Chapter Thirty-Four
Sabrina
I had somehow managed to get permission to leave the island.
Even now, sitting in the back of the SUV as New York rolled past the windows, I wasn't entirely sure how I'd convinced Dad to agree. Actually, that wasn't true. I hadn't been the one to convince him. Nonno had probably had more to do with it than I did.
Dad thought I was spending the day in New York with Asher, Mario and Lillian.
That much wasn't a lie.
The reason we were here was anything but.
Two nights ago, Mario had intercepted information about Yuri travelling to New York for a private meeting. There wasn't much information beyond a name, a location and the knowledge that whoever Yuri was meeting had been important enough for him to leave Sergei's side.
That alone had been enough to interest me.
Yuri wasn't just another guard. He'd been one of Ivan Volkov's closest men and, after Ivan's death, had become one of Sergei's most trusted people. Men like Yuri didn't travel across the country for a private meeting without a reason.
I intended to find out what it was.
Dad would never have agreed to this trip if he'd known the truth. Neither would Mum. And if one of my brothers had come with us, there wouldn't have been the slightest chance of getting anywhere near Yuri without questions being asked.
Thankfully, they were all still back on the island, completely convinced I was spending the day exploring New York with my friends.
Only four people knew why we were really here.
By the time we reached the other side of New York, none of us looked like the people who had left the island that morning.
Our clothes had been replaced by black tactical gear, with hoods pulled low and masks hiding everything except our eyes.
Anyone who saw us would have assumed we belonged to the shadows.
They would have been right.
The club was louder than I expected. Music travelled through the walls, while voices and laughter spilled into the streets outside. To anyone else, it was just another night in New York.
To us, it was a target.
Mario moved first, his attention focused on the security system.
“Give me thirty seconds,” he whispered.
I watched the small device in his hand as he worked quickly. Thirty seconds later, the cameras went dark.
“Done.”
We moved immediately.
The back entrance was barely guarded, exactly as Mario had predicted. Yuri wasn't expecting trouble. Men like him rarely did when they believed they were the ones holding the power.
We slipped inside without making a sound.
The hallway behind the club was quieter than the main floor, the noise fading with every step until all that remained was the sound of our movements.
Mario stopped in front of a closed door.
“This is him,” he whispered.
The four of us positioned ourselves outside, hidden in the darkness. There was a small opening near the edge of the door, just enough to see inside.
I looked through.
And everything inside me stopped.
Yuri was sitting on the sofa.
That part didn't surprise me.
The person beside him did.
For a moment, my mind refused to understand what I was seeing. A woman was tucked against his side, completely comfortable and completely at ease. She looked like someone who belonged there.
Then Yuri spoke.
“Olga.”
The name hit me strangely. Not because I knew it, but because I knew her.
No. No, no, no.
My breath caught as I listened.
“Sergei was closer than ever,” Yuri said. “He was so close to finally getting the boy.”
The boy. My stomach dropped as the realisation hit me. They were talking about Dario.
“But somehow Morana found out,” Olga replied. “She always did have a habit of ruining things.”
Yuri let out a humourless laugh. “She caught on at the last possible moment.”
Olga leaned back against the sofa. “I helped you get so damn close.”
The words barely registered.
“I gave your men the opening they needed,” she continued. “The orphanage was already vulnerable. It should have been easy.”
My fingers curled into fists.
“Everything was going well,” Yuri said. “We were going to take him before anyone realised.”
“But that girl, Sabrina, was always there,” Olga replied.
My chest tightened.
“Even after she was kicked out of the orphanage, she kept coming back. Every single day, that girl made everything harder for me.”
“And now the Morettis took the boy in,” Yuri added.
“She ruined everything,” Olga said quietly.
My vision narrowed.
Yuri leaned forward. “Sergei will get the boy eventually.”
The certainty in his voice made my blood run cold.
“It doesn't matter that he has the protection of the Morettis now. It doesn't matter who stands in his way. The Volkov name will get what it is owed.”
Something inside me cracked.
They weren't talking about a weapon. They were talking about Dario. My Dario, the little boy I'd spent years trying to protect. And they'd been this close all along.
I couldn't listen anymore, not because I didn't believe them, but because I did. That was the part that hurt the most.
Margaret.
The headmistress of the orphanage.
Olga.
My mind struggled to connect the two names because, somehow, they belonged to the same person.
I had never liked Margaret. Even before she kicked me out, something about her had always felt wrong – cold enough to make every instinct I had scream. But suspicion and certainty were two different things.
I knew she was cruel. I knew she didn't care about me. What I hadn't realised was that Dario had been living under her care all along.
I had never trusted Margaret. I had trusted the orphanage.
When I had nowhere else to take him, I'd convinced myself those walls would keep him safe.
I'd been wrong.
She had been watching him the entire time, learning who he was and why he mattered. While I hunted every Russian connected to Ivan and Sergei, one of Sergei's own people had already been standing beside the person I was trying to protect.
I had spent years searching for the enemy, never realising I'd already entrusted Dario to her.
The words from the room kept replaying in my mind.
I helped you get to the boy.
I gave your men the opening they needed.
She was always in the way.
She made it harder for us to take him.
My stomach twisted as memories came rushing back. Dario running towards me every time I entered the orphanage, his smile when he saw me, the way he trusted me completely, and Margaret standing there pretending to be nothing more than the woman who looked after him.
I'd left him there.
Not because I wanted to. Not because I believed she was good. Because I was a child too. Because I had nowhere else to take him. Because I had been fighting a war that no one else knew existed.
And somehow, even after everything I'd done and everything I'd sacrificed, I still hadn't seen the danger sitting directly in front of me.
I stepped away from the door.
“Sabrina.”
I didn't know who called my name. I couldn't stay there knowing that everything I'd thought I'd done to protect him had never been enough.
So I ran.
I ran without thinking or caring where I was going. The city blurred around me as I pushed forward, my feet carrying me faster than my mind could process. The lights, the noise and the people around me disappeared until there was only one thought repeating over and over again.
I failed him.
The further I ran, the louder it became.
I failed him.
I failed him.
I failed him.
I didn't stop until the buildings faded behind me and the streets turned into empty fields. Only then did my body finally give up.
My legs collapsed beneath me, and I fell to the ground. My hands pressed against the grass as I tried to breathe, but every breath caught somewhere in my chest.
I wanted to be angry. Anger would have been easier because it was familiar. But this wasn't anger. It was guilt – the unbearable weight of realising that the one person I'd dedicated my life to protecting had been in danger while I was too far away to see it.
Footsteps approached slowly behind me.
Lillian reached me first, gently removing my mask before draping her hoodie over my shoulders. She sat beside me, and Asher and Mario joined us moments later.
None of them tried to fix it. They knew they couldn't.
The memories kept coming: Dario's small hand holding mine, his voice calling my name, the way he trusted me without question.
And the worst part was that I'd trusted myself too.
For years, I'd built myself around one promise.
Protect Dario.
Every choice I'd made traced back to that promise, and now I had to face the one truth I'd spent years avoiding.
I couldn't protect him from everything.
The tears came before I could stop them, slowly at first, then all at once. My shoulders shook as I tried to hold everything inside, but there was nothing left to hold it together with.
I'd survived so much, but this was different. This wasn't someone hurting me. This wasn't Ivan. This wasn't a threat I could hunt down and eliminate.
This was the knowledge that the person I'd spent years trying to save had been surrounded by danger, and I never knew.
A broken sound escaped me, then another, until the pain became too much to contain.
And I screamed.
The sound tore through the empty field, raw and full of everything I'd spent years refusing to feel – the fear, the guilt, the helplessness and the anger.
I wasn't Morana in that moment.
I wasn't the assassin everyone feared.
I was just Sabrina, a girl who had spent her entire life trying to keep one person safe.
And for the first time, I had no idea if I'd succeeded.