Page 233 of Mile High Ruin

Another man, Kirill, mutters, “Petrov knew she would protect him.”

“She didn’t protect him,” I say.

“No?” Iosef asks carefully. “Then why is he gone?”

I turn my head toward him. He goes silent. For a moment, the only sound is the engine of one of our cars idling near the exit.

“She was confused,” I say.

Iosef says, “She’s always confused when it saves her from choosing. Is she confused about whose child she carries?”

The garage goes very still.

I turn fully toward him. “Be careful what you say next.”

Iosef’s eyes flick once toward Anton, then return to me. He knows he has gone too far.

He continues anyway. “I’m saying what nobody else wants to say. She disappeared with Daniel and Mila. She reappeared under Petrov’s protection. She withheld your sister’s location. She stood between you and your enemy tonight, and when he dragged her away, she looked betrayed by you, not by him.”

Each sentence is a blade placed carefully on the table. I hate that none of them are entirely false.

Marek’s voice comes lower this time. “We all saw what seeing her did to you.” I say nothing. “That’s what worries us.”

The men around us don’t look at me directly, but none of them contradicts him either. I look from one face to another and understand exactly what has been growing quietly beneath their loyalty.

They think Sloane has already beaten me.

Not with a gun. Not with Petrov’s men. With tears, exhaustion, a swollen belly, and my own inability to stop caring whether she breathes.

Iosef says, “If she is working with him, even partly, then every decision you make around her becomes compromised.”

“Careful,” Anton says quietly.

Iosef’s mouth closes, but the damage is done. Because the question beneath all of it is not spoken, and still every man here hears it.

How much of Sloane belongs to Petrov?

My hand curls once at my side. “Nobody goes against Sloane.”

Marek’s eyes flash. “Vadim⁠—”

“Nobody.”

This time my voice cuts hard enough that even he stops.

I look at Iosef. Then at Kirill. Then at the others. “You won’t touch her. You won’t threaten her. You won’t speak a word about her. You won’t decide she is acceptable damage because Petrov put his hands on her and walked out breathing.”

No one answers. Good.

I step closer, just enough that the warning becomes personal. “If anyone forgets that, I will remind him myself.”

Marek looks away first.

Iosef doesn’t, though something unreadable passes across his face.

Anton remains beside me, silent for several seconds before he asks, very quietly, “No matter what?”

I know what he means.