Chapter Sixteen #2
Her mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not even a denial. Just the flicker of a tongue wetting dry lips, a show of nerves she’d never intended to reveal. “I didn’t know he’d—” she started, but I cut her off.
“You didn’t care,” I said. “That’s the difference.”
She blinked, once, and the mask snapped back into place. “You act as if you’re any better,” she said. “As if locking him up in this mausoleum is a favor.”
“At least he’s alive in my mausoleum,” I said.
She exhaled, sharp and small. “My father gave his life for you. Everything you have—every breath, every dollar, every man who bows when you enter a room—was bought with his blood. I only ever asked for what was promised.”
“Your father asked me to keep you safe,” I said. “Not to turn the estate into a revolving door for your personal vendettas.”
She stiffened. “You always think you know best. That’s your tragedy, Vadim. You believe the rules don’t apply to you. But in the end, you’re just like every other man—selfish, blind, doomed to repeat the same failures until someone finally puts you down for good.”
I took a step closer, closing the distance to three feet. “Do you think I don’t know that?” I said. “Do you think there’s a single night I don’t rehearse my own murder, just to make sure I know which direction to fall?”
A pause. She broke eye contact, looked at the floor, then the stairs. I wondered if she was counting the seconds until I hit her, or until I forgave her.
I’d never done either before.
I let the silence linger. Then, softer said, “The promise I made to your father wasn’t about you. It was about the debt. The debt is paid.”
She looked up, and for the first time in months, I saw what was underneath: not anger, not entitlement, but a raw, skinless grief. “You think he’d be proud of this?” she asked. “Of you?”
I thought about it. “I think he’d be proud I lasted this long.”
She laughed, but it came out half-sob. “You’ve made your decision, then.”
“I have. I won't kill you for what you did to Iren, but I won't take care of you anymore either.
I've paid my debt to your father. Now, you are on your own.
There will be no more money unless you earn it yourself.
No luxury life, no villa, no prestige. I am sending out word to everyone that you are no longer under my protection.
From this moment on, you can no longer use my name, my people, or any of my properties.
Whether you live or die doesn't matter to me anymore. We're done."
“My father died for you,” Sasha snapped. “I have every right—”
"You lost that right when you hurt Iren,” I snapped right back, raising my voice to her for the very first time. “And, if you ever appear in front of me, I will assume you are coming to me to die, and I will accommodate you.”
She straightened, set her shoulders, and pulled her purse off the foyer table with a motion so practiced it was almost beautiful. “Where am I being sent?” she asked in a voice so calm it surprised me, and I didn’t get surprised.
“I’m sending you back to London, permanently,” I said. “Yuri has the details.”
She gave a small, brittle nod. “I want a clean break. No more legacy accounts, no surveillance.”
“You can have the break,” I said, “but there will always be surveillance.”
She almost smiled. “You’ll regret this, you know. He’s a kid. How long do you think he’ll be happy with a decrepit old mobster? He’s half your age for fuck sake.”
I was aware, but I’d hold on as long as he let me.
Yuri appeared, silent as death, at the far end of the hall. She walked past me, close enough I caught the warmth of her skin through the silk. At the door, she paused, turned back. “Do you love him?”
The question hung in the air like a rope.
I didn’t answer.
She smiled for real, then, just a tiny upward curve. “You should try it sometime.” Then she was gone, trailing perfume and tragedy out into the night.
Yuri waited until the door closed, then turned to me. “You want confirmation?”
“Of course,” I said.
He nodded and left.
I stood in the entrance hall, letting the silence settle back into the bones of the house. For the first time in years, it felt empty in a way that didn’t frighten me. I breathed in, slow, and held it.
The debt was paid. I had made my choice.
It was the only thing that mattered.
I headed upstairs to check on Iren. The shower was running when I got there. Lin had prepared the suite as if for a minor surgery: clothes laid out, medical kit open to the proper page, even the bottle of iodine uncapped.
He did not linger. He ghosted out the moment I entered, leaving only the trailing suggestion that anything less than recovery would be a professional embarrassment.
I sat on the rim of the tub. My shirt stuck to my back in three places, each a small, private burn. I peeled it off and folded it, placed it on the towel rack the way I’d seen Lin do a hundred times. The tiles underfoot were warm, a pointless luxury, but I let myself take it.
From the shower, the water hissed in staccato bursts as Iren scrubbed the worst of Parsons off his skin. I heard the plastic crinkle of the first aid kit, then the snap and hiss of antiseptic hitting open flesh. He didn’t make a sound, but I knew he felt it.
When the shower cut off, there was a lag—three minutes, maybe four—before he emerged.
He wore one of my shirts, pale blue, unbuttoned and enormous, sleeves rolled twice but still covering his hands.
The hem hit mid-thigh, making him look smaller than I remembered.
He stood in the doorway, letting the steam backlight him, and didn’t say anything.
For a second I thought he was angry.
He sat down, cross-legged, on the tile beside the tub. He didn’t look at me. His hair was wet, sticking to his forehead, and his eyes were both red from soap or from what came after.
I kept my hands on my knees, not reaching for him. I could count the seconds by the pulse in my neck.
He was the one to break the silence. “I was losing,” he said, voice even. “If the door hadn’t opened when it did, I would have lost.”
There was nothing to say to that but the truth.
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
He nodded, and for a while neither of us moved. When he spoke again, it was softer, almost a whisper, “But you did open the door.”
I let the words hang, then: “I got there in time. That’s the only variable that matters.”
He looked up at me, finally, and there was something in the tilt of his jaw—pride, maybe, or relief—but it was thin, stretched tight over bone and memory. “You say that like it’s easy to believe.”
“It isn’t,” I said.
He uncurled himself, drew his knees up, and rested his chin on them. He looked ten years younger, and it hit me: there would always be men like Parsons. Always. My job wasn’t to erase them. It was to get there first.
He was staring at the cut on my wrist, the one I didn’t even know I’d gotten. “You’re bleeding,” he said.
I checked. A shallow slice, already crusted over. “It’s nothing.”
“Should disinfect it.”
I shrugged. “I have a man for that.”
He almost smiled.
He looked at his own wrists. The marks from Parsons’ hands were ugly, deep red on pale skin, but he didn’t rub them. He just flexed his hands, slow, as if reacquainting them with the idea of motion.
“What happened to Parsons?”
I considered how to answer. “He’s handled.”
He nodded, and didn’t ask for details.
“And Sasha?” he asked.
“Gone,” I said. “London. She won’t come back.”
He let that settle, and then said, “I told you about her. The first week, at breakfast. You didn’t believe me.”
“I did,” I said. “I just didn’t want it to be true.”
He accepted that, and didn’t press. There was no accusation in his face, only exhaustion.
We sat there, two feet apart, listening to the slow cooling of the bath and the click of the heater cycling off. After a while, I stood and offered him a hand. He hesitated, then took it, letting me help him up.
The master bedroom was quiet, blackout curtains drawn, the kind of darkness that absorbs sound and memory both. Iren sat on the edge of the bed, hands folded, head down. I turned down the sheets, then lay back, letting the mattress catch me.
After a moment, he lay down next to me, face to the ceiling, breathing in even, measured beats. He asked, “You’re not going to ask me if I’m okay?”
“No,” I said, wondering how many times I was going to repeat those words. The odds were not in my favor. “Because you’re not.”
He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Do you think it gets easier?”
“Never,” I said. “But you learn the timing.”
He rolled to his side, rested his head against my shoulder. “What if I don’t want to learn?”
I put my hand on the back of his neck, thumb tracing the line of tendon. “Then I’ll learn for both of us.”
He was asleep before I finished the sentence. I stayed awake, counting his breaths, listening to the wind rattle the gutters outside and the faint, stubborn noise of life going on in the pipes and vents of the old house.
Sometime after midnight, Lin checked the room. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even pause, just confirmed we were both alive and left again. The air was still, the weight of the day finally settling into the mattress and the bones of the house.
I didn’t sleep. I kept my hand on Iren’s shoulder, felt the warmth of him under the borrowed shirt, and let the silence close over us.
The truth was, I had gotten there in time.
It was the only truth I could hold onto.
And for tonight, it was enough.