Page 105 of Ruin
A distraction to keep my attention on the perimeter while he positioned his pieces for a strike at the center.
"What does he want?" Marco asks.
"Everything," I say. "The same thing every man who comes at this family wants. The territory, the revenue streams, the political connections, the infrastructure. But Zhukov is smarter than the ones who came before. He won't try to take it by force alone. He'll try to break it first, then collect the pieces."
"Break it how?" Peter asks.
I don't answer because my phone buzzes against the table.
I glance down.
Selene:Where are you?
Three words.
No context. No explanation for why she's asking or what she's planning.
I could lie.
Tell her I'm at a meeting, somewhere vague, somewhere that doesn't invite follow-up.
But I've told her enough lies to last several lifetimes, and the ones I'm still paying for haven't finished compounding interest.
I type back:In Hell.
Seven minutes later, I hear the door at the top of the stairs open and close.
Heels on concrete.
Steady, deliberate, each step carrying the particular rhythm of a woman who's made a decision and isn't interested in second-guessing it.
She's dressed in all black. Fitted pants, silk blouse, hair pulled back tight enough to sharpen the angles of her face. No makeup.
The collar visible at her throat for the first time since the confrontation, deliberately uncovered, glinting under the fluorescent lights like she wants it to be seen.
The room goes quiet.
Not the respectful silence that greets me when I enter a room.
Something different. Wariness. Curiosity.
The particular stillness of people recalculating a situation they thought they understood.
She doesn't hesitate at the door, doesn't ask permission.
She walks to the table, pulls out the empty chair beside Vincent—not beside me, I note, and the positioning is deliberate—and sits down.
She doesn't speak at first.
Her eyes move across the table—the maps, the photographs, the financial reports—reading the room the way she reads case files. Then she looks at me. "What's going on?"
Vincent looks at me.
I give him nothing, instead I let the silence stretch until it becomes its own kind of answer.
"Continue," I say to Vincent. To the room. To the woman sitting at my table like she was born for it.
Vincent resumes the briefing.
