“Don’t you say it!”Atlas roared.“Don’t you fucking say her name!”
My pulse kicked hard, violent, like it wanted to burst straight through my chest.
“Did you think you could replace her?”Marcello’s voice softened—just a touch, and I was almost fooled into thinking he had a human side.“There’s a reason you spared her, Atlas.”
“Mercy is a word people use to absolve themselves of guilt.Don’t delude yourself into thinking otherwise, little brother,” Atlas spat.
Silence spread thick and heavy.A wire pulled taut.One wrong move and it would snap.
Marcello sighed quietly.“I wouldn’t have been able to put a bullet in a kid, either.Regardless of what her father did.”
What her father did.
I tossed the words around in my head.I let them roll off my tongue and trickle through my veins.What did my father do?
There was another beat of silence as sirens sounded faintly from the street below.The air hummed with tension.
“So tell me, Atlas.What are you planning to do with her?”
Footsteps shifted—someone was moving around the room.I didn’t expect Atlas to answer, but when he did, his answer was as unexpected as it was confusing.
“…I have no idea what to do with her.But she survived my presence twice.So I wasn’t going to let death take her.”
Marcello let out a bitter laugh.“Bullshit.You know exactly what you want to do.You just can’t say it out loud.”
A low growl escaped Atlas, what sounded like a dangerous warning, but Marcello ignored it.
“You’re in deep, brother.Deeper than you think.”
A harsh exhale followed.It was Atlas’s.Frustrated.Cornered.Exposed.
Then silence.
And I was frozen behind the door, my heart pounding so hard it hurt.Every word sank like a stone in my gut.
He had spared me once.
He hadn’t come back to rescue me—he had come back to finish the job he couldn’t do all those years ago.
And now?
Now he wasn’t sure he could do it.
I closed my eyes.Of course.Of course this was my life.
I pushed away from the door and sank onto the edge of the bed.My heart rammed against my ribs like it was trying to escape my chest.Too fast and violent.Too real.
A bitter smile ghosted across my mouth.How poetic would it have been if this was my escape?Let the Russians storm the building and tear through walls and men.Let them kill Atlas and all his soldiers.They’d do the dirty work while I walked out through the smoke, stepping over the ruins of their empire.
But that fantasy died before it even formed.Because I knew better.
My hands shook as I folded in on myself, my forehead pressed to my knees, trying to breathe through the panic clawing up my throat.
The past had found me.The present was a trap.And the future?The future looked like a war I was already losing.
Not against the Russians or whatever was left of the Sokolov empire.But against Atlas Cavalho—the most dangerous monster I’d ever known.
And now I was trapped in his den.With no way out.