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I stare at him, unseeing.

“But you know the one part I’ve made peace with?” Ray asks the bottle more than me. “Your family’s reputation. Yuris would set the fuckin’ world on fire for the people they love. Every cop in Boston knows it. Every crew knows it better—which is why anyone hunting your clan goes after your people first. Loving one of you is as good as a death sentence. You have no idea how many people want you all wiped off the face of the earth. My daughter is better off. And better her old man’s a killer than her name be on some revenge agenda. You’d only ever hurt her.”

“You already did that,” I bite out. “You didn’t even go through the motions of filling out a fucking report for her. You think that didn’t fuck her up, knowing her own father wouldn’t tear this city apart to find her?”

“She has a tracker in her. She’s always had a tracker in her,” Ray sighs. “You should’ve let yourself die in the shoot-out, man. You were supposed to. And while your brothers mourned you, they were going to take you out one by one.”

My lungs constrict, my body rebelling against processing the information he gives all too freely. And what it means that he’s dispensing it without a care.

“Who? What gang? Who’s the fucking mole?” I choke out.

Again, Ray shakes his head. But this time he rises to his feet, too, and walks that bottle over to me. He holds it out. “I know I’ve lost my baby girl. And now, I’ve got to take your life. It’s a dog eat dog world, Yuri. And now someone’s yanking my fuckin’ leash, and I have to bite you. You understand that, don’t you?”

That’s when it sinks in. The bottle he offers me may as well be my last meal. His honesty is a benefit of my death sentence.

No one tells this much truth to a person who’s going to remain alive to pass it on.

Fuck.

Chapter 20 - Meera

I’ve never really thought I could have too much time to think. But I’m at the end of my tether by the time we get there.

The drive from Leonid’s destroyed penthouse to the palace he apparently grew up in is endless. Then again, so is the drive up from the wrought iron gates up a sprawling, cobblestoned driveway.

Maybe a week ago I would’ve been daunted by the sight of the gargantuan mansion that looms over me. I’m not that woman anymore. The woman I am now is out of the car before Lebedev ever gets his door open. I storm across the gravel, up the stone steps, through doors that two, armed strangers pull wide, because I apparently command that deference now. Or maybe it’s just Div’s blood dried rust-brown on my hands and my knees and my pale pink sweater.

It’s not the best laid of plans, to barrel through halls I’ve never seen before. But I’m a public-school teacher who deals with teenagers all day long. I feel pretty confident I can handle some criminal masterminds.

It helps that they’re loud enough for me to chase the discord all the way to the source.

They’re in a room off what I assume is the main hall. Several figures with thick, dark hair are shrouded around a long table with lots of paperwork already on it, alongside phones that remain lit and buzzing. Leonid has shown me photographs and told me stories, so I can spot identify them easily—just in case the first, traumatic meeting with his brothers hadn’t burned them into my memory already.

Trifon stands at the head of the table. Valentin’s beside him with his sleeves shoved up. The only one who throws me for a loop is a woman I’ve never met, who is unmistakably a Yuri too—with lustrous black curls that frame her doll-like face, her wide pale blue eyes, and a pair of four-inch heels that keep her from being the shortest person in the room.

I halt in the doorway, agog.

Every head turns.

Somewhere under my sternum, the old Meera—the one who waits to be invited, who’d never even think about storming into someone’s house, let alone a group of such dangerous people—backs away slowly.

I ignore her every instinct and do the opposite.

“They took him alive,” I say. “I need you to listen to me, because I was there, and I remember all of it. I want to help. You don’t have to trust me, but you love your brother and I assume you know he’s not a moron. And he trusts me. Or we wouldn’t be together.”

Trifon’s eyes narrow a fraction. He clears his throat. “Yes?”

So, I tell them. I share every insight I spent the car ride gathering in my head to stay sane. “The dogs knew something was wrong,” I say. “By the time we understood something was up, it was already too late. There were too many of them. Too much force, too much power, too much ammo. Leo saved me. He got me to a safe room. I thought they came for me, but they—they didn’t even bother shooting in my direction. They didn’t look for me. They just took him. But before all of this started, Leonid and I were arguing.”

Valentin eyes me with distrust. “About what?”

“My father,” I answer without missing a beat.

“We know,” the woman says. Darya, I recall Leonid showing me the photograph from her wedding. “Miron spilled the beans when we found out Leonid was taken.”

Trifon and Valentin stare at me like I’ve got two heads. Hell, even the men by the door are looking at me the way my students look at me during the cellular respiration unit, like they’re being told something difficult by someone who will not be repeating herself.

It’s new, this. Having the total, undivided attention of a room full of professionally dangerous people. Commanding it.