Page 110 of Ruin
But right now, in this room, she's choosing to point everything she has at my enemies instead of at me.
And the look on her face when she pulls apart Zhukov's financial filings and starts connecting dots that nobody else in this room would know how to find…
She was never my creation.
She was always this. I just gave her a reason to stop hiding it.
That’s the difference between ownership and partnership.
Between a collar and a crown.
I'm only now beginning to understand which one I'm looking at.
16
SELENE
Ihaven't stopped moving since the video ended.
If I stop moving, I'll see her face.
Emilia's face, swollen and bloody, her blue eyes wide with the kind of terror that comes from being hurt by people who enjoy it.
If I stop moving, I'll hear the sound she made when the man squeezed her shoulder, that small, animal whimper that didn't sound anything like the girl who laughs too loud at her own jokes, and cries at insurance commercials, and held my hand through the worst night of my life.
So, I don't stop.
Michelle picks up on the second ring. I'm in the hallway outside the room, pacing, one hand pressed against the concrete wall because I need to feel something solid and cold against my skin or I'm going to come apart.
"Selene? It's seven in the morning."
"I need a favor. Property records for a factory building in Sunset Park. I'm looking for ownership history, utility accounts,any commercial permits filed in the last five years." My voice is steady. The voice is always steady. It's everything underneath that's shaking. "The address is?—"
"Whoa, slow down. Is this for the same client? The one with the Russian problem?"
"Yes." No. It's for me. It's for Emilia, who is bleeding in a chair because she had the misfortune of being loved by a woman who sleeps next to a murderer. "It's urgent, Michelle. I wouldn't call this early if it wasn't."
"Okay. Okay, give me the address. I'll pull what I can from the city database and call you back."
I give her the information and hang up before she can ask questions I don't have the energy to dodge.
Then I lean my forehead against the wall and breathe.
In through the nose, out through the mouth, the way the therapist I saw at seventeen taught me after the nightmares got bad enough that Judge Hart found me sleepwalking in the backyard at four in the morning.
Judge Hart. Emilia's father.
The man who opened his home to a shattered sixteen-year-old girl and never once made her feel like a charity case.
If Emilia dies in that factory, it won't just be my best friend I've lost.
It'll be the last piece of the family that saved me.
The thought hits me somewhere below the ribs and I press my fist against it, hard, like I can push the grief back down through sheer force.
Not now. I can't do this now.
Emilia needs me focused, on my A-game, not crumpled against a wall in the basement of a nightclub having a breakdown.
