Chapter 19
Kirill
Only the door stands between the cop and us.
Thin wood and cheap hinges. Nothing that would stop me if Jordan lost her grip.
One wrong word, one flicker of fear, and everything goes loud.
Neutralize. Secure. Vanish.
Ninety seconds, no more.
I’ve already measured every step to the elevator and rehearsed the timing in my head. Now I wait.
The door opens. Jordan keeps one hand on the knob. The other smooths the borrowed black dress against her hip, like she’s greeting an unexpected neighbor and not facing down a nosy detective.
I’m angled to see her sideways silhouette in the harsh hallway light and the cop’s long shadow spilling into the room.
“Detective Colvin?” She acknowledges him with the same soft, inviting voice she used for the video I interrupted the day I broke into her apartment and abducted her. “How can I help you?”
“Sorry to bother you, Miss Thorne.” The man is calm and patient, waiting for her to fill the silence rather than forcing compliance. “As I said, there was a disturbance behind your apartment building about a week ago. We’re following up with the residents. Hoping someone saw something.”
I tense for the tell. The stammer. The mystical smokescreen to buy herself time. Any second now, she’ll panic and freeze.
“A disturbance?” As easily as breathing, Jordan pitches her tone halfway between curiosity and concern. “I’m sorry, I’ve been away. What happened?”
The steadiness knocks me off-balance. This isn’t the same woman who wailed about psychic scars in her living room, who clung to me in a panic and battered her fists against my chest.
She’s practiced and perfect. I don’t even detect a hint of strain.
Well, fuck me. So much for freezing.
The detective shifts, shoe creaking and fabric rustling. “Reports of gunfire. When officers arrived at the scene, they found several pools of blood in the alley. Spatters. Signs of violence. But no bodies. No victims. And no witnesses have come forward.”
Should’ve called Lev, one of our most trusted low-level guys, to clean up that scene. He never leaves a trace of evidence. But in all fairness, the clean-up crew didn’t have much time to work before the cops arrived.
Jordan’s face shifts into a concerned frown. “That’s awful.” The words come out with just the right amount of distress. “I hope everyone’s all right.”
She’s lying, but there’s no way the cop knows. If I hadn’t been in that alley myself, I’d believe her.
She’s one hell of an actress.
Suave as a criminal.
Where the hell did this come from?
The detective tries again, a little more insistent. “Where did you say you’ve been?”
“Visiting family since last Saturday.” The answer is glass-smooth and doesn’t give anything away.
“Needed a breather, a new scene for my Sunday livestream. You can check if you want, see that the background doesn’t match my usual because I was traveling.
I only got back into town right before I went on stage. You can check that, too, obviously.”
Line by line, she builds this truth-based alibi to give stability. Not a scrap of anxiety. No spiritual dodge or metaphysical smoke. She’s engaged, attentive, and just helpful enough to be believable.
“Family time, huh?” The tone shifts as he goes for a new angle. “Where were you? The number we have for you isn’t working.”
That’s the test. Most people would trip. Unless they were clean.
Jordan just laughs. “I lost my phone in a lake trying to do yoga on the dock, if you can believe it. Had to get a new number. Still updating everything.”
Her laugh—a real, natural one rather than an overexplainer’s—even prompts my shoulders to relax.
With this detective, she doesn’t act like the scatterbrained mystic or the cornered prey. She controls every inch of herself, using her words like a shield.
I’m impressed. And annoyed. Because now I’m rethinking every conversation we’ve ever had.
I know she at least half believes all the New Age garbage—her time on stage earlier proved that—but clearly that’s not all she’s hiding under that pretty face.
She’s sneaky. Calculating.
Dangerous.
Mine.
Not the fucking time, Kirill.
“Any chance you were home the night of the fourteenth?” The detective doesn’t let up.
She tilts her head, feigning thought. “No, definitely gone by then. Like I said. Left on the thirteenth.”
No room for doubt.
“Sorry for the interruption.” The detective sounds resigned. He knows she’s redirected him and doesn’t know how to go back. “If you remember anything, here’s my card.”
Paper exchanges hands and bright warmth lights up Jordan’s voice as she thanks him.
The detective’s shadow starts to turn, then stops. His shoes crunch the soft carpet in the hall. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything. Thought I heard you talking to someone.”
My hand finds the metal at my side.
“I’m a podcaster.” Jordan’s laugh is disarming sunshine. “I talk to myself constantly. It’s a side effect of the job. We all end up sounding insane.”
A half-second pause ensues. “Sounded like an argument.”
My muscles tighten as I prepare for the fight.
Jordan doesn’t miss a beat. “It’s like a telenovela in here.” She releases a richer, more authentic laugh and taps the side of her head with a finger. “Except with a microphone. Have you ever watched a soap opera, Detective?”
“Once or twice.” His words come slower, more relaxed.
Jordan shrugs, almost playfully. “So you get it. My life’s basically like that. Drama for the microphone to keep my audiences entertained.”
The detective actually chuckles. I hear his shoes shuffling back, his weight receding. “Thanks for your time, Miss Thorne. Enjoy the conference.”
“Thank you, Detective. Have a good one.” With a smile, she wiggles her fingers at him.
Once the door closes, the resulting silence rings louder than any shout.
Jordan stands frozen, her hand still on the knob, her back to me like she’s bracing for an aftershock.
She’s perfectly poised in that black dress, revealing no hint of the chaos that just passed.
Something in me breaks and reforms around the evidence.
Who is this woman, really?
She’s entirely different from the moon-eyed spiritualist peddling self-help and the victim I wrenched from her home. Not the fragile thing I expected.
She has a steel core, a quick mind, and a talent for manipulation I haven’t seen since Vanya, the best social engineer in the whole family.
She turned that cop inside out. She parried or redirected every question, guiding him away from danger while convincing him she had nothing to hide.
He never stood a chance.
And the part I can’t wrap my head around?
She lied to protect me.
That changes everything.
She’s a blade hidden in velvet. And for reasons I can’t begin to guess, she just shielded me from danger.
Flawless. Natural as air.
Respect hits first, slicing a line straight through my assumptions.
Disbelief follows.
Why the hell would she do that? Why would she protect me?
This doesn’t compute. Not in any world I’ve ever known.
People act for leverage. Self-interest. That’s the only constant in my universe, the one rule that doesn’t waver. Every choice is about gain or avoiding loss.
One move, one word, and Jordan could have walked away. Free. Left me behind while she had the detective by her side. With her people filling the hotel, she could disappear before I caught up to her.
But she didn’t. She threw freedom away.
Even if she knows the police aren’t any safer than I am—she’s not stupid enough to think we don’t have eyes and ears in the precinct—she could’ve stepped out into the hall to speak with the cop. Used the chance to bolt and slip into the crowd. She’s a runaway with experience.
My mind cycles through explanations, each more hollow than the last.
Fear? No, her act was too smooth, too calculated. Some hidden benefit I can’t see? Maybe. But what could she possibly gain by staying with me?
The detective’s footsteps fade and Jordan remains still, her forehead pressed against the wood, her shoulders heaving with every breath.
When she finally pivots, the mask she wore for the cop shatters, and her body sags against the door like someone’s yanked the bones from her frame. Exhaustion leaks into every line.
“Why?” The word rips out of me, raw and uncontrolled. No finesse. Just need.
She huffs a dry laugh. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you were standing right there, promising death?” She shoves herself away from the door and shuffles into the room. “Cops can’t touch guys like you. Not really. Not before you could get to me or Ashley.”
That’s true. But there’s more than one way out for her. She could’ve tried.
Her eyes flash with an emotion sharper than fear. Anger, maybe. The line between the two blurs. “My father chased guys like you for a living. You’re above it all. You take what you want and no one can stop you.”
Untrue.
I don’t exist above anything.
I sit exactly where Roman puts me. In the streets, alleys, and warehouses, my hands bloody while doing what needs to be done to keep our family safe.
But I don’t tell her that. I just watch, riveted, as some entity inside Jordan tears open with a violence that has nothing to do with fists.
“What does it matter?” She explodes into motion, the black dress swirling as she paces.
“Maybe I should get kidnapped every week. Because nothing I’ve done the past fifteen years seems to matter.
I live in a shithole. I’ve got one hundred and twenty-nine bucks in my account, and half of that disappears today for my phone bill.
” She rounds on me with burning eyes. “The phone you stole.”
She’s not wrong. I seized her phone, her freedom, her stability, and whatever fragile structure she’d managed to build for herself.
“I eat grapefruit for dinner. Not even a whole one! Only half. With a lot of water. Just once I’d like to afford a decent fucking meal. Warm bread with butter. Halibut with vegetables. Real, fresh vegetables!”
She glares at me like I’m personally responsible for every halibut that never landed on her plate. Then she spins away, keeping that narrow strip of carpet between us, always moving, always measuring the distance.
Prey fighting with every last ounce of energy she has left.
That’s the thing people always get wrong about animals. Carnivores attack for sustenance, always ensuring the chase is worth the effort. Prey animals lash out if cornered, desperate and reckless in the face of either death or a fate even worse than death.
“You don’t get it!” Her hands slash the air, punching and slicing. “Whatever you want, that Safety-237, I have no idea what you’re talking about! I don’t want anything to do with your missions or your damn quests.”
I stand silent, wondering if this is finally the real Jordan. The one with nothing left to lose. So far removed from the spiritual guide in floaty robes, so far from the frightened captive, even further from the flawless socialite who just outmaneuvered a detective.
“But none of that matters.” She stumbles to a halt, all the fire draining out in a rush, leaving her limp and pale. “Maybe nothing matters. Maybe that’s why I can’t attract anything but killers and phone bills. Maybe it’s all just a lie.”
She hovers in the dead center of the room, her face shifting. The mask falters and caves in, defeat sinking into her bones.
I hate that expression.
She should be defiant. Full of spirit and life and energy. Not the beginnings of an empty shell.
I clench my hand at my side to prevent myself from reaching out to her.
She’s not done, though. “Thanks for helping me see it.” She spins, and the glare she gives me is pure challenge. Direct, naked, and almost savage. “So go ahead. Shoot me. Break my fingers. Whatever guys like you do.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and thrusts out one hand, fingers spread and trembling between us, offered up like a dare. Or a sacrifice.
Maybe both.
I gape at her hand. The hand of a woman who eats grapefruit for dinner but dreams of halibut. Whose life savings total one hundred and twenty-nine dollars. Who could have walked away but didn’t.
Jordan stays still, offering pain as if it’s the only thing people trade in, like it’s the only currency she has left.
I understand. I taught her that lesson myself.
The expectation of violence bounces off something inside me.
But I don’t want to hurt this woman who just torched her own safety to cover for me.
I’m not soft. Not incapable.
I just…don’t want to.
Her quivering hand still floats between us as she waits for what always comes next.
I have no idea what to do with her outstretched fingers. No idea what to do with her.
And that, more than anything else, scares the hell out of me.