Page 161 of Lethal Obsession

She doesn’t try to cross the deck or touch me, which gives me relief and pain in almost equal measure.

I sit at the laptop, pretending to code, until finally I hear the even rhythm of her breathing.

I look through the open glass door at her sleeping figure, the way the light gleams off her long, elegant limbs, and feel like I need to wash myself clean.

I don’t want to be in the waste disposal business anymore.

The thought hits me with a cold shock.

I cross the deck to the bar and pour myself a vodka. I drink it slowly by the railing, looking at the carpet of stars overhead and their glittering reflection on the water.

I don’t want that life anymore.

Not Miami. Not the swamp. Not any of it.

I don’t want the corpses or the saw grass or the rank stench of blood and violence in my nose. I don’t want the late-night meetings with corrupt officials or the cynical quid pro quos with people I secretly despise.

I don’t want to sleep above the basement that took so much from my family and me.

My family’s promise to return the Naryshkin treasures to the descendants of their rightful owners was fulfilled long ago, at least as much as the combined efforts of Roman’s family and mine could determine. Any unclaimed pieces in the vault remain in our possession, guarded in the event a rightful owner should emerge.

Which means that the only thing holding me in Miami now is the Petrovsky bratva.

Which I’ve just closed down.

I know that isn’t entirely true. The reality is that so long as we own that compound, and my men remain behind its walls, the Petrovsky bratva is a gator waiting patiently beneath the swamp surface. Just as dangerous, just as lethal—and just biding its time.

Only I don’t want to start dragging corpses beneath the water again.

You don’t have to do this anymore, Dima said the night we dumped Ron Watkins’s body.

Back then, the swamp was my only reality, and Ofelia was nothing more than a lethal obsession, a distant fantasy that could never be mine.

Now, the swamp feels like another lifetime. And Ofelia is lying naked in my bed, the moonlight catching the sapphire on her finger.

The ring that I put there.

The one that says she’s mine, now and forever.

And if I truly mean that—if my word is ever to mean anything at all—then Mak was right in what he said during his visit weeks ago: “If you are serious about having any kind of future with Ofelia Borovsky, I suggest you rethink your career choices, not to mention your commitment to the swamp.”

On my laptop screen, the tangled links between me, dirty money, and dead bodies glare accusingly across the deck.

Fuck you, I think with a surge of anger.

I’ll work out what murk in the swamp is trying to suck me down. I’m close enough that I can almost taste the rotten mess on my tongue.

And the minute that’s done, I think with a thrill of determination, so am I.

Every minute after that will be spent on building Phantom—and a future for Ofelia and me that is as far from those muddy waters as day is from night.

I’m going to create a life for us that the gators can’t ever touch.

I settle back in with renewed determination to search the next name on the list, suddenly impatient to get this done.

Then my eyes meet the dead ones waiting for me, and I feel a sudden shock of recognition—followed by a rush of memories.

Renata curled up on my bed, battered and bleeding, her rapist’s foul stench still clinging to her body.