“Then walk,” I say without looking back.
Outside, the car door clicks shut behind her, sealing her in like a secret. I don’t look back right away. I listen to the rain sliding off the roof, the soft purr of the engine beneath the quiet,and the steady pulse of her breath behind the tinted glass. Her body is folded into the corner of the seat, spine too stiff, chin lifted in practiced defiance—but her silence betrays her.
She’s rattled. Good.
I turn back to the house, stepping over the bloody drag marks where Richard had collapsed earlier. He’s still slumped against the banister, one arm twisted unnaturally behind him, head drooping forward. The guards haven’t moved him, not because they were told not to—but because there’s nowhere for him to go. No destination. No purpose left.
I stop a few feet from him and let the silence settle like dust.
He lifts his head slowly. One eye swollen shut. Lips split and blood-caked. “She’s not like me,” he rasps, barely audible. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
“No,” I agree. “But she’s yours. That’s enough.”
He breathes heavy through his nose, chest heaving like each breath costs him. “Don’t touch her.”
I crouch in front of him.
“I already did.”
His nostrils flare, but he doesn’t lunge. He can’t. He’s too broken. And that’s the point. I want him here—alive, humiliated, helpless. I want him to watch every trace of the world he built slip between his fingers, starting with the only thing he still thinks he has left.
“Let her go,” he breathes, wheezing through the words like they might be his last.
I reach forward and press two fingers against the split in his lip. He flinches. I drag my hand down the blood that’s crusted on his throat and smear it across the front of his ruined shirt.
“I’m not done yet,” I say.
He glares through the good eye, but it’s dimming. His will is fraying at the edges. Soon, even the rage will leave him, and all that will remain is regret.
I stand and nod toward the guards. “Patch him up. Leave him where he can rot quietly.”
Then I walk away.
I move through the house without looking at the portraits on the walls, without glancing at the rooms filled with curated perfection. All of it was arranged to impress—to project power, legacy, wealth. None of it means anything now. A hollow shell of empire. A cage built of its own illusion.
By the time I reach the car, the rain has slowed to a mist.
Dima is waiting by the passenger side, smoking lazily, his jacket soaked but his expression unreadable.
“You sure about this?” he asks.
“No.”
He doesn’t press. He opens the door for me, flicks the cigarette into a puddle, and gets in the front seat without another word.
I slide into the back beside her.
Alina doesn’t look at me. She stares out the window, jaw clenched, arms wrapped tight across her stomach like she’s trying to hold herself together. Her makeup is smeared. Her lip is trembling just enough to betray her.
“You can cry,” I say after a moment. “No one will think less of you.”
She turns her head slowly, green eyes sharp and bright and filled with disgust.
“Go to hell.”
I smile.
The driver starts the engine and pulls away from the estate. The house shrinks behind us in the rearview mirror, its lights glowing faintly through the fog like the dying embers of a fire too proud to admit it’s out.
