Page 25 of Ruin
"Both," he says quietly.
I turn my head and press my lips to his palm, a gesture that's half affection, half claiming.
"I told you. I'm not the girl you sent away."
"No." His hand cups my jaw. Gray eyes searching mine. "You're not."
I lean into his touch, and somewhere deep in the machinery of my mind—the part that catalogues and calculates and files everything away—I know that this is exactly where I need to be.
Not just in this bed. Not just in this building.
In this life.
This sharp, dangerous, morally bankrupt life where a diamond collar is a crown and a lie to your best friend is a random day of the week and the man holding your face killed people before breakfast and will kill people after dinner, andyou don't care.
You don't care because the power feels like oxygen and the darkness feels like home and the girl who used to flinch at bloodshed now restructures it into profit margins.
I belong here now.
The thought doesn't frighten me.
It fits.
4
Cassius
The photographs are spread across the conference table in my office suite like a crime scene in reverse.
Surveillance shots, grainy and timestamped. A warehouse on the east docks, mid-shipment.
Mywarehouse. My docks. My product.
Except in the photos, the crates are open and empty.
"When?" I ask.
Vincent stands at the other end of the table, hands clasped behind his back.
He looks the way he always looks when delivering bad news.
Immaculate and unhurried, like a surgeon explaining that the patient bled out but at least the incision was clean.
"Tuesday. Between two and four in the morning. They bypassed the alarm system and neutralized both guards. Non-lethal. Zip ties and duct tape. Whoever did this, they were professionals."
"No casualties?"
"None. That's the point. They weren't there to kill. They were there to send a message."
I pick up one of the photographs. The empty crate has something scratched into the wood. Cyrillic letters. I don't need a translator.
We're here.
"Kirill Zhukov," I say.
"Kirill Zhukov."
I set the photo down and look at the map pinned to the wall behind Vincent.
