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“You mean he got away?” Cyrille asks.
“Just barely,” I say. “He received a message while he was there. Someone told him I hit the panic button. It was clear that someone was tipping him off. Someone… on the inside.”
Cyrille stares at me for a moment as she starts putting the pieces together. “Wait… You think thatPavelwas the one tipping him off?”
“We cornered him last night and he confirmed it himself,” Misha explains. “He’s been working with Petyr this whole time. This is how it had to be.”
Cyrille’s face drops. She looks so incredibly fragile for a moment that I feel the need to grab hold of her just to keep her from crumbling.
“Cy, I’m so sorry…”
She lifts her eyes to mine. For a moment, she looks like a cornered animal. I think she’s going to lash out at me. Then I realize the anger I’m seeing is aimed at herself.
“I can’t believe what a fool I’ve been,” she spits.
“No! This isn’t your fault.”
“I gave him information, Paige!” She chokes on her own words. “I told him things that he would never have known if it weren’t for me.”
“You didn’t know. How could you possibly have known?”
“Jesus!” she cries, talking over me. “Of course that was why he was so interested in getting to know me. He was grooming me. He was manipulating me. He was fuckinglaughingat me.”
“He was an asshole,” I say bluntly. “And now, he’s dead.”
She looks at me. Then past me, to Misha. “He’s… dead? You’re sure?”
Misha nods. “I pulled the trigger myself.”
“Good.” Her sneer is vicious and violent, and when I see that, it’s easy to understand how she could’ve been a Bratva queen. So cold. So imperious. Even I’m frightened of her.
I take her hand. “I know it wasn’t love, but betrayal hurts, no matter what.”
Her sneer doesn’t change. “Not as much as death.”
75
MISHA
I’ve been working for hours and my eyes feel like burnt-out coals in their sockets. After the debacle at Cyrille’s, I took Paige back home and went to Orion. I was hoping work would take the sting out of the grief sitting heavy on my chest.
Watching Cyrille process as her lone flicker of hope for love after Maksim was snuffed out… It was a difficult thing to witness. Her words and her icy rage are still ringing in my head, echoing endlessly.
All I could think about was,I can’t let this happen to Paige.
This war has taken too much from my family. Losing Maksim tore a hole in my chest that will never heal. But losing Paige? Losing our children? It would take something from me, something essential that I’d never get back.
I can’t let that happen.
Sighing, I shove back from my desk and crack my neck. My nose is tingling, and for a moment, I think I’m hallucinating again. Going back to the smell of gunpowder that accompanied the sound of my brother’s lifeless body hitting the floor.
Then I realize I’m not imagining the smell.
It’s real.
I lurch up and cross the room to my door. When I open it up, the air is thick. There’s a haze hanging in the hallway. Smoke, yes, but underneath it is an acrid chemical stench that makes me shiver.
“Hello?” I yell down the hall.
