Page 62 of Twisted Fate

VALENTINA

F or a moment, I don’t breathe.

I feel my expression shuttering, all vulnerability vanishing in an instant, replaced by the careful blank mask I've worn for most of my life. The assassin, not the woman. I feel myself tensing, assessing, ready for whatever’s on the other side of that door. For a betrayal, if this is one. If not…

I’m afraid to let myself think about what else it might be.

Konstantin moves to the door, checking through the peephole before undoing the multiple locks.

My hand flexes, aching for a gun, a knife, anything to fight back with if this is the moment that shatters the fragile trust between us.

When the door opens, I feel myself shift forward on instinct, ready to spring. To pounce, if I’m in danger.

A man enters as Konstantin steps back, a hat tugged low over his eyes, rain dripping from his coat, a waterproof envelope tucked under one arm.

When he takes the hat off, revealing damp, wavy, thick, dark hair streaked with faint grey and a sharply handsome face, jaw streaked with salt-and-pepper stubble, I lean back, watching him through narrowed eyes.

I don’t know who this is, but I don’t trust the relaxed, devil-may- care aura that I feel coming off of him.

No one in our world who has that is using it as anything but a disguise.

"You look like shit," he greets Konstantin cheerfully in a voice laced with a Russian accent, stepping inside as he shakes himself like a dog. Konstantin steps back, frowning at the spray of water.

The man’s eyes find me immediately, narrowing in assessment. "This her?"

The way he says it—like I'm a curiosity, a problem to be solved—makes my spine stiffen. My jaw tightens, and I rise up off of the couch, every muscle in my body coiled. Ready to strike, if need be.

"This is Valentina," Konstantin confirms, emphasizing my real name. The sound of it on his tongue sends a shiver down my spine. I wonder if I’ll ever get used to hearing him say my real name. If he’ll be in my life that long, after this.

I feel a pang at the thought, and quickly shove it down.

Konstantin glances at me. "Valentina, this is Yuri. He's… an information specialist."

"A hacker," I translate flatly. I've worked with people like him before.

Used them. Sometimes eliminated them. My heart thuds behind my ribs.

A hacker means that envelope is likely for me.

Whereas a moment ago I was ready to get away from the man, to attack him if need be, now all I want is to snatch that envelope out from under his arm.

Yuri grins, unperturbed by my coldness. "Among other things." He shrugs off his coat, handing Konstantin the envelope. "Found what you asked for. Wasn't easy, and you owe me big time, but it's all there."

I take a step forward, my fists clenching at my sides as I look at the envelope. I swallow hard, my mouth suddenly dry. If Konstantin hasn’t lied to me—and he’d have good reason to—if he kept his word, then it might all be in there.

Everything that I need.

My stomach clenches at the sight of the envelope.

The truth about my parents, about my past—it might all be there, reduced to paper and ink.

After all these years of wondering, of nightmares, of carrying the weight of their deaths like a stone in my chest, the answers are just…

sitting there. I stare at it like it might bite.

“You want to know what I found?” Yuri glances between us as Konstantin closes the door and flips all of the locks again.

Konstantin glances at me, clearly giving me the choice, and in that moment, I know what I feel for him is real.

To anyone else, it might be a small thing, but I’ve never gotten to make a single choice before in how I heard about what happened to my parents.

In how the information was given—or rather, withheld—from me.

But what I feel for him now is irrelevant. Too much has happened. I don’t know if there’s hope for us any longer, no matter what moment we shared on the couch before Yuri arrived, and I don’t know if we’ll have a chance to find out.

I almost just ask for the envelope, but for the first time in my life, I’m afraid. Afraid that I’ll open it, and it won’t be there, or it won’t be enough. Afraid that the name of their killer, the thing I need most, won’t be something Yuri found.

I swallow hard, then give a tight nod. "Tell us."

My voice sounds steadier than I feel. Inside, I'm that terrified eight-year-old again, hiding behind the sofa, watching as strangers took everything from me.

Yuri's jovial demeanor fades, replaced by something more somber. "Your parents, Jacob and Miranda Sawyer—they weren't random victims. Your father was working with Nicholas Kane.”

A cold like ice rushes through my body. I’m frozen in place, staring at Yuri, waiting for him to say more. To unravel my life, bit by bit.

“Kane had some involvement with a human trafficking operation. Big money, powerful clients. Your father was a part of it, but I guess he didn’t know the human trafficking part at first. He was pushing numbers for Kane. An accountant, I guess.”

I swallow hard, feeling tears prick at the back of my eyes. I nod for Yuri to continue, and I see sympathy in his eyes as he does. Not a hard-bitten guy, then.

“He threatened to turn Kane in to the feds if he didn’t get out of the business.

Kane must’ve fired him. Maybe he told him just to go home to his family and that he could get out.

If he did—” Yuri’s mouth thins. “Well, your father should’ve gotten his family the hell out.

But maybe he was going to. I wasn’t there. ”

My heart is beating hard, thudding in my chest like a wild animal trying to escape a trap. I can see Konstantin’s face darkening as he puts the pieces of the puzzle together. And I?—

My knees give out as it hits me, what should have been obvious from the start of Yuri’s story, but my mind couldn’t process it at first. I, who’ve killed so many people, couldn’t fathom the horror of what Yuri was trying to tell me.

I drop to the couch, the color draining from my face, my knuckles turning white as I grip the edge of it. "Kane killed them."

Yuri nods, that hint of sympathy still in his eyes. "He ordered the hit, yeah. But here's where it gets interesting." He taps his fingers against the envelope he’s holding. "He never intended to kill you. The order was to bring you back alive."

A tremor runs through me, so slight I try to hide it. Everything I thought I knew about myself, about my life, is crumbling beneath me. "What? Was…were they not supposed to kill my father? Was I supposed to be leverage?"

It makes a sick kind of sense. A child hostage to ensure compliance.

It’s not out of Kane’s wheelhouse, though a sick feeling spreads through me as it hits me that I’ve been working for a man like that, willingly, all my life.

A man who I’m not surprised would take a child hostage to force a father to do terrible things.

"No," Yuri corrects me, his voice gentler than before.

"The order was to kill your mother and father, and bring you back to him alive.

His own personal project. Take the daughter of the man who betrayed him, raise her as a weapon, use her to do his dirty work.

The ultimate revenge—turning your enemy's child into your most loyal soldier.

But—" His mouth twists. “I guess the men he sent couldn’t find you. Not sure why they abandoned the search. It cost them their lives, failing him, making him have to hunt you down in the system. But I guess they panicked for some reason, and left the house before finding you.”

The words land like blows. I can't breathe, can't think.

All these years, all these missions, all these deaths at my hands—they were never about justice for my parents, never about earning the name of the person who killed them.

They were just the continued execution of Kane's revenge against a dead man.

My closure, if Kane ever gave it to me, would have been?—

“What was he going to do if I ever demanded the name?” I croak.

It feels like a sick joke, Kane holding that carrot out all these years, only to know that he was the one all along that was the culprit.

It casts him in an entirely different light than the man I thought I knew, the man that I thought?—

That I thought, in his own strange way, loved me.

Yuri shakes his head. “That, I can’t say, Ms. Kane.” Hearing the name attached to mine feels like a physical blow. My head snaps up, and I see Konstantin’s jaw tighten.

“That’s Mrs. Abramov to you, Yuri,” he growls, and I look sharply at him, a flood of emotion constricting my chest.

“Mrs. Abramov. Sorry.” Yuri’s demeanor is as unflappable as it’s been since he walked into the room.

“I can’t say what he would have done,” he continues.

“But probably, he would have given you a fake name. Someone plausible that he wanted dead, and used you to get rid of yet another one of his enemies while covering his tracks.” He shrugs. “That’s just my guess.”

It makes sense. I look at Konstantin. “You trust him?” I ask, and my voice sounds strange, even to me. “You’d believe the information he brought you?”

Konstantin nods without hesitation. “He’s never failed me before. It’s why I called him.”

Yuri casts him a grateful look, one that hints at a friendship between the two of them, and I realize that Konstantin put everything he could into finding these answers for me. He called his best man, told him to make it a priority, clearly, since Yuri found all of it so quickly.

“For what it’s worth—” Yuri pauses, clearing his throat.

“Far be it from me to tell you how to feel. But I’ve seen a lot of fucked-up shit, doing this job.

What Kane did to you is a special kind of evil, Mrs. Abramov.

And knowing the kind of woman you are, I’d say you’re going to answer it with a special kind of response. ”

Yuri holds out the envelope to me, and I take it. I open it, sliding the papers out, and I stare down, for the first time in twenty years, at the faces of my mother and father.

I don’t cry. I don’t scream, or curse, or rage. I just sit very still, processing the complete dismantling of my identity. Every kill, every seduction, every lie—all in service to the man who murdered my family. The irony is so bitter I can taste it.

I flip through the pages of emails, calls, anything that Yuri dug up, one by one. I hear Konstantin thanking him and opening the door again, sending Yuri back out into the storm. If I was a better woman, I suppose, I’d tell Konstantin to have Yuri stay, but right now I want to be alone.

Well, almost alone.

I look up, the words coming out of my mouth before I can fully think them through. “I’m glad you’re here,” I croak, and Konstantin stops, turning to look at me with surprise.

“You are?” he asks quietly, and I nod.

“I’m glad I didn’t have to find this out alone.”

Konstantin crosses the room, slowly, and sits down next to me, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body but still not touching. He says nothing as I look through the papers again, the grief and hurt coalescing into a tight ball of rage in my chest.

Rage that I’ve felt all my life, since I was eight years old—but directed at someone new, now. At the man who was supposed to help me find an outlet for it. The man who was supposed to help me.

"He killed them," I say finally, my voice hollow. "He killed them, and then he made me into… this. His weapon. His revenge." I laugh, a broken sound that’s completely without humor. "All these years, I thought I was working toward avenging them. But I was just finishing what he started."

I can feel Konstantin's desire to reach for me, to comfort me, but he holds back. He must understand, somehow, that this isn't something he can shield me from. This is something I have to face and process in my own way.

"What do you want to do?" he asks instead, and I feel that rush of emotion again, of gratitude. He’s giving me the best thing he could right now—agency, a choice of my own.

It's a gift more precious than he knows—or maybe he does know, and that’s why he’s doing it. All my life, I've been controlled, manipulated, used. This simple question— what do you want to do? —feels revolutionary.

I look up at him, and feel a clarity washing through me, cold and sharp as a blade.

"I want to kill him," I say simply. "I want to destroy everything he's built. I want him to know, in his last moments, that the weapon he created is the one that’s killed him."

I should feel some sort of horror at myself, I suppose, at the kind of person I’ve become. But instead, the words just feel cleansing. It feels good to face who I am, to own it, to take control of it—to use the darkness that’s lived inside of me since that night to my own advantage.

I’m not just Kane’s creation. I’m a survivor in my own right. And I’ll survive him, too.

Konstantin just looks at me evenly, unfazed by my viciousness, undeterred by my anger. He understands that darkness. He has it in him, too—he has to, to have lived as the heir to a Bratva family for so long. And he’s not put off by mine.

He reaches for my hand, covering it with his, his fingers interlacing with mine. "Then that's what we'll do," he promises.

I don’t pull away. The storm rages on outside. My fingers intertwine with his, and neither of us says anything. We just sit there, in that blue darkness of the storm—and for the first time in my life, I don’t feel alone.

I feel like I have someone I can count on.