Chapter 9 #3
After a moment too long, he lifts his gaze to mine. “I don’t know them.” His voice is quiet. Matter-of-fact. Like he’s telling me the time.
My stomach clenches, but I don’t flinch. I don’t even blink. I just nod once. Slowly. “I figured,” I murmur.
But something in me still tightens. Even though I knew it was coming. Even though I told myself he wouldn’t know their faces, their names, their story. I still… hoped.
Hope is a fucking disease.
He sets the locket down carefully in the space between us, the way you’d return a weapon you had no use for.
His voice cuts through the quiet again. “Who were they?”
I lean back slightly, crossing my arms. “People who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He studies me like he’s trying to figure out which part of that sentence is the lie. I don’t give him the answer.
His eyes narrow just slightly. “When?”
“Christmas Eve. Fifteen years ago.”
Something shifts in his posture. Barely. But I notice it. A tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there before. I don’t know if it’s the date or the tone of my voice that did it.
“Where?” he asks.
“No.”
He raises an eyebrow.
I shake my head. “I didn’t bring you here to give you my trauma on a silver platter, Rafael. I asked if you knew them. That’s all.”
He leans back again, watching me. “So you’re still keeping secrets,” he says.
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Says the man who drugged me in his gun room.”
His lips tug into something that’s not quite a smirk.
I lean forward slightly, resting my elbows on my knees. “I don’t trust you.”
“Good.”
The word is sharp. Final. But there’s something else beneath it—approval?
He lifts the necklace again, holds it between two fingers. “You’ve been carrying this around with you all these years?”
My voice is quieter now. “It’s the only thing I have left of them.”
He looks at it one last time, then sets it down again. I don’t move to take it back.
We sit in silence for a moment. Not enemies. Not allies. Two ghosts in different war stories. Two people with blood on their hands and names in their nightmares.
And neither of us looking away.
He doesn’t speak for a while. He just sits there, watching me. Not with pity. Not with curiosity. But like he sees something—something I’m not sure I want him to see.
Then, slowly, he reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket. My breath stills and when he pulls his hand out, he’s holding my dagger.
Clean. Polished. Almost gleaming beneath the lights.
I sit up straighter, my heart kicking harder. It’s like seeing a part of myself in his hands.
He turns it once, then again—testing the weight, the balance—before extending it toward me. Blade first.
The silver edge glints under the low lighting. A quiet promise between us.
He holds it without flinching. And for a second, I just look at it. Then at him. Then back again.
His fingers don’t tremble. His gaze doesn’t shift. It’s not a threat. It’s a surrender.
I reach for it, but before my fingers close around the handle, his voice cuts in—low, quiet, lethal.
“I thought about that night.”
My hand stills, hovering inches from the blade. His thumb shifts, and in one smooth motion, he flips the dagger so the hilt is now pointed toward me.
“I thought about the feeling of you lunging at me with this.” He taps the flat side of the blade against his own chest, exactly where my knife had once been aimed.
“About how fast it all happened. The sound of the glass, the weight of your body when we hit the floor, your hands…” His eyes flick to mine, and there’s a dangerous glint now. “Shaking. But not from fear.”
No. Never from fear.
He drags the dagger across the front of his shirt—not cutting, just gliding it over the fabric as if mapping invisible lines only he knows exist.
“I’ve seen death more times than I can count.” His tone drops into something darker. “I’ve been shot here—” he taps his left side, just above his ribs, “—stabbed here,” he touches the spot low on his waist, the one where I first saw the scar, “—and burned across my shoulder when I was fifteen.”
Each place he names, he traces gently with the tip of my dagger. Like it’s a lover’s touch.
“I used to think I was lucky,” he murmurs, “walking away from all of it. But lately, I’ve been wondering…”
He looks at me then, gaze locked with mine, and I feel something in my chest twist. “What if it’s not luck? What if death is just waiting for the right moment?”
The room feels smaller. Thicker. My voice comes out quieter than I mean it to. “And what would that moment look like, Rafael?”
He watches me for a beat longer, then flips the dagger in his hand again and finally presses the hilt into my palm.
I curl my fingers around it, gripping it tighter than I need to.
He leans forward. Close. “I think maybe I’ll know when I see it in someone’s eyes.”
I don’t blink. “And did you see it in mine?”
He lets a faint smirk tug at his mouth, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not yet.”
I sit back slowly, resting the dagger across my thigh. His gaze drops to it for a second—then to my face again.
Still circling. Still dancing on the edge of something sharp.
He stands up then, smooth and composed, and brushes a hand through his dark hair. “I have a job,” he says, shifting back into business like the past fifteen minutes didn’t just cut the air between us in half.
“A job?” I echo.
He meets my gaze again. “Colombia. Cartagena. You’ll be coming with me.”
My fingers curl tighter around the dagger. And this time… I don’t look away.
I stay seated, legs crossed, the dagger still resting against my thigh as he stands in front of me like he didn’t just drop a bomb in the middle of my living room.
Colombia. Cartagena.
When?
My eyes follow him like he’s a loaded weapon with a mind of its own, never knowing if he’s going to shoot or offer me the trigger.
“So that’s it?” I ask, voice cool, sharp around the edges. “You decide something and I follow?”
He doesn’t blink. “You saved my life. This is me returning the favor.”
I narrow my eyes. “By dragging me to another continent?”
He gives me a small shrug, like the idea of dragging anyone anywhere is just business as usual. “I need someone I can trust at my side. And you’re the only one I know won’t hesitate to put a blade in my chest if I cross a line.”
“Comforting.”
He ignores the sarcasm. “We leave tomorrow. Eleven sharp.”
Of course. No time to think. No time to question. Just him, making decisions and expecting the world to move accordingly.
I shake my head once. “You could’ve told me in advance.”
His eyes flash, amused. “I just decided that you are going.”
Of course he did. Because Rafael Romanov doesn’t play by anyone’s rules. He makes them.
And I?—
I knew that already, didn’t I?
“Pack light,” he adds, turning for the door. “We’ll be gone five days. I’ll send Kellan the location. Be there by ten.”
Be there by ten.
Like it’s nothing. Like it’s a goddamn brunch.
I don’t move. “You could say please.”
He glances over his shoulder. “And you could pretend to like following orders.”
Before I can answer, he’s gone.
I stand slowly, dagger still in my hand, and walk to the door. I twist the lock tight after he disappears down the hallway, the sound final and sharp.
Then I move to the windows—floor-to-ceiling glass that looks over the glittering city, its lights like stars that fell too hard and cracked on pavement.
I press my palm to the glass and breathe.
Colombia. I’m going to Colombia. With him .
I should’ve said no. But I didn’t.
Because a part of me—maybe the part that’s been sleeping under the weight of every lie I’ve been told—wants to get closer to him. Not because I trust him. Not even because I believe him.
But because I don’t.
He looked at the photo in that locket and said he didn’t know them. He said it like it was the truth. Steady. Calm. Unbothered.
But I’ve spent years collecting every breadcrumb that ever led back to my parents’ murder. Letters. Paper trails. Names whispered in back alleys and burned before dawn.
Too many signs pointed to him. To the Bratva. To the Romanovs.
So no—I don’t believe him. Not fully. Not yet.
But I don’t need to. Because I’m not following him to Colombia to serve. I’m going there to hunt.
And if he’s the monster at the center of it all?
Then I’ll smile while I drive the dagger through his heart.
The same way he smiled when he handed it back.