Page 66

YULIAN

The scotch glass hits the counter hard.

The bartender doesn’t need any more encouragement than that to bring the bottle again. His eyes are scurrying away from mine as he pours, terrified. If I’d been any other client, he would’ve cut me off already.

But I’m not any other client. I’m the deadliest son of a bitch in New York. A piece of shit with too many zeroes in his bank account and too many guns shoved through his belt.

I’m a monster.

And tonight, Mia saw it, too.

“You used me.”

“Don’t you dare touch me again.”

“Goodbye, Yulian.”

The liquor burns down my throat, chasing away the pain. Trying to, at least. But pain is a stubborn bitch.

“Have you tried gasoline yet?” a female voice chimes in. “I hear it tastes just as bad.”

“Go away, Nikita.”

“I’ve been away for three months.” She shrugs, slides into the empty stool next to me at the counter. “I’m not staying gone longer than that.”

Her sass hits all the wrong notes. “Then where the fuck were you tonight?” I snarl. “You were supposed to stand guard. This happened on your watch. I swear, if we didn’t have the history we do?—”

“I know,” she overrides. “I’m sorry.”

I couldn’t miss the guilt in her voice if I tried. It makes me feel like shit. “‘Sorry’ won’t cut it, Nika.” I grimace. “You didn’t get the color of the napkins wrong; you left a hole in our defenses. Someone took a bullet. Mia almost?—”

“I know!” There’s a desperate, pleading edge to her tone. “I’m really fucking sorry, Yuli. I don’t know what else to say.”

“You could start with an explanation.”

She takes a brittle exhale, then gestures to the bartender for a drink. When it comes, she downs it in one go. “I passed out. During my rounds.”

“Bullshit.”

“Is it?” She lifts up her sleeve, showing me the constellation of needle marks in her arm, the bruises still bright purple.

“I’ve been fed through a tube for three months, Yulian.

I haven’t been walking, standing, or even being awake for more than five minutes at a time. Tonight, I could barely sit down.”

“You said you could handle it.”

“I did. And that was my mistake.” She passes a hand through her hair. There’s white in it now, sprinkled into the black like midnight snow. “Look, I’m not here to make excuses. I fucked up. That’s on me. My whole team is dead—that’s on me, too.”

Dead. That’s news to me. Though, to be fair, I didn’t exactly stick around for damage control. “How?”

“Single bullet to the head. We were surrounded before we even took up our posts.”

“How’s that fucking possible?” I growl. “We checked the perimeter. We re-checked a dozen times. We?—”

“There were holes in the ground,” she whispers. “They’d buried themselves, Yulian. With tiny tubes to breathe, hidden in the foliage. They were everywhere.”

The image sends a cold chill down my spine. Buried. I try to picture it: an army of corpses, rising from the earth, turning my worst nightmares into reality. And Nikita, in the middle of it all, reliving it all over again.

Suddenly, my anger at her fizzles out. I promised Kira I’d take care of her sister, that I’d keep her away from the monsters that took her. Instead, I shoved her right into their gaping maws.

“How many?” I ask, exhausted.

“Seven.”

“ Blyat’. ”

“Yeah. Blyat’ is right.” She finishes her second drink and pushes away her glass. “I woke up because of the screams. I’d passed out in the brush—that’s probably the only reason they didn’t get me, too. When I tried reaching out, there was only static on the line.”

Jammed comms. “And then?”

“Then I crept through the orchard and took them out one by one.”

Despite the disaster that was tonight, I can’t help the spark of pride that flickers through me. “I got the one in the trees.”

“You got his shoulder. I blew his brains out when he fell.”

“Good job.”

“Not good enough.” Her nails dig into her palms, short and bitten. “That girl got hit. Mia’s friend.”

The mere mention of Mia is enough to rip my wound open all over again. “And Maksim’s girl,” I whisper, trying to focus on literally anything else. Anything that isn’t her.

“Damn.”

“Yeah. Damn.”

“I saw the ambulance. How’s she doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“His phone’s off.”

“And Mia’s?”

Cracks snake up the glass in my grip. “She’s no longer our concern.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means she’s done with this.” I grind my teeth and set my jaw. “With me.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Without a word, I fish out the engagement ring and set it down on the counter.

Nikita’s eyes widen at the sight. “Fuck. Seriously?”

I don’t bother answering.

Instead, I turn towards my phone, left unlocked next to me on the bank’s app, $900,000 blinking at me from the screen.

It’s not an oversight. It’s stalling.

Once I pay her, it’s all over.

She said she didn’t want it. Keep your money— those were her words. Right as she was slipping her engagement ring off, she spit those words to me.

Suspended. Jobless. Cashless. And still, she turned down a million dollars.

That’s how much she fucking hates me.

It’s not right to keep the money. I won’t do it. She can give it all to charity if she chooses; I don’t care. But she needs to get it.

She needs to get something for all I put her through.

Idiot, the cold voice inside me growls. Do you really think it’s money she wants? That a wire transfer will fix what you broke?

After all this, do you really still think Mia Winters is for sale?

No. She isn’t.

But she’s a mom. Before anything else, she’s always been that. A mother to her son. To Eli.

And Eli needs that money.

She’ll take it. I know it in my gut. After the storm has passed in her heart, she’ll take it and move far away from here. She’ll take her son, her life, and disappear under a new name again.

And I’ll never be able to reach her.

It’s why my fingers are still hovering over the screen, unwilling to press down. The second I do, it’s goodbye.

And I’m not ready to say goodbye.

“Look.” Nikita’s voice snaps me out of it, but not all the way. “She’s angry. You lied to her, and her friend got shot. She needs time to process. That’s all this is, Yulian.”

“You weren’t there.”

“No, but I was in her car. I was in your bed, under her care, and then I was in the StarTech basement doing shots with her. I was there when you proposed—shit job, by the way, but at least it was original?—”

“If there’s a point, get to it.”

“Sure.” She turns to face me. “She loves you, you big idiot . She had stars in her eyes when you asked her to marry you. It was the worst proposal on earth, and still, she said yes. Do you have any idea how many women would’ve done that?”

“Pretty much every socialite looking to marry into wealth and power.”

“No. Those would have demanded a diamond and candlelight. And you would have given it to them, because you wouldn’t have cared if they lived or died. But with Mia, you did.”

“I put her in danger.”

“You were trying to save her.”

“From myself!” I snarl, palms slamming on the counter. “I was trying to save her from me, goddammit—where the fuck’s the love in that?!”

“Everywhere.” Nikita does something bold then, something risky at best and suicidal at worst: she takes my glass away and grabs my hand. “So don’t let it go to waste, brother. Don’t let these mudaki take yet another family from us.”

Us.

Not “you”— us.

In the short time she’s been around, Mia has already become family to everyone who matters most to me.

And she’s become family to me.

Don’t let these mudaki take yet another family from us.

My parents, my sister—they’re all beyond reach. Kira, too, alive only in memory and in the flowers Nikita brings her every week.

But Mia is here. She’s alive . She isn’t a memory yet.

And I’ll be fucked if I let her become one.

“I have to go.”

Nikita grins. “Go get her, you big idiot . ”

“Call me that again, and I’ll have you thrown into a dungeon.”

“Attaboy.”

I pour my last drink into a plant, grab my coat, and head out into the night.

The whole way to Mia’s apartment, my pulse is thrumming. I’m more lucid than I’ve been in ages. Awake. I have no idea how I’ll get her to forgive me. But fuck me, I’ll try. I’ll try as many times as it takes. Until she’s either on a plane or in my arms.

Because I can’t imagine a life without Mia in it.

I take the stairs of her shitty apartment building three by three. I’m out of breath when I get to her floor, the alcohol and exhaustion weighing me down, but I still push open the door.

Wait. Push open the door?

Why isn’t it locked?

“You.”

I almost draw my gun, but then I recognize the voice. Reese.

“Where’s Mia?”

He strides towards me, fists balled up with rage. He isn’t imposing by any means, but the black eye is new. “Why don’t you ask Sitter Ratched, you dickhead?”

“Sitter what?”

“Tamara. That psycho you sent to watch her son.”

Dread sinks into my gut. “I never sent anyone.”

“Bullshit,” Reese growls. “That night, when Mia stayed over at that rich boys’ club with you, you sent?—”

“No one,” I cut in. “I thought Kallie was staying over. Mia didn’t ask for a sitter, so I didn’t send one.”

“But…” Reese’s eyes widen. His fists uncurl. “But Mia said it was in the contract. She said?—”

“If she’d asked, I would have done it. But she never did, Reese.”

“Because she thought you’d already sent someone!”

Impatience mixes with terror in my veins. I scan the room. Everything looks haphazard in a panicked sort of way, like there’s been a search and seizure. It’s unlike the warm chaos of Mia’s home—unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.

Then, on the floor, I spot it.

Eli’s Garfield plushie.

I pick it up without thinking. It’s cold, I realize. It must have been on that floor for hours.

Eli never would have left it like that. Not if he had any choice. In fact, he wouldn’t have left it at all.

My fingers dig into the fabric. “Reese, I need you to answer me now. What happened here?”

And finally, he tells me. About the woman named Tamara, Eli’s kidnapping, the note on Mia’s counter.

When he’s finished, my knuckles are marble white.

Brad.

I should have killed that mudak when I had the chance. I never, ever should have let him walk out of StarTech, or even his own wedding. That stunt at the hospital—it should have cost him both his legs.

Instead, for Mia’s sake, I let it go unpunished.

A mistake I won’t repeat.

“Where did she go, Reese?”

“She didn’t say. Just that she was going to get Eli back.”

She’s going to him. To bargain—to plead.

Fear grips me as hard as fury.

“Wait!” Reese calls after me as I turn to leave. “Where are you going?”

“To get my family back.”