Page 19 of Wicked Refusal

“Oh, I see. You were taunting me on purpose. Nice try,printsessa,but it won’t work. If there’s one thing I’ve got going on for me, it’s patience.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“I’ll admit, I can get a little hotheaded from time to time. But how couldn’t I? You’re just like her.”

I blink. “What?”

“Kira.” He spreads his arms wide. “She was just like that, too. Cunning, calculating, vicious. Always one step ahead of everybody else. That is, until she wasn’t.”

“You mean, until you murdered her.”

“Eh, murder, schmurder.” He shrugs. “Honestly, I always regretted that I wasn't there to pull the trigger on her. But they tell me she screamed.” His smirk turns wicked. “She died like a dog, right here.”

Wait. What?

My eyes go to the table again. Overturned, full of holes—and stained a dark brown that must’ve been red at some point. Not sauce, I don’t think. Belatedly, I realize exactly where this man took me.

“This is Yulian’s house,” I whisper. “This is where they died.”

Desya grins, all teeth. “Couldn’t have been easier. He loved complaining to me. Wouldn’t shut up about this stupid dinner and the embarrassment of his parents insisting on Kira being there. They always thought he’d wind up with her, eventually. I knew they were right.”

“They werefriends,” I snarl. “Yulian told me he’d never had plans to marry her. Never.”

“Well, he lied.”

“He didn’t.”

“Yes, he fucking did!” There it is again: a hot, quick burst of rage, gone as fast as it came. “But it’s fine. You see, he lied to me, too. That’s why she had to go. Why they all had to go.”

It dawns on me, then—the horror of what went down here twenty years ago. “You killed them because… you were jealous?”

“Technically, Prizrak killed them.”

“But you gave the order.”

He shrugs. “Guilty as charged.”

I’m shaking now, overcome with rage and regret on Yulian’s behalf. Is this the kind of weight Yulian has been carrying around all his life? Twenty years of guilt, of thinking he’s the reason his whole family got murdered?

“How could you?” I croak. “How could you do that to your own friend?”

His expression turns unreadable. “I did what I had to do.”

“No. You did it because you wanted to.”

“He was going to get married. He was going to leave me behind.”

“So you had his whole family murdered?!”

“YES!” he yells. “That’s what happens to fucking traitors!”

He clutches his scar. The T-shape twitches with the muscles underneath, turning his face into a grotesque spectacle.

I thought I could reason with this man. That I could find out what he wanted or outsmart him somehow. But there’s no reasoning with crazy. And Desya Bogdanov is, without question, insane.

As if on cue, he grins again. He reminds me of those theater masks—comedy and tragedy. One smiling, one crying.

Right now, he’s half of both.