Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
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.