Chapter 38
TERESA
Present moment…
“It’s time to end this.”
Aleksander shifts his weight, the pistol glinting in his hand. As he raises it toward me, my lungs feel as if they’ve locked shut. But then he lowers the weapon, as if a thought suddenly occurred to him.
“Let’s have a final toast to Maxim,” he declares. “Before the woman who destroyed him joins him in the ground.”
My knees want to fold, but I force myself to stand upright. Every second he stalls, every word he wastes is another chance. Another moment closer to Vlad finding me.
Aleksander turns toward the bar. He uncorks a decanter with practiced ease, pouring amber liquid into three crystal tumblers. His eyes flick toward me, narrowing, his mouth curling into a wicked grin.
“You’re going to be dead soon anyway, so a little drink won’t hurt.”
He sets one in front of Jack, then me. His hand trembles slightly as he lifts his own glass.
“Finally,” Aleksander says, his voice swelling with dark pride. “My plans pay off. Finally, there will be justice. Maxim will be avenged. My blood honored.” He raises his glass, amber liquid trembling in the light. “To the future.”
The words are still hanging in the air when Jack moves. He rolls his eyes as if bored out of his skull and lifts his pistol. The crack is sharp, ugly. Aleksander’s body jerks, his gray vest blooming red as the glass tumbles from his hand and shatters across the floor.
For a frozen heartbeat it doesn’t seem real. Aleksander blinks down at the stain and sways. He sits hard on the edge of the desk, sucking sharp breaths in and out. Shocked.
“Jack,” I choke. “What—”
The gun hangs lazily in his hand. “The old man wouldn’t shut up. And we need to get this goddamn show on the road!”
A new voice drifts across the room, cold as winter. “Honestly,” Trina says, “I couldn’t take one more of his rants about Maxim and justice.”
She steps out from a side door I hadn’t noticed, dark hair pulled back tight and sleek, face composed.
Without hurry, she crosses to the bar, plucks up the decanter, and pours herself a drink.
She swirls the amber liquid once, then lifts it to her lips like she’s been waiting her whole life for this moment.
“You—” The word tears from my throat, betrayal searing through every nerve. “Trina?”
Her gaze meets mine over the rim of her glass. The look in her eyes is cold. Calculated. Nothing like the friend and ally I thought I had.
“Darling,” she says, her voice light, “did you really think you were going to live through all of this?”
Behind me, Aleksander makes a gurgling noise. Blood leaks between his fingers in a skinny river. He looks at Trina, comprehension dragging slow through pain.
“You,” he rasps. “It was you the whole time.”
Trina sets her glass down and smiles as if she’s just been handed a compliment. “Yes. It’s been me for a long time,” she replies, eyes bright.
Everything tilts again, and I plant my feet. “Start over,” I say, because if she doesn’t, the room will slide off its axis and take me with it. “From the beginning.”
Jack snorts like I’ve missed an obvious punchline. Trina studies me for a beat, then nods once, as if deciding I deserve the truth.
“Your parents,” she says. “Lovely. Na?ve. They believed marrying you to Maxim would keep your birthright intact.” She looks bored by the memory. “They were wrong, of course.”
“I didn’t—” I start, but there’s no point so I close my mouth.
“Jack,” she continues, turning her head slightly, “objected. Was worried he’d be cut out, cast aside.”
Jack lifts a shoulder as if to say, “what else did you expect?”
“So we tested a theory,” Trina goes on. “About how many screws you have to loosen before a plane falls out of the sky.”
The words hit me square in the chest. My hand goes to my stomach protectively. “You killed my parents,” I hear myself say, my voice small, cracked. “Our parents!”
Another shrug from Jack. “We just hurried things along.”
A log shifts. The fire pops.
“Then,” Trina says, gaze flicking to the man bleeding on his own rug, “we created pressure where it would count. Aleksander thought you were the problem and we agreed. He needed a narrative—he’s sentimental, as you well know.
And it didn’t take much pushing on my part to convince dear uncle that he should put you on Vlad’s kill list.” She smiles, pleased at her own workmanship. “And it almost worked.”
“Why?” My throat burns. “Why me?”
Jack steps up, the gun he used to shoot Alexander still in his hand. “Because, sis, you’re in the way. When the old man dies, his company, and our parent’s, passes to you. But if you’re out of the picture…” He grins, a sick, joker’s grin, letting the words linger.
His tone makes my stomach drop. I look at him—and then at Trina—and it clicks. My blood runs cold.
“You planned Maxim’s death,” I whisper.
Trina doesn’t flinch. For a moment, something like regret flickers in her eyes, but then it’s gone.
“Maxim was sweet,” she says. “But sweetness doesn’t rule empires.”
The night of the gala floods back—the masks, the music, the way time slowed before the first scream. Maxim’s weight in my arms. His blood.
“You killed him,” I say, my voice shaking. “You killed him and left me to drown in it.”
Trina tilts her head. “We adjusted the details. A door left unlocked. Guard shifts adjusted. The toast timed just right. Aleksander signed the contract himself, thinking the hit team was going to take out a few of his rivals. He didn’t realize we’d paid them more to do a little extra work, didn’t realize it was also the end of his dynasty. ”
Aleksander lets out a moan of agony, emotional and physical. Part of me wishes he’d already died so he didn’t have to listen to this, to learn this.
“Better off, T,” Jack says. “All of us.”
I can barely breathe. “You think that about our parents too?”
He doesn’t blink. “Out with the old, in with the new.”
Aleksander groans again, a curse grinding through his teeth, blood still dripping between his fingers.
Trina doesn’t look at Aleksander. She looks at me.
“Here’s how it works,” she says calmly, as if she’s explaining a math problem. “I get Volkov. I get Winslow. And when Vlad goes down, I get Angeloff too. This town finally gets the queen it deserves.”
Her eyes flick toward Jack. “And Jack gets his piece. Enough money to keep him happy until he burns out.”
Jack grins, leaning back like this is all a game. “Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse, right?” He laughs at his own line, and it’s clear he means it.
My chest tightens. I stare at him—my brother—unable to recognize the person sitting there. How could he be this cold, this reckless? A psycho in plain sight, and I didn’t see it until now.
Trina ignores him, still watching me. Her smile is small, cruel. “You, Teresa, are simply in the way.”
Aleksander laughs, a raw, broken sound that ends in a cough. He tries to pull himself upright, but his hand slips, blood smearing the desk. He looks at me. The hatred is still there, tinged by anger that any of this could happen in his own house.
“Run,” he says so quietly I almost miss it.
The guard beside me shifts, the gun barrel kissing my hip to remind me what I already know.
“Trina,” I say, my voice breaking on her name. “Please. I—” My palms clamp my belly. “The baby.”
“Which is why this needs to be neat.”
“What does that even mean? Neat?”
“No spectacle,” she replies. “No messy ballistics for forensics to trace to the wrong gun. Aleksander will be cast as the man who finally snapped, consumed by grief and vodka, finally finishing the girl who cursed his house. He dies of complications. You die of his madness. The city shakes its head, the board signs the papers, regulators get an exciting memo to read.” She grins.
“And the empire grows with a steadier hand at the wheel.”
My knees want to give. I grip the desk to keep them from folding.
“Vlad will come,” I state, because saying it out loud makes it feel slightly less like a wish and more like a plan. “He’ll—”
“Someone will take care of Vlad,” Trina says confidently. “The Abramovs have been eager to prove their devotion. And if not them, another hand. He isn’t as untouchable as he thinks. No one is.”
“He’ll kill you,” I say. “Both of you.”
Jack lifts his chin. “Not a chance.”
Trina laughs a soft, amused laugh, like I’ve just said something na?ve. She gestures around us with her glass, the sweep of the chandelier light catching in the cut crystal.
“This house isn’t my uncle’s anymore,” she says. “It’s mine. Every man in this room, every guard outside no longer answers to him. They answer to me. Loyalty can be bought, Teresa, and I paid very well.”
My stomach twists as I glance at the stone-faced guards lining the walls. None of them move. None of them look shocked at what Jack did, at their boss bleeding out on the rug or what Trina just declared. They stand there like statues, like they’ve already accepted their new queen.
“If Vlad tries to storm these gates,” Trina continues, her tone smooth, unhurried, “he’ll find an army waiting. And it won’t matter how many Angels he drags behind him. This is my fortress now.”
Trina sets her empty glass on the bar and turns. “I am sorry,” she says. “You were a friend. But now you’re just an inconvenience.” She sighs, a soft little release that makes me want to claw her face. “We’ll make it quick. I can promise you that one kindness.”
The men move at a nod. Efficient. Hands under my elbows, guiding.
“Trina,” I try again, stubbornness and the will to live refusing to die. “Please.”
She meets my eyes. “If there was another way,” she says, “we’d take it. There isn’t.”
Aleksander coughs wetly. He drags himself up on one elbow, spitting a curse in Russian. He glares at Trina with a hate so concentrated it gleams.
“You won’t last on top,” he says. “Betrayal like this… it always comes back to haunt you.”
“I’ll handle it if it does,” she says, refilling her drink. “I always do.”
The guards angle me toward the French doors near the bookcase that lead out to the gardens. Jack looks away when I search his face, pleading. Trina smooths an invisible wrinkle from her slacks as if bored.
“What if I just give up my claim? Give you my inheritance and run?” I offer as a last hope.
She shakes her head. “The board will always worry you’ll come back one day. I’m sorry, but this is the way it has to be.”
An anguished cry slips from my throat, and I try to fight the guards holding me.
“Remember—do it quickly,” she reminds the men.
My feet stumble, their grip tightens. The doors open. Cold air snakes inside as if an omen to what’s about to happen.
I look back one last time. Trina is nothing but a silhouette cut out of firelight. Aleksander sags against his desk, hand red and shaking, eyes full of hatred. Jack shifts his weight and taps the gun against his thigh, waving with his other hand.
“Vlad will come,” I yell to all of them, to myself, to the baby. It lands with a small, stubborn weight.
Trina’s smile is polite but empty. “He’s already too late.”