Chapter 27
THEA
The limo driver is waiting as we exit the building. He opens the door, and I climb inside, Gabriel sliding in next to me.
He puts up the privacy screen, and I let out the breath I’d been holding since we walked into that meeting.
“Oh my God.” My hands are shaking. “Gabriel, you… you stabbed him.”
“He disrespected you.”
“He called me plump, and you stabbed him in the leg.”
“Yes.” His tone is calm, as if it was just another day at the office. “And I’d do it again but worse. Do you understand me, Thea? No one speaks to you that way. No one gets to make you feel small. Not while I’m breathing.”
I stare at him. Who is this man, this terrifying, violent, utterly uncompromising man who just drove a pen into someone’s thigh because he insulted me?
“We didn’t win,” I whisper. “They didn’t believe us.”
He shakes his head and leans back against his seat. “Not all of them. But I saw doubt. Vlad, Petr, Ivan—I could see the doubt in their eyes. I’m sure they’re questioning Kolya now, even if only in their own minds. And that’s all we need at the moment.”
“That’s all?”
“For now. They’ll meet again to discuss matters. Between now and then, doubts will grow. Men will ask questions, dig into old records. I’m confident that, in time, enough of them will doubt Kolya’s side of the story.”
“And if they don’t?”
His expression hardens. “Then we’ll find another way.”
The limo pulls away from the curb, merging into traffic. Rain beats down steadily, drumming on the roof with metallic pangs.
Without thinking, I reach over and take his hand. He wraps his fingers around mine, giving me a gentle squeeze.
The meeting went by in a blur, and I’m having a hard time processing it. And there’s more. Regardless of what the council believes, I did something that I can’t take back.
I stood in front of them and claimed my name.
“Kolya was scared,” I say. “I could tell.”
He nods. “He blustered, gave them a story that he’d likely cooked up just in case the matter ever came to light. But it’s not going to hold.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because we have the truth on our side. And the council is not comprised of stupid men. They already have their doubts, and in time, they will cut through Kolya’s bullshit.”
At first blush, this is good news. Then a thought occurs to me. An implication.
The grim expression on Gabriel’s face makes it clear that he understands it, too.
“Then his only move is to kill us,” I say. “He knows I’m alive, and we did the work for him confirming who I am.”
Gabriel nods. “We’ve made him more desperate. And that means we’re going to have to be ready for his next move.”
I close my eyes and flash back to the meeting, the memory of Gabriel plunging that pen into Sasha’s leg, the howl of pain that followed.
It’s awful to think about, to know that he committed such horrible violence for me.
But in its own way, it’s reassuring. If that’s what he’d do to a man who only insulted me, then what else is he willing to do to keep me alive?
I turn to him.
“Thank you.”
He meets my gaze. “For what?”
“For…” I gesture helplessly. “For everything. For defending me. For believing that I could do this.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t thank me. You’re the one who did it. You made a choice that many would be too terrified to make. You looked a man who wants to kill you in the eye. That took courage.”
“I was terrified.”
“Courage isn’t the absence of fear—it’s doing what needs to be done despite it.” He leans in, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’m proud of you.”
The words break open something in my chest. No one has ever said that to me—not Liza, not Sissy, not anyone.
I’m proud of you.
I kiss him.
Right there in the back of the limo, city lights streaking past the rain-spattered windows, I kiss him like he’s the only solid thing left in the world.
And maybe he is. Because everything else is uncertain.
But this? What he and I have? It’s real.
And for now, that’s enough.
Liza is waiting in the living room when we get back. She’s sitting in one of the leather chairs near the fireplace, hands folded in her lap, looking small, tired, and terrified.
She stands when we walk in.
“Thea.” Her voice breaks as she speaks my name.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. But I’m not fine. And I also don’t have the energy to explain. “It’s done, for now.”
She nods, but I can sense my answer isn’t good enough for her.
I watch as Gabriel moves to the bar and pours himself two fingers of whiskey. He doesn’t offer me any; I have no doubt he can sense that my stomach is too tense for alcohol.
“Sit,” he says to Liza once he’s taken a sip. “We need to talk.”
Rain continues to fall. I take the chair across from her. Gabriel presses a button on the wall, and a fire roars to life in the fireplace. He remains standing, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his glass.
For a long moment, no one speaks.
“You told them,” she says quietly. “You told them who you are.”
“Yes,” I say simply.
She takes a slow breath, as if trying to keep her anger at bay.
“I can’t believe you did it. Do you know how much time and effort have been put into keeping your identity a secret?
I had to devote my life to it. And it wasn’t a burden I happily carried—it was forced upon me.
I put my life, my daughter’s life, in danger.
And you’ve just thrown it away. Why? For what? ”
“I don’t need to explain myself,” I say.
Gabriel watches me, an expression of satisfaction flashing across his face for a brief moment.
Liza sighs, as if she’d expected nothing less. Then she stands, striding over to the bar and pouring herself a drink of her own. Gabriel doesn’t stop her.
“Kolya,” she says, turning around, drink in hand. “How did he take it?”
“He denied everything, denied knowing who she is, denied that he knew she was alive all along,” Gabriel says. “As expected. But the seeds have been planted. The Bratva will review the information I provided and likely do an investigation of their own.”
Liza shakes her head. “So there’s a damn good chance that although your identity has been revealed, Kolya will go unpunished for his crimes.
He has a target now, and he won’t stop until you’re dead.
” She narrows her eyes. “And you’re not the only one who could be in his crosshairs.
He may come for me and Sissy just to send a message. ”
She goes back over to the couch, drops onto it, and takes a sip. Liza looks defeated in a way I’ve never seen before.
“God. I’m sorry, Thea.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “For everything. For not telling you. For leaving you. For all of it.”
“Tell me about that night,” I say. “The night they died. I need to hear it. All of it.”
She flinches, as if she knew I’d be asking this question eventually.
Then she nods and takes another sip.
“You were at my house for a sleepover with Sissy. So hard to imagine now with the way you girls butted heads when you got to high school, but you two were once thick as thieves. Anyway, you and Sissy had been playing dress-up all evening. You were obsessed with this purple dress Sissy had, and she let you wear it. You kept twirling and making her laugh…” A small, sad smile takes hold, and she pauses before continuing. “You were so happy. And then—”
She stops, swallows hard.
“It was late. After eleven but not quite midnight. You and Sissy were asleep, or so I thought. There was a knock at the door. Two men. It was snowing. I remember that so clearly.” She glances at Gabriel.
“They told me what happened, that Lev and Masha were dead, that Ana and Dmirtri were dead. That the house had been—” Her voice breaks. “They said it was a massacre.”
My chest tightens.
“You came out of the bedroom, must’ve heard me crying. You asked what was wrong. And I didn’t know what to say. How do you tell a five-year-old that her whole family is dead? I could barely process it as an adult.”
“What did you say?” I ask, my voice a soft whisper. “I don’t remember.”
“I told you your family was going away for a while and that you would be staying with Sissy and me. It was all I could come up with in the moment. I tried to make it sound fun, like it was a permanent sleepover. But you knew something was wrong. You cried and asked to go home, kept asking for your mama and your papa.” She presses her hand over her mouth, then closes her eyes. Tears trickle down her cheeks.
She goes on.
“I learned the next day that the men who came to the house were not your father’s men; they were Gabriel’s.
They came back the next day with money—a lot of money.
Said it was for your care, your education.
They gave me a new birth certificate, school records—everything I needed to prove your new identity, to make you Thea Andrin, instead of Teodora Fetisova. ”
“How much?” I ask.
“What?”
“How much money did they give you?”
She hesitates. “Two hundred thousand. Cash.”
“And you spent it all on Sissy.”
Her face crumples. “No, not all of it. I did use some of it for you, for rent, for food.”
“But not for college. Not for the education Gabriel intended it for.”
“There was more money than that,” Gabriel says. “The $200,000 was just the beginning. You weren’t wise with that money, were you?”
Her eyes go wide. “It was hard raising two girls alone!” she says. “Yes, I spent some of it on myself. And why wouldn’t I? I was raising someone else’s child!”
I turn to Gabriel. “And you just trusted her with the money?”
“I had someone checking in periodically,” he says. “But I should’ve done so myself more often. I was preoccupied. That was when I’d just come into power in the Camorra. I was consolidating power, trying to hold onto my own rule. I’d assumed Liza would do the right thing. I was wrong.”
Liza shifts in her seat. At least she feels some shame for what she did.
“I should’ve been more careful,” she admits. “With the money. But I was put into an impossible situation.”
“An impossible situation you could only get out of by abandoning me,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, Thea. I have no excuse. I raised you for so long, and when you turned eighteen, I just wanted to get my life back to normal, to not have to look over my shoulder with worry for once that some Bratva thug would be there with a gun, ready to kill all of us.”
I don’t know if I can forgive her. I don’t know if I want to. So I push the matter aside—for now.
“You were watching me for months before the auction,” I say to Gabriel. “How many months?”
“Six.” He doesn’t hesitate with his answer.
I shift in my seat, trying to process the information.
Six months. Six months of men following me, learning my routines, my habits. My life.
But he’s not done.
“That was for routine monitoring. Before that, I had men checking in on you, reporting back to me about how you were doing. Sometimes, I did it myself.”
He’d told me this before, but only now is the reality of it hitting me, that my life has never been my own. I’d been passed around, watched and surveilled, never once making decisions for myself. And now I’m here in this mansion, trapped and controlled yet again.
“What happened before then? At the beginning of those six months?”
“That’s when I received word that Kolya and his crew had tracked you down and knew where you lived and where you worked. I had to know if you were in immediate danger.”
“So you had me followed. Stalked me.”
“I had you protected. It was for your own go—”
“My own good. Yeah, I’ve heard it all before. And that means you not only knew about the auction, but you also knew about the roofie, about what was going to happen to me that night.”
His silence is answer enough.
“You knew,” I say. “And you let it happen. You knew the fate of the women at those auctions. You knew what was going to happen to me, to Sylvie.”
“Thea—”
“You let them drug me and drag me onto that stage. You let me think I was going to—” God, I can’t even say it. “You let it happen.”
“I had to. I couldn’t intervene without exposing my hand.
If I had simply taken you, Kolya would’ve made a move out of a sense of panic.
He would’ve known that I was looking after you, he would’ve found out that Liza and Sissy had been looking after you.
I needed to let the auction happen so I could have plausible deniability. ”
“So you used me as bait.”
“I used the situation—”
“You used me. Was any of this real? Or was I just another piece on your chessboard?”
“Everything that’s happened between us is real. Everything I feel for you—”
“I don’t know what you feel! I don’t know what’s real and what’s strategy.
For all I know, everything you’ve done since day one has been to take out Kolya, to use me as a way to resurrect what my family was, so you can bring it all under your control.
You’ve lied to me so many times before. How am I supposed to know when the truth starts? ”
I can’t breathe suddenly. I need space.
“Thea—”
But I’m already moving. I rush out of the living room and up the stairs to my room. I close the door and lock it.
I sink to the floor and let myself fall apart, let the tears flow.
And as I sit there, sobbing, a horrible thought occurs to me. He’s right. If he’d approached me six months ago, there’s no way I would’ve believed him. I would’ve told him to screw off and put myself right in the open, where Kolya could’ve gotten to me.
If he’s telling the truth, then the auction was the only way he could control what I did and the only way he could bring me to the mansion, where I’d be safe.
He saved my life.
But he also manipulated me every damn step of the way. If he’s telling the truth, then everything he did was truly for my own good. And I have no idea how to reconcile it all.
There’s a knock at the door. I know it’s him before he says a word.
“Thea. Please let me in.”
I don’t answer.
“I know you’re angry. I know you need space. I should’ve told you everything the day you arrived. And I should’ve trusted that you could handle the truth. But I was afraid you’d run—which you did. And I was afraid I’d lose you, that I’d fail not only you, but also your family.”
I say nothing.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me tonight. I’m just asking you to believe that everything I’ve done, every manipulation, every lie, was to protect you, and because I couldn’t stand the thought of a world without you in it.”
There’s a rawness in his voice that I can’t ignore.
“Take all the time you need. I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
His footsteps fade and are soon gone.
I stay there on the floor, my back against the door.
He manipulated me, lied to me, used me, and saved me. It’s all true, and all of it is real.
But I don’t know what to do with it. So I just sit there in the dark, listening to the rain, and cry.