“I didn’t know he’d call her.”
“You knew she would come if she thought you were in danger.”
Sergei says nothing. That’s answer enough.
Something in me goes very still. For this weak, selfish, sweating creature who sold her once and nearly delivered her into death the second time through cowardice alone.
“You told him she still cared,” I say.
Sergei’s mouth opens. No words come.
I step closer. “Didn’t you?”
His voice breaks. “He asked if she would answer. I said maybe. I didn’t think?—”
I grab him by the throat and slam him back against the wall.
Men move behind me, but no one stops me.
Sergei claws at my wrist, eyes bulging.
“You didn’t think,” I say quietly. “That’s the only honest thing you have said.”
Viktor is suddenly beside me. “Yaromir. He may know more.”
I keep my hand on Sergei’s throat another second.
Then I release him.
He drops to his knees, coughing hard, one hand at his neck.
I don’t actually expect him to have any of my answers.
Sergei flinches. “I don’t know. I swear. Dmitri took my phone and had one of them drive me around for hours. Then they left me near the old market. I came back and your men found me.”
He’s shaking now, curled on the floor, no longer the father who dragged Anya to my house and called it a proposition. Just another small man crushed under debts he created and loyalties he never had.
I look at my men. “Take him downstairs.”
Sergei looks up quickly. “Wait. Please. Is she alive?”
The room stills.
For one second, I see Anya in his face.
Not much. Just enough to make me hate him more.
“You don’t get to ask that,” I say.
They drag him out.
The door closes.
My decision settles before the door opens again.
This time no one announces Larisa. She walks in wearing black, cane in hand, as if she has arrived for dinner instead of war. Her gaze moves over the table, the maps, the weapons, the ring beside my gun.
Then she looks at me. “Well,” she says. “It seems you are finally ready to act.”