My ankle shrieks when I stumble to my feet. I embrace the white-hot pain clearing my foggy mind as I pull up my pants and put several feet between us. “You’re a fucking liar.”
She doesn’t recoil. “I’ve never lied about anything in my life. I saw Roman, the man I calledDaddy, who I thought loved us both, kneel over my dead mother while her blood still pooled around her. After he stole my necklace, the one she said would be mine one day, he started shouting my name.”
Nothing adds up as Nika pushes herself up from the floor. She’s naked from the waist down, her eyes too steady. Too clear.She appears to be telling the truth, but how in the hell is that even possible?
“You’ll say anything to justify your insanity.” I yank my gaze away, unable to look at her and still think with that sincerity written across every line of her face. “No.”
“Yes.”
Her conviction causes me to doubt everything I thought I knew.
Roman killed Lilia, his own wife? Nika’s mother? The man who saw the monster in me and didn’t flinch? Who gave me purpose when I had none?
I don’t believe her. “You’re wrong.”
“After everything he’s done this last year, you don’t think he’s capable?” She stands still, watching me unravel. “He’s out of control. He could have ignored the clues I sent at any time. He chose not to. His pride meant more to him than the lives of everyone else. And you still protect him?”
“He’s my Pakhan.” I shove my hair out of my face viciously enough to rip a few strands free, the sting helping to ground me. “Tell me what you want from me. From Roman.”
She rolls her eyes while exhaling a puff of hot air. “The same thing I’ve been telling you I want from the very beginning. I want my mother’s locket. The one she promised to me. The only tangible thing I have left of her.”
I reach into the front pocket of my jeans, right where her hand sat while giving me head just minutes ago. I extract the locket, the metal warm from my body heat, and hold the chain aloft. “You think Roman killed your mother over this? Are you psychotic? He probably gave this to her!”
She stiffens, fixating on the necklace with an almost fanatical intensity. For the first time since we met, she resembles the psychopath from the video. “He didn’t give her anything. That gift came from myDedushkaPeter, who gave it to my mother,not to Roman. Why do you think he gave it to my mom instead of his own son?”
Her eyes brighten with unshed tears.
Tears.
This woman—tough as a diamond, frigid as winter, trained to kill without hesitation—is about to cry over a piece of jewelry.
The sight throws me off-balance because I think she’s fucking serious.
This would be the perfect time for her to tell me what she’s actually after, and she still insists it’s just the locket. Not whatever the locket leads to. Not money or power. Not even Roman’s death.
This is wrong. The fury, the tears, the insane tale… It’s too emotional to be calculated, too detailed to be fabricated.
And sadly, entirely too raw to be anything except lived truth.
It’s the truth of a nine-year-old girl who lost everything and longs for a fragment of the happiness she once knew.
A sick, twisted nausea curls in my gut.
No. I cannot accept this. Not without proof.
She’s got to be after more. She must have some further reason for doing all this shit. For ripping my family apart from the inside out.
My gaze catches on a painting that hangs on the wall near Nika’s bedroom door. It’s been at the edge of my awareness since I first searched this place.
A woman with dark hair and a smile. The proportions are wrong, the colors muddy, but there’s clumsy love in every brushstroke. The kind of thing a child would create.
Mounted and professionally framed.
I cross over to the portrait.
Nika sucks in a small breath. “No.”
I yank the frame off the wall and set it on the floor, exposing a small safe with a digital keypad. “What’s the combination?”
