CHAPTER 69
Brynn
Tallinn, Estonia
Tomar’s gun remained pointed at Jameson.
“She really isn’t dead,” she said. “Clearly I should have killed Whitaker sooner for his betrayal.”
Jameson stood directly in front of me, blocking everything but the edge of her shoulder and the weapon held beside it.
His body had gone completely still, every muscle calculated rather than frozen.
I could feel every decision he was making in the tension across his back.
“Lower the gun,” he said.
Tomar laughed once, but there was nothing amused in it.
“I had people searching four countries for you.” Her gaze stayed fixed on him. “Ports. Airports. Clinics. Every identity you had ever used and every route you had ever built.”
The gun shifted slightly as she spoke.
He shifted with it.
She noticed, and her mouth tightened.
“And then you walked through my door,” she said. “Do you understand how lucky that is?”
“It wasn’t luck,” he said.
“No?” Her eyes moved past him and found me again. “You came for the records. You brought her with you. You delivered everything I needed to the same room.”
Her gaze lowered, and the barrel followed, dipping beneath Jameson’s arm to draw a loose circle around my stomach.
“What the fuck is this?” Tomar asked.
Jameson moved another step in front of me.
Tomar stared at the curve beneath my coat before looking at him.
“You gave her a child?” she asked.
Something raw moved through the question. It wasn’t surprise but injury, as if our daughter were something he had taken from her.
His hand moved behind him until it found mine.
His fingers closed around my wrist.
“Don’t aim that at her,” he warned.
Tomar shook her head slowly. “You used to understand what mattered.”
“I understand what matters perfectly,” he said.
Her face changed only slightly, but it was enough.
“You sabotaged another system.” Her voice rose with every word. “You crawled inside it, changed the architecture, and tore it apart because you decided no one else was qualified to control what you created.”
“You exposed yourself by using it,” he said.
Tomar lifted her chin. “I made it functional.”
“You made it criminal,” he said.
Her grip tightened around the gun. “It was already criminal.”
He shook his head. “But it never should have been. Don’t you understand?”
The gun moved with her hand as she spoke, cutting through the space around Jameson’s body.
I watched the barrel.
So did he.
“The difference was that I made it useful,” Tomar said. “I gave them something governments, intelligence services, and private networks had spent decades trying to build.”
Jameson didn’t take his eyes off the gun. “And now they know you did it.”
A quick, disbelieving laugh escaped her, and then another followed it.
“You destroyed everything,” she said.
“No,” Jameson said. “I made it visible.”
Her gaze snapped toward me. “And she handed it to the world.”
“I’m thorough.” I held her stare.
Jameson’s grip tightened around my wrist.
Tomar’s gun drifted toward my stomach again.
The movement was small.
Careless.
Enough.
Jameson released me and reached beneath his jacket.
Tomar’s finger tightened.
The gun went off.
I saw the barrel pointed at my stomach. Saw the flash. Understood exactly where the bullet was going.
Jameson did too.
He threw himself in front of me before I could even scream his name.
The shot struck him with a sickening force, and his body slammed back into mine.
My knees hit the cold floor first, and his weight followed.
“Jameson!” The scream ripped my throat raw.
Blood spread across his shoulder too fast.
He forced himself upright on one arm and shoved me behind him with the other. His breath broke between his teeth, but he kept his body between mine and the gun.
For one second, something like shock crossed her face before hardening into fury.
“You should not have moved,” she said.
“In what world would a man not protect his woman and child?” he seethed.
Tomar stared at him.
The simplicity of it hollowed out my chest.
Tomar took one step closer.
Jameson pushed me farther behind him.
His injured arm hung close to his body. Blood ran over his hand and dripped from his fingers onto the floor.
Tomar looked at it as though it were an inconvenience he had created solely to spite her.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she demanded. “Multiple governments are investigating. Every client who paid for protection is cutting contact. Accounts are frozen. Routes are compromised. People who begged me to erase them are suddenly pretending they never knew my name.”
“You should leave before they remember it,” I said.
“I am leaving,” Tomar said.
Her words came too quickly and too loudly.
“The Bratva will be here soon,” she continued. “They’ll remove the archive, clear the building, and have me out of Estonia before morning.”
She tightened her grip on the gun. “I refuse to take the fall for this. They understand what I built. They understand what it’s worth. Now they’ll understand how you broke it.”
Jameson’s breathing had become shallower. He’d told me about being hospitalized, but it wasn’t until that moment that I wondered whether he’d been healthy enough for us to come here at all.
He never would have told me the truth.
Her hand trembled around the gun. “As I said, I’m not going down for this.”
“You already have,” I said. “The world knows everything, and more information will continue to go public.”
He kept one arm braced across my legs, holding me behind him even as his strength drained onto the floor beneath us.
His chin sank toward his chest.
He wasn’t looking at Tomar anymore. He wasn’t looking at anything.
Tomar saw it too.
Her expression steadied, not because she’d regained control, but because she believed she’d won.
“Stay with me, baby,” I whispered, pressing my hand against the heat of his blood.
His fingers tightened once around my leg.
A sound carried from beyond the equipment.
Footsteps.
Unhurried.
Tomar heard them.
Her shoulders eased by only a fraction, but she knew whoever was coming.
“Finally,” she said.
A man stepped into view behind her.
Tall and broad through the shoulders, with dark hair cut close at the sides and a trimmed beard sharpening an already severe face. He wore black, his shirt open at the throat, with none of the tactical gear I expected from someone entering an armed standoff.
I’d seen him before.
At the Geneva gala.
Jesus, had I been flirting with Bratva?
“Lev. You’re late,” Tomar said.
He didn’t answer.
His attention moved across the room, taking in Tomar, the gun, and me on the floor before landing on Jameson.
His gaze stopped on the blood spreading across Jameson’s shirt.
Something emptied from his face.
Tomar tilted the gun toward us. “They’re the reason we’re standing in the ruins of everything we built.”
Lev looked at the weapon, then at Jameson.
He removed his jacket with deliberate calm and let it fall to the floor beside him. The movement exposed the black shoulder holster beneath his shirt, but he made no attempt to reach for the weapon.
Instead, he rolled his shoulders once and flexed his hands at his sides. “No one puts a bullet in my brother.”
Jameson’s head snapped up.
Tomar stared at Lev. “Your brother? He isn’t Bratva.”
A low, humorless laugh left him. When he spoke again, every trace of Russia had disappeared from his voice. “Better.”
His gaze returned to Jameson. “He’s my twin.”
The room went silent.
Jameson stopped breathing.
Tomar looked between them.
Even I held my breath as one second passed, then another.
Her face lost what little color remained.
“No,” she said.
Tomar’s mouth opened, but her confusion collapsed beneath something darker.
Understanding.
“You used me,” she said.
Her hand tightened around the gun.
Jameson’s weapon pressed against my palm beneath the edge of his jacket.
I hadn’t realized my hand was there.
He’d pushed me behind him and placed it within reach.
Or instinct had done what training taught it to do.
My fingers closed around the grip.
Tomar looked at Lev. “After everything I gave you?”
“And what was that?” he asked. “A system you stole from him.” He nodded toward Jameson.
Her face twisted. “The Bratva funded this.”
“I know,” Lev said.
“They were coming for me,” Tomar said.
“No.” Lev’s gaze remained cold. “They were coming for what remained.”
Her voice broke. “I am what remains. I’m the most important part of this.”
Lev gave a dark chuckle.
“Actually,” he said, looking at Jameson again, “he is.”
Tomar followed his gaze.
Something in her face gave way.
Hatred replaced it.
The gun moved toward Jameson.
No.
I eased his weapon free.
The weight settled into my palm, familiar and solid, even as my hand threatened to shake.
Jameson’s blood was hot against my skin. His body was failing beside me, and she was still trying to take more from him.
He’d made me practice until I hated him for it.
Until the draw stopped feeling like a sequence and became one movement.
Until I understood that a weapon didn’t matter if I hesitated after deciding to use it.
Tomar raised the barrel toward Jameson.
She was going to shoot him again.
After he had already taken a bullet meant for me.
After he had put his body between her and our daughter.
So did I.
I brought the gun up with both hands, locking my wrists the way he’d taught me.
Tomar saw me.
Her finger tightened.
I fired first.
The recoil drove through my arms, and the crack of the shot tore through the room.
The bullet caught her high in the chest.
She staggered, but the gun remained in her hand.
Still pointed toward him.
“Don’t!” I warned.
She tried to raise it again.
I fired a second time.
Tomar hit the floor.
Her weapon skidded beneath one of the consoles.
For several seconds, I heard nothing except the shrill ringing in my ears.
Then Jameson’s breathing.
Too shallow.
Too close.
I kept the gun trained on Tomar.
She moved once, dragging in a small, broken breath that never seemed to reach her lungs.
Lev crossed the room.
I followed him with the gun.
He stopped.
His eyes dropped to the weapon in my hands, then to Jameson’s blood across my sleeve.
“I’m not the threat,” he said.
“You’ll forgive me if I’m having trouble sorting that out.” I kept the barrel trained on him.
His gaze shifted to Jameson.
Something changed in his face. It wasn’t enough to soften it, but it made the resemblance impossible to miss.
The same dark eyes.
The same controlled stillness, cut into different edges.
Jameson’s head hung forward again.
One hand pressed against his shoulder. The other stayed locked around my leg as if he still believed I might move in front of him.
Tomar made another sound.
Lev turned to look down at her.
Her eyes found his.
Recognition remained in them, tangled with disbelief.
“You...” The word caught wetly in her throat.
He stood over her without raising his weapon.
“The best part,” he said, “is that you were never going to own the system.”
Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.
Lev’s expression remained cold.
“It was never meant for you,” he said.
One final breath left her.
Then nothing.
Lev turned away from her.
He crossed the remaining distance and dropped to his knees in front of Jameson.
Jameson lifted his head to stare at him.
Pain had drained the color from his face, but he didn’t seem aware of it anymore.
Lev reached toward him, then stopped with his hand suspended between them.
“Jameson,” he said.
His name sounded different in Lev’s voice. Older. Familiar in a way I couldn’t understand.
Jameson’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Lev’s hand lowered a fraction, but he still didn’t touch him.
Running footsteps broke through the silence.
Lev turned toward the sound and drew his weapon in one smooth motion, aiming at the far end of the room.
Rook appeared with her gun raised.
“I heard gunfire,” she said.
Her gaze swept over Tomar’s body, the gun in my hands, and the blood covering Jameson.
Then she saw Lev.
She stopped dead.
“Mon Dieu,” she whispered. My God.
Lev’s gun dropped to his side.
Rook lowered her weapon by an inch. “Harrison.”
The name changed something in Jameson.
I felt it happen beneath my hand.
His breath caught.
His face folded before he could stop it.
Rook could see him too, and that made him real in a way Lev’s face alone hadn’t.
This wasn’t blood loss, shock, or a pain-born hallucination conjured from whatever part of him still remembered the brother he’d lost.
Harrison was real.
Jameson made a small, strangled sound.
He tried to swallow it, tried to pull his face back under control, but a sob tore free before he could force it down.
Lev turned toward him.
This time, when he reached out, Jameson caught his arm.
Lev closed both hands around him.
For one second, Jameson stayed rigid, his fingers locked around Lev’s sleeve as if he expected him to disappear.
Then he held on.
I pressed one hand harder against the wound in his shoulder and kept the other wrapped around the gun.
Behind us, the repository continued running, its fans humming beneath the ringing in my ears.
Names and commands moved across the screens.
Proof enough to destroy what remained of Mirrorstream.
But Jameson was staring at his brother as if the dead had walked back into the world.
Whatever had been holding him together finally broke.