"No, you listen to me." I stand up and pace to the window, looking out at the manicured gardens where everything is orderly and controlled. "I've been counting dirty money for you for years. I've kept my mouth shut and my head down and never asked questions about where the cash came from or where it went. But I'm asking now. Did you plant those drugs?"
The pause is shorter this time, but it's still too long. "Yes."
The word hits me in the chest, and I have to grip the windowsill to keep from falling. "Oh, God."
"It wasn't personal," he says quickly. "The soldier was already marked. He was stealing from the Bratva, skimming off the top. He would have been killed anyway."
"So you decided to kill him yourself?"
"I decided to make his death useful," he corrects. "The Karpin family needed a way to destabilize the Vetrov operation, and the soldier's death provided that opportunity. Two birds with one stone."
I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the cool glass. "You work for them. For the Karpin family."
"I workwiththem," he says. "There's a difference."
"For how long?"
"Three years. Maybe four. I don't remember exactly when it started."
"And me?" I ask. "What was I? Another useful tool in your arsenal?"
"You were my sister," he says, and his voice cracks slightly. "You were supposed to be safe. You were supposed to stay out of this."
"But I didn't stay out of it, did I? Because you needed someone to count the money, someone who wouldn't ask questions. Someone who trusted you completely."
"Zoya—"
"How many people have died because of your games?" I ask. "How many families have been destroyed because you decided to play both sides?" Anger coils around my chest and I feel like I’m going to lose control.
"I'm trying to survive," he says. "We're all trying to survive. The Vetrovs aren't the good guys in this story, Zoya. They're killers and thieves and worse. At least with the Karpin family, I know where I stand."
"And where do I stand?" I ask. "In your grand plan, where do I fit?"
"You get out," he says firmly. "You disappear. You start over somewhere they can't find you."
"What if I don't want to disappear?"
"Then you're going to die," he says bluntly. "The Vetrovs will use you until you're no longer useful, and then they'll dispose of you. That's what they do. That's what they've always done."
I think about Maksim's hands on my skin, the way his voice softens when we're alone, the careful way he touches me as if I might break. "You're wrong about him."
"Am I? Has he told you he loves you? Has he promised you a future together? Or does he just take what he wants and expect you to be grateful for it?"
The questions sting because they're partially true. Maksim has never said he loves me—at least not in a way that I believe. He's never made promises about our future. But there's something in the way he looks at me, something in the way he held my hand when I was recovering, that tells me Damir's assessment is incomplete.
"I have to go," I tell him.
"Zoya, wait?—"
"No," I say firmly. "I've heard enough."
"Please," he says, and the desperation in his voice is unmistakable. "Just think about what I've told you. Don't let him manipulate you into believing that what you have is real."
I hang up without saying goodbye and let the phone fall from my trembling hands. It clatters on the marble floor, and the sound echoes through the empty library. I sink back into the leather chair and stare at the device, wondering if I've just severed the last connection to my old life.
The conversation replays in my mind as I climb the stairs to the guest room. Damir's admission that he planted the drugs, his casual dismissal of the soldier's death, his insistence that I'm being manipulated. The brother I thought I knew, the one who raised me and protected me and taught me to count money with steady hands, is a stranger. Or maybe I'm the stranger, and he's always been exactly what he is now.
I close the door behind me and lean against it, feeling the weight of everything that's changed. But it's not my room, andthis isn't my life. Or maybe it is now, and I just haven't accepted it yet.
