Chapter 11
Dmitry
Ishould’ve been planning nothing but Andrey’s death. The timing, location, disposal, and how much mess I could afford to make before Viktor told me to end it already.
Instead, all I could think about was killing him. Tonight. I knew what I was going to do, what I had to do to prepare. But instead, I found myself standing outside the bunker door.
I unlatched it and told myself I wouldn’t lock her in after I left. She wasn’t my prisoner, not anymore, not when she wanted her father’s blood spilled as much as I did.
She’d moved since I left. The blanket was still around her shoulders, but now she sat cross-legged on the cot, hair loose and falling over one eye, fingers wrapped around a bottle of water and a pack of crackers. The heater hummed beside her, turning the cold bunker into something almost livable.
Her gaze lifted the second I entered. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t scramble back. She just watched me as if I were both judge and executioner.
“You’re back sooner than I assumed,” she whispered.
“I have to leave and handle business,” I replied.
I’d stopped at one of the few late-night corner stores after leaving the mill and bought some fresh items for her. I set the bag I’d brought on the small table. A few slices of dark bread, cheese, cured meat, and tea bags.
“Eat something more than protein bars and crackers,” I said.
She hesitated a fraction of a second, then slid off the cot and walked to the table. She didn’t hover or try to look grateful. She just picked up a slice of cheese and placed it on some bread before taking a bite.
“Is it weird knowing that blood money paid for all of this?”
I huffed a sound that might have been a laugh if I’d been a different man. “All money is evil and corrupt.”
She looked small and breakable, but I’d seen the way her hatred shifted in the office when she realized how her father had used her. That kind of quiet was never a weakness. It was the pause before a trigger was pulled.
“Did he send it?” she asked. “What you wanted?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Enough to end this,” I said.
She nodded once. “Is that where you’re going tonight?”
It wasn’t phrased as a question to me, but I answered it anyway. “Yes.”
She stared at the table, at the neat little line of bread and meat, then back up at me. “What happens after all of this?”
I knew she was asking what happens to her.
When I didn’t answer, a muscle ticked in her jaw. “To him… to me…” She let out a breath. No shifts in the soundscape meant no one had found us yet.
I stepped close enough that my hip brushed the edge of the table. Her gaze flicked to my throat, then to my mouth, and finally settled on my eyes. There was no pretense left in her, no practiced politeness or even fear. Just resignation and intent, as if she’d already burned the bridge behind her.
“Right now,” she said, “I just want you to finish it.”
The words shouldn’t have done anything to me. It was nothing but a request from someone who understood there was no version of the future where Ivanov walked away. But something twisted low in my gut, anyway.
Before I could stop myself, I reached out and caught her chin between my fingers, lifting her face until she had no choice but to hold my gaze.
“You understand what happens when he’s gone?” I asked. “You’ll have no house. No staff. You’ll be penniless and without a support system. It’ll just be you.”
Her pulse fluttered quickly beneath her skin, but her voice stayed steady when she said, “I don’t care about any of that. It’s always just been me.”
“And how do you think you’ll feel after I kill your father?”
She was silent for a long beat. “I don’t know,” Zoya finally said. “I think part of me will grieve the fantasy of who I thought he was. But the rest of me?” Her gaze lifted. Steady. “It’ll feel like nothing,” she said. “Like it was overdue.”
She didn’t look away when she said it.
That same cold certainty that made her say she hoped he’d stall flickered behind her eyes, and I felt something in me answer it. I released her chin slowly, my thumb dragging once along the soft edge of her jaw before I let go. Her breath caught, the smallest hitch, and her pupils dilated.
Bad timing to notice that. Worse timing to care.
“Don’t leave this bunker,” I said. “Not until it’s done. It’s for your protection. But I won’t lock you in.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“If anyone comes looking, they won’t find you here,” I told her. “If something goes wrong, this place keeps you safe.”
“And if you don’t come back?” she asked.
“I’m coming back,” I said.
Her gaze didn’t falter. She held mine, steady and unnervingly direct. “What happens to me after?”
The question punched straight through the professional distance I’d been clinging to.
I could have lied. I could have said I’d give her a passport and a new life on the other side of the world.
That she could pretend none of this touched her bloodline, and that her father’s empire hadn’t been built on human bodies.
“I’ll help you get out of the country,” I said instead. “Clean and quiet and with enough to start over somewhere his shadow and reputation can’t reach.”
Her brows drew together. “You will?”
“I will,” I said. “If that’s what you decide.”
She studied me for a beat. Then shook her head slowly. “That’s not what you meant.”
“No,” I admitted. “It isn’t.”
She sat there and stared at me, then straightened her shoulders and tipped her chin up a notch higher. “Then say what you meant.”
I stepped closer until the bunker’s air warmed against my chest. My hand found the back of her neck, thumb brushing the pulse at her throat. This was dangerous, wrong, and not in my plans. Yet, Zoya was changing something in me, nudging loyalty and murder into territory that felt personal.
“What I meant,” I said, “is that after this is finished, I’m not pretending you don’t exist. I’m not dropping you in a city you’ve never seen and calling it mercy. You’re not disposable. Not to me.”
Color rose beneath her skin, and she slowly stood, her height minuscule compared to mine as I towered over her.
Her lashes fluttered, pupils dilating, and for one long second, the bunker shrank to nothing but the scent and sight of her and the knowledge that I could take her apart without ever raising my voice or touching her.
I forced myself to let her go. “Eat more and rest,” I said. “When I come back, the first part will be done.”
Her brows knit. “The first part?”
“The man who paid for your father’s business. The one who paid to watch my mother die. He’s first on my list, and tonight, he stops breathing.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And then you kill my father?”
“Yes,” I said, no tremor in my tone. “Slowly.”
She didn’t argue or try to defend him. All she said was, “Be careful.”
I should have turned and walked out, left her with the heater and the blankets and the rational distance between captive and captor. Instead, I stepped back into her space, close enough to feel her breath warm against my neck, to see the pulse kick beneath her skin.
I slid my hand to the back of her neck, thumb grazing her nape as if I couldn’t control myself.
Her eyes widened as I used pressure and tilted her face up.
I was leaning in closer, my mouth hovering a breath from hers now.
I could have taken her right now, pressed my mouth to hers and forced her to kiss me as if she were already mine.
But I didn’t close the distance. I let her feel the choice without letting her have it. I wanted Zoya to know I could take what I wanted, and she’d give it to me because she wanted to. Not because she’d been cornered.
“Ya ne budu tebya seychas tselovat’,” I’m not going to kiss you right now, I whispered, “potomu chto ya khochu chto-to sladkoye, myagkoye i sovsem moyo, kogda ya vernus’ ves’ v krovi, kogda ya otnyal ch’yu-to zhizn’ i mne nuzhno, chtoby ty vytashchila menya iz poteri rassudka.
” Because I want something sweet and soft and completely mine, when I come back covered in blood, when I’ve taken someone’s life and I need you to pull me back from losing my mind.
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t pull away or deny anything I said. Zoya said nothing. She just stared at my mouth like she wanted to force my hand and take what she wanted instead.
I took a step back before either of us went further. I left the bunker and climbed the stairs. The slaughterhouse was freezing, but something in my chest burned hot and clean. I already had the location of where that motherfucker was right now.
I stepped outside, flipped the collar of my jacket up against the cold, and saw death and blood finishing out my night.
Tonight, I would collect a debt owed to me for the last thirty-eight years.
And for the first time in my life, there was something in my life worth returning to.