Chapter 28
STEFAN
I stride out of my office, jaw locked tight, blood pounding in my ears.
Eight years. Eight fucking years I trusted her. Gave her access to everything—my operations, my home, my plans. And the whole time, she was playing me. From the very first day.
I should have known better. Never trust a woman.
My mother taught me that. She showed me with her words and her actions that women smile and lie and wait for the perfect moment to drive the knife between your ribs.
And like an idiot, I let myself forget.
I shove through the door to the basement stairs, taking them two at a time. My hands shake with the need to hit something. Break something. Make someone bleed.
Good thing I have Mikayla locked up down here. Or Mila. Whoever the fuck she actually is.
I haven’t been down to see her in a week. I’ve been too busy trying to keep Olivia safe, trying to salvage what’s left of my operations while the feds circle closer. But now…
Now, I have questions that need answers.
The basement is cold. Concrete floors, bare walls, a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. Mikayla sits on the cot I had brought down for her, hands cuffed in front of her. She looks up when I enter, and her eyes narrow.
“Back for another round of interrogation?” Her lip curls. “You’re wasting your time.”
I stop a few feet from the cot. “What’s your real name?”
She blinks. Then a slow, bitter smile spreads across her face. “Finally caught on, have you?”
“Answer the question.”
“Or what? You’ll torture me?” She laughs, the sound sharp and ugly. “If you were going to break me, you’d have done it by now.”
My hands curl into fists. “You worked for me for eight years. You know what I’m capable of.”
“I do. Which is why I stopped being scared of you a long time ago.” She meets my eyes, unflinching. “There’s nothing you can do to me that will make me talk against my will.”
I want to prove her wrong. It wouldn’t take long to show her exactly how creative I can be when someone betrays me.
But something stops me. Maybe it’s the fact that Olivia is upstairs somewhere, trusting me to be better than my worst instincts.
Or maybe it’s just that I’m tired.
Violence has a way of hurting both the giver and the taker, and fuck knows I’ve been on both ends of it for so much of my life. Lies are the same, and I’ve had plenty of those, too. I’m so fucking tired of both.
I pull over the single chair in the room and sit down. “Fine. How about an answer for an answer?”
She leans her head to one side and squints, suspicious. “What?”
“You give me the truth, I give you the truth. No games. No lies.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you’ll actually be honest?”
“I promise to give you the truth if you do the same for me.”
She studies me for a long moment. I can see the calculation in her eyes. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I’m sick of not knowing who to trust. And maybe if we’re both honest for once, we can figure out what the fuck is actually going on.”
Another pause. Then she nods slowly. “Fine. I’ll take the first question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Have you found Natalia yet?”
“No,” I admit. “We had a location, but she disappeared before we could get there. We’re still looking.”
She nods, unsurprised. “Your turn.”
“What is your real name?”
“Mila Vladislav.”
So Arkady’s information was accurate. Not that I doubted him, but hearing it confirmed still stings.
“You took your sister’s name,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That’s a second question. I’ll answer anyway, though.
” She shifts on the cot, almost like she’s enjoying this game.
“It was my way of honoring her. I haven’t always done that, even after taking her name.
But I intend to now. Somewhere along the way, I lost my way in my mission.
But now, I’m re-committing myself to it. ”
“You mean you’re re-committing yourself to destroying me.”
“Yes.” The word is simple. Final. No hesitation.
“Why?”
“That’s three in a row, cheater,” she scolds with a giggle. “My turn. Do you love her?”
I don’t need to ask who she means. Olivia. It’s always Olivia.
The answer sits on my tongue, heavy and terrifying. I’ve never said it out loud before. Haven’t even let myself think it fully, not in those exact terms.
But sitting here, in this cold basement, across from a woman who’s dedicated years of her life to ruining mine—somehow, this feels like the right moment.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I do.”
Her eyes widen. She wasn’t expecting honesty. “You actually mean that.”
“I do.”
“I don’t think you know how to love people, Stefan. You only know how to use them.”
“Maybe that was once true. Before her.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees, matching Mila’s posture.
“Now, tell me why you did all this. You spent eight years working for me, pretending to be loyal, when you were planning to destroy me the whole time. That’s a hell of a long con with no clear payoff. ”
She’s quiet for a moment. When she speaks, her voice is different. Softer. Almost vulnerable.
“Because you killed my sister.”
I close my eyes and breathe. It’s the only way to process what I knew was coming and tried to pretend couldn’t be true. But it is true. My worst fears, my greatest mistakes, all coming back to spit in my face and laugh at me.
“The body we buried,” I say slowly. “From the cabin. That was Mikayla Vladislav.”
“Yes.”
I close my eyes. Fuck. I knew it, but hearing it confirmed makes it real in a way it wasn’t before.
“I didn’t kill her,” I say. “Not on purpose. I thought I was killing my mother.”
“But Mikayla died anyway, didn’t she? She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you put a bullet in her head without even checking who she was.”
“It was dark. The car was on fire. I couldn’t—”
“You could have checked!” she cries out, anger breaking through the calm. “You could have made sure! But you didn’t, because you were so consumed with revenge that you didn’t give one single fuck who got caught in the crossfire.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. I’ve known it for weeks now, ever since we discovered my mother was still alive.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “I’m sorry your sister died because of my mistakes.”
“Sorry doesn’t bring her back.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
We sit in silence for a moment. The bulb overhead flickers.
“She was all I had,” Mila says quietly. “Our mother died when we were young. We only had each other. And then your mother came along and offered Mikayla a job. ‘Good money,’ she said. ‘Easy work.’ Just drive her places, keep her safe. Mikayla was thrilled. She thought it was her big break. A chance to make something of herself.” Mila’s hands clench in her lap.
“She didn’t know what she was getting into.
Didn’t know who your mother really was or what she was planning. ”
“And you?”
“I was younger. Still in school. Mikayla sent me money every month. Told me to focus on my studies, that she’d take care of everything.” Her jaw hums with tension. “The night she died, I was home studying for an exam. I didn’t even know something was wrong until the police showed up at my door.”
I can picture it. A teenage girl, alone, being told her sister is dead. No body to identify. No closure. Just strange cops with unkind faces and impossible news.
“They told me there’d been a car accident,” Mila continues. “Mikayla died on impact, they said. But I knew something was off. Mikayla was a good driver. And the story didn’t make sense.”
“So you investigated.”
“Yes. Took me months, but I pieced it together. The connections to your family. The timing.” She looks at me. “I knew you’d killed her. I just didn’t know why.”
“And when you found out?”
“I wanted you dead. To make you suffer the way I suffered.” She pauses. “But I was smart enough to know I couldn’t just walk up and shoot you. You had too many people watching your back.”
“So you became one of those people.”
“Yes. I took Mikayla’s identity. Trained and made myself useful. And then I waited for the right moment to apply for a position in your organization.”
“The fighting pit in Vladivostok.”
She nods. “I knew you went there sometimes, looking for talent. I made sure I was fighting the night you showed up.”
I remember that night. Remember watching her break a man’s arm without flinching. Those eyes, dead and cold and, above all, intelligent.
I should have seen it then. That kind of control only comes from deep pain.
“You played me from the beginning,” I say.
“Not all of it.” She shifts on the cot. “At first, yes. I was looking for weaknesses. Ways to bring you down. But after a while...” She trails off.
“After a while what?”
“After a while, I started to understand you. You weren’t just a monster. You were a man who’d been hurt by the people he trusted most.” She meets my eyes. “Just like me.”
“That doesn’t excuse what you did.”
“No. It doesn’t. Just like your pain doesn’t excuse what you did to Mikayla.”
She’s right. Again.
“My turn.” She pauses. “When you find Natalia, what will you do to her?”
I don’t hesitate. “I’ll kill her.”
“Have you not had enough death? What about your father, about Mikayla, about all the other people who’ve died because of your war with Natalia?”
“They made their choices.”
“Mikayla didn’t choose anything. She was just trying to make a living.”
The guilt twists in my chest. “I know.”
“And yet you’d do it all again.”
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “Yes. To protect the people I love, I’ll do whatever the fuck it takes.”
“You sound like her, you know. Your mother. Both of you, when you talk… you sound the same.”
“She’s a monster,” I sneer.
“What does that make you?”
I don’t know how to answer that, so I rise and walk to the door without responding. My hand is on the handle when Mila speaks again.
“For what it’s worth, I believe you when you say you love Olivia.
I can see it in your eyes.” She pauses. “My sister would have liked her, I think. Part of me likes her, too. I know that doesn’t change anything for you.
You’re going to do to me whatever you want to do.
Kill me, most likely. But just know that I made the choices I made for the same reasons you say you are. ”
“What’s that?” I ask, despite my better instinct.
“Love,” she replies somberly. “It makes fools of us all.”