Unblinking.
If grief were a weapon, he just fired it at point-blank range.
And I will never forgive him for the way she sounds right now.
Not ever.
Reed keeps talking for another minute—condolences, procedure, regret—but I’m no longer listening the way he thinks I am. I’m watching instead. The way his eyes flicker left when he mentions dates. The pause before he says classified complications. The way his hands stay too still, like he’s afraid movement will betray him.
His story is clean.
Too clean.
When he finally leaves—escorted, polite, breathing my air longer than I’d like—the doors close behind him with a sound that feels permanent.
Raelyn doesn’t notice.
She’s folded into me, fingers twisted in my shirt, voice breaking on the same sentence over and over.
“He’s gone,” she whispers. “He’s really gone.”
I tighten my arms and pull her fully into my chest, shielding her from the room, from the walls, from the truth I’m already dissecting piece by piece. Her tears soak through the fabric. Her body trembles like she’s trying to hold herself together by force alone.
I rock her slowly. Instinctive. Wordless.
“He can’t be,” she murmurs. “He promised. He always came back.”
I press my mouth to her hair, breathe her in, anchor her where the world just fractured.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur—not as reassurance, but as a statement of fact. “You’re not alone. Not now. Not ever.”
She clings harder, like she’s afraid I’ll vanish too. I let her. I don’t move. I don’t rush her grief. I absorb it.
And while I hold her, my mind works.
Hart disappeared with two tails on him. One criminal. One clean. Reed says dead, but offers no remains, no location, no real proof—just authority and finality. Men who speak the truth don’t need it to sound inevitable.
This man did.
Raelyn’s sobs quiet into broken breaths. I lift her without asking, carry her away from the hall, away from where that lie was delivered, and sit with her on the couch, her curled into my side like she belongs there. Because right now, she does.
My hand moves in slow circles against her back, and my jaw locks.
I’ll find out what really happened to Nathaniel Hart.
I’ll peel this story open until it bleeds.
And whoever thought they could end this with a sentence and a condolence….
They’ve just made themselves my enemy.
Reed is lying. I feel it in my bones.
And Markov isn’t the only enemy in this story.
Chapter 15 – Raelyn
I wake up in Konstantin’s bed with my head pounding and my chest hollowed out like something vital has been carved from it.