For one heartbeat, fear drops out of my body like a stone. Not because I’m brave. But because something in me snaps, clean and quiet, and leaves nothing behind except a cold decision.
“No one sent me,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. It scares me that it doesn’t. “But if you’re going to kill me, do it. Pull the trigger and explain to your daughter why there’s a corpse in your bathroom.”
His eyes change. Not softer. Never that.
Sharper.
Like I’ve finally stopped being an inconvenience and started being a question.
The gun stays up, but his stare pins me to the marble. Water runs down his chest, pools at our feet, and I realize I’m drenched, uniform plastered to my skin, my pulse loud enough to drown out thought.
Then he lowers the Glock. Slow. Controlled. A choice, not mercy.
“Get out,” he says. “Now.”
The air rushes back into my lungs so fast it burns.
I move. I don’t think, I don’t thank him, I don’t breathe like a normal person. I scramble past him, slip on wet marble, catch myself on the doorframe, and run like the hallway is on fire.
“Wait.”
My body locks. My blood turns to ice because, of course, he changed his mind, of course, this is where the bullet finds my spine.
“What’s your name?”
“V… Valerie.” My teeth click on the first syllable. “Valerie Novak.”
He repeats it like he’s filing it away. “Next time I find you somewhere you’re not supposed to be, I won’t hesitate.”
I nod so hard it hurts.
“Get out of my sight.”
I do.
I don’t stop until my door is locked and my back hits it. Then my legs finally give up, and I slide to the floor, hands over my mouth, trying to swallow the noise of my own collapse. The sobs come anyway. Ugly. Violent. The kind you can’t hide from your own ribs.
I make it to the bathroom and vomit until my throat burns. When it’s over, I sit on the tile with my forehead pressed to porcelain, and one thought beating through me like a drum.
I lived.
I almost died. He almost killed me.
And if I die, so would Mom and Ethan.
Chapter two
Lev
The girl is lying.
I know it the way I know when a deal's about to go sideways or when one of my men is thinking about turning rat. Instinct honed by fifteen years of staying alive in a world where hesitation is a death sentence.
Valerie Novak doesn't belong here.
I dry off and dress in silence, my mind replaying the encounter. Her terror was real—pupils blown wide, pulse hammering so hard I could see it in her throat, breath coming in panicked gasps that made her chest heave. The kind of fear you can't fake because the body doesn't lie.
Cowards. I fucking hate cowards.