

Kir juts his chin at the chairs. “Can we sit?”

“No. Explain.”

He sighs and lets his hands flop by his side. “My father ordered me to kill you.”

I’m at a loss for words. There’s a level of depravity here that I didn’t expect even in my wildest dreams. One of New York’s most powerful and infamous billionaires orderedhis own son,the CEO of the company that bears their family name, to come hunt me down and slaughter me in my own apartment…

“About a week and a half ago,” he continues, “after your friend Rae was publicly humiliated at the Lazarev gala, my father got pissed that I tried to intervene to protect her. We argued. He doesn’t like being challenged, my father.” Almost unconsciously, one of Kir’s fingertips floats up to touch what I can see now is a yellowish, fading bruise ringed around his eye. “That’s when he gave me the kill assignment. He’d learned that you were working on a story about our family, and he wanted it buried.”

“And yet here I am,” I say, still shook. “Breathing.”

“Yeah. Here you are.” He exhales hard through his nose. “I couldn’t do it. Obviously.”

“You sure as fuck came here with the intention of doing it,” I remind him with an angry stamp of my foot.

“Yes, I did,” he confesses. “I walked into your apartment that first night ready to do it because you weren’t anything to me. Just a name on a piece of paper. That’s it. That’s all.”

He scrubs a hand over his face. The mask dangles from his other fist, forgotten.

“And then youbitme.” A disbelieving huff of air escapes him. “You couldn’t see, you couldn’t move, you had no weapon, no plan, no way out—and you bit through my glove and tried to break my ribs with your elbow. You weigh, what, a hundred and thirty pounds? And youfoughtme. Like you’d rather die on your feet than beg on your knees.” He chuckles under his breath. “I’ve watched people twice your size beg me for their lives. Grown men, dangerous men, but they fold the second they understand what’s happening.” He looks at me with so much soul in his eyes that it takes my breath away. “You didn’t fold. You gotangry. And something inside me just...” He makes a fist and then opens it, slowly, like releasing something he’ll never get back. “Broke.”

His throat works hard and he shakes his head.

“I was fucked from that moment, Jillian. Completely and permanently fucked. I knew it right away. I went home that night and I couldn’t wash you off me.I could still smell your perfume on my hands, and I inhaled you like a fucking drug. I needed it. Needed more. You infected me with a sickness, and Jillian, and the only cure was more of the thing that caused it.”

Looking away from me out into the darkness of the city beyond my window, he keeps talking.