Page 136 of Fallen Empire

Because she was one of us.

And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to save her.

A breath slipped from her mouth, soft and final.

Her last.

She was gone. Whoever she was, she’d died for us.

I reached forward, gently closing her eyelids, then stood and backed into the farthest corner of the room, pressing myself into the shadowed wall. As far from the door as I could get. As far from her body as possible.

The click overhead made my heart seize.

He was back.

I didn’t know how long it had been since he last spoke—minutes, hours—everything blurred together in this place. But the sound of his voice again, smooth and casual, like he hadn’t just dumped a dying woman at my feet, made my stomach twist.

“Well. I guess you didn’t know her after all.”

The sound of him made my skin crawl, but I couldn’t afford to let him get inside my head.

It was too calm. Too deliberate.

I’d spent years coaching powerful men through public scandals, teaching them how to fake composure when the world was burning around them. But Aleksei didn’t need to fakeanything. He didn’t hide the madness. No, he carried it with pride, wore it like a second skin.

And every word from that speaker? It was a blade I couldn’t see coming. This wasn’t something I could manage or control. This was psychological warfare.

And I was the experiment.

He wasn’t just a monster.

He was calculated. And he was enjoying every second of this.

But if he wasn’t going to come into the room, then he didn’t want my blood, at least not yet.

This was about control.

Which meant if I had any shot of surviving this, I had to take some of it back. I’d have to fight him with the only weapon I had left—my mind.

And pray that was enough.

“No,” I said, voice steady. “I didn’t know her.”

“Then tell me,” he pressed, tone sharper now. “What were her final words? The ones so vital she wasted her last breath on them.”

I glanced at the camera mounted in the corner.

And that’s when it hit me.

He didn’t know who she was either. I looked down, buying myself a second, then shook my head slowly.

A loud bang exploded through the speaker. My body flinched before I could stop it.

“Tell me,” he growled. Any trace of patience was gone.

I didn’t answer right away. Not because I was scared, even though I was, but because for the first time since being dragged into this hellhole, I might’ve had something he didn’t.

After hearing her last words, I assumed she was a warning meant for Jaxson—another twisted move in Aleksei’s obsession with control. Jaxson had sent her after Aleksei, soof course he would respond the only way he knew how. Destruction.