Chapter 8 #2
The sound doesn't come through the surveillance audio, but I can see her shoulders heaving, her hair falling around her face as she empties her stomach of wine and betrayal and the last remnants of trust.
When she finally stops retching, she splashes cold water on her face and stares at herself in the mirror.
Her hand goes to the collar at her throat—my collar, my mark of ownership—and for a moment I think she's going to tear it off.
She doesn't, but the look in her eyes as she touches it tells me everything I need to know.
She knows exactly what she's been wearing. And for how long. And what it means.
Noon comes and goes without a word from her.
I try to focus on business—territory disputes, shipment schedules, the mundane details of running a criminal empire—but my attention keeps drifting to the surveillance monitors showing her office door, still closed.
Lionel reports hourly.
She declined lunch.
Sent her assistant to the quarterly review meeting instead of attending herself.
Asked her assistant to hold all calls.
She's creating barriers, building walls, walls that I don’t want her to create.
At two, my phone rings.
Unknown number, but the caller ID shows international routing through multiple servers.
"Cassius Wolfe." The voice that answers is heavily accented, amused, like the speaker is enjoying a private joke. Russian. "I am Kirill Zhukhov."
I gesture for Vincent, who's been hovering nearby like a concerned parent, to start tracing the call. "What do you want?"
"To congratulate you on your taste in women. The judge's little girl has grown up beautifully, has she not?" His laugh is like broken glass scraping against concrete. "Tell me, does she know who she is sleeping with? Or does she still believe her parents died by Russian hands?"
My hand clenches around the phone hard enough to crack the case. "Get to the point."
"The point, my friend, is that secrets have a way of surfacing. Especially when they are so... educational. I have photographs, you know. From that night nine years ago. Very clear images of a young man in a mask entering the Deveraux home."
The blood in my veins turns to ice water. "You have nothing."
"I have everything. Police reports that were mysteriously buried.
Witness statements that never made it to trial.
Evidence that your father's organization killed two innocent people and let mine take the blame.
" His voice drops, becomes almost conversational.
"How long do you think she will stay loyal when she learns you are the monster from her nightmares? "
I think about the surveillance footage. Her reaction to discovering the truth.
"What do you want?" I ask.
"Your territory. Your operations. Your woman, perhaps, when she’s finished grieving." He pauses, letting the threat sink in. "I will give you twenty-four hours to consider my terms. After that, certain information becomes public knowledge."
The line goes dead.
I stare at the phone, calculating possibilities.
Zhukhov isn't bluffing—Russians never bluff about evidence.
He has something, photographs or documents that could destroy everything.
But more than that, he understands exactly how to break me.
Through her.
Vincent approaches me, tablet in hand. "The call was bounced through six different servers across three continents. Untraceable."
"He has evidence. From that night."
"Impossible. We destroyed everything. Your father was very thorough about the cleanup."
"Not everything. There must have been witnesses we didn't know about, records we couldn't access, evidence we didn't think to hide." I move to my desk, pull up building schematics on my computer. "How's your Russian, Vincent?"
"Rusty but functional. Why?"
"Because we're going to war. And I need to know everything about our enemy before they make their next move."
The afternoon crawls by as I plan, but my attention keeps drifting to the surveillance feed from her office.
I told myself I wouldn't watch. That lasted eleven minutes.
She's been staring at her phone for ten minutes now.
I watch her start to type something, pause, delete it. Start again. Delete again.
Her jaw tightens each time, like she's arguing with herself about who to call and what to say.
Lionel checks in at two.
She declined lunch. Sent her assistant to the quarterly review meeting instead of attending herself. Asked security about private elevators—ones that don't require keycards.
By three, I'm watching her browser history populate on the mirrored feed.
Flight searches. International destinations. One-way tickets.
Each detail confirms what I already know—she's planning her escape.
The question is whether she'll run before or after trying to destroy me.
By six o'clock, the building is nearly empty except for security and my core team.
Her office light is still on, a golden beacon in the growing darkness.
On the surveillance feed, I watch her stand from her desk.
She walks to the door, reaches for the handle, then stops, then returns to her chair.
Five minutes later, she does it again.
Stands, crosses the room, reaches for the door.
Doesn't open it. Goes back.
She does this three times in the last hour, each time getting a step closer to the hallway before something pulls her back.
She wants to confront me but can't bring herself to do it.
Either she's afraid of what I might do, or she's afraid of what she might do.
Both possibilities terrify me.
Vincent returns to my office carrying a bottle of my father's best scotch and two glasses.
The same bottle we opened the night I officially took over the organization.
"Liquid courage?" I ask.
"Liquid honesty." He pours generously, hands me a glass that catches the last light from the windows. "You have to choose, Cassius. The empire or Selene. You can't have both, not anymore."
"Why not?"
"Because she's going to destroy everything the moment she's certain you killed her parents.
She'll go to the FBI, the media, anyone who will listen.
Your father's life work, your life work, will crumble overnight.
" Vincent's voice is gentle but implacable.
"Three generations of power and influence, gone because you couldn't resist corrupting one broken girl. "
"So, what are you suggesting?"
Vincent's silence stretches long enough to be an answer.
When he finally speaks, his words land like hammer blows. "She's a threat to the organization. Threats are eliminated."
"No."
"She knows too much. Even if you could convince her to forgive you, she'll always be a weakness others can exploit.
Like Zhukhov is doing now." He gestures toward my phone.
"How many other enemies will use her against you?
How many times can we weather attacks aimed at your heart instead of your head? "
"I said no."
"Then what's your solution? Lock her up? Keep her prisoner until she learns to love her captor again?" Vincent shakes his head sadly. "That's not love, Cassius. That's Stockholm syndrome. And it won't hold once she's had time to think clearly."
I drain my glass, feel the burn of expensive alcohol do nothing to warm the ice in my chest. "There has to be another way."
"There is. Tell her the truth yourself. Control the narrative. Make her understand why it had to happen, how her father's investigation would have destroyed innocent people along with the guilty."
"And if she tries to kill me?"
"Then you'll know where you stand."
My phone buzzes with a text from Lionel:
She's heading back to her apartment. Looked upset when she left. Like she'd been crying.
Crying.
The words hit me straight in my heart.
She's in pain, and I'm the cause of it.
Nine years ago, I destroyed her family.
Now I'm destroying her heart.
The irony would be amusing if it weren't so fucking tragic.
"She's pulling away," Vincent observes, refilling his glass. "Creating distance between you. That's either self-preservation or preparation for attack."
"Which do you think?"
"With her? Both."
I think about the woman she's become over the past year—brilliant, ruthless, capable of anything when properly motivated.
Nine years of trauma and transformation have forged her into something magnificent and dangerous.
If she decides I need to die for what I've done, she'll find a way to make it happen.
The thought should terrify me. Instead, it makes me proud of what she's become.
"I'm going to her apartment," I decide, standing up and reaching for my jacket.
"Bad idea," Vincent warns, rising as well. "If she's planning something—if she's called someone for help—"
"Then I'll deal with it." I check my gun, holster it beneath my jacket, grab the keys to my most anonymous car. "But I won't let her suffer alone with this knowledge."
"What if she's not alone? What if she's called that ADA friend? Or the FBI? Hell, what if she's contacted the media?"
The thought stops me cold.
Michelle. Law enforcement. Reporters who would love nothing more than to bring down Cassius Wolfe with his own lover's testimony.
She has options, connections, people who would help her destroy me if she asked.
"Contact Lionel and tell him to have our people watch the building," I tell Vincent. "Anyone approaches her apartment—law enforcement, media, even a fucking pizza delivery—I want to know immediately."
Vincent refills his glass, settles back in his chair like a man preparing for a long vigil or a funeral.
"You know this ends badly," he says quietly.
"Everything ends badly. The only question is how much damage we do on the way there."
"And if she chooses revenge over love?"
I pause at the door, thinking about her tears tonight, her silence today, the way she pulled away from me after the most intimate night we've ever shared.
Thinking about the footage of her staring at my photograph with heartbreak in her eyes.
"Then at least she'll be choosing for herself instead of living a lie."
The elevator ride down feels like descending into hell.
Which, given the circumstances, might be exactly what I'm doing.
But I'd rather burn with the truth between us than live without her in a kingdom built on lies.
Even if the truth destroys us both.
Even if she destroys me first.