Hope flashes across her face. "You're going to save Ethan?"
"I'm going to eliminate a threat to my organization and recover a potential asset for leverage." My voice stays cold. "Don't mistake that for mercy."
"I don't—thank you."
"And after?" I cut her off. "After Patrick's dead and your family is safe? We're done. You're finished here."
She flinches like I hit her.
"You'll leave. Take your mother and brother and disappear. I don't care where. Just somewhere I never have to see your face again."
"But Mila—"
"Will be told you had a family emergency and couldn't stay." The words taste like ash. "She'll cry. She'll ask for you. And eventually, she'll forget. Children are resilient that way."
"Lev, please…"
"This isn't a negotiation." I push off the table. "You betrayed me. Lied to me. Put everything I've built at risk. The only reason you're not already dead is because killing you would hurt my daughter. But I will not keep you here. Do you understand?"
She nods. Tears streaming down her face. Looking absolutely destroyed.
Good.
She should hurt. Should feel a fraction of what she's put me through.
I head for the door, then pause. Look back at her one last time.
"For what it's worth?" My voice softens just slightly. "I believe you love Mila. That part was real. Everything else? I'll never know for sure. And that's the part that's going to haunt us both."
Then I leave.
Lock the door behind me.
And go plan how to kill Patrick O'Rourke.
I'm going to paint the docks with his blood tonight.
Chapter seventeen
Valerie
The basement is cold.
Not just temperature, though concrete walls and no heating make my breath fog in the air, but the kind of cold that seeps into your bones and stays there.
I deserve worse.
Deserve the pliers Lev held. Deserve the knives on that table. Deserve every brutal thing he threatened to do to me.
But he left me alive. Locked in this cell with nothing but a cot and my guilt.
My face throbs where it hit the floor when the guards dragged me down here. I can feel swelling around my left eye, taste blood where I bit my tongue. Small injuries. Nothing compared to what Ethan's endured.
Nothing compared to what I've done to Lev.
I don't know how long I've been down here. Hours? A day? Time moves strangely in the dark.
The door opens and Lev stands in the doorway. Face blank. Eyes cold. He's changed clothes, black suit, no tie, looking every inch the Pakhan.
