Page 58 of Ruin
Flight searches. International destinations. One-way tickets.
Each detail confirms what I already know—she's planning her escape.
The question is whether she'll run before or after trying to destroy me.
By six o'clock, the building is nearly empty except for security and my core team.
Her office light is still on, a golden beacon in the growing darkness.
On the surveillance feed, I watch her stand from her desk.
She walks to the door, reaches for the handle, then stops, then returns to her chair.
Five minutes later, she does it again.
Stands, crosses the room, reaches for the door.
Doesn't open it. Goes back.
She does this three times in the last hour, each time getting a step closer to the hallway before something pulls her back.
She wants to confront me but can't bring herself to do it.
Either she's afraid of what I might do, or she's afraid of what she might do.
Both possibilities terrify me.
Vincent returns to my office carrying a bottle of my father's best scotch and two glasses.
The same bottle we opened the night I officially took over the organization.
"Liquid courage?" I ask.
"Liquid honesty." He pours generously, hands me a glass that catches the last light from the windows. "You have to choose, Cassius. The empire or Selene. You can't have both, not anymore."
"Why not?"
"Because she's going to destroy everything the moment she's certain you killed her parents. She'll go to the FBI, the media, anyone who will listen. Your father's life work, your life work, will crumble overnight." Vincent's voice is gentle but implacable. "Three generations of power and influence, gone because you couldn't resist corrupting one broken girl."
"So, what are you suggesting?"
Vincent's silence stretches long enough to be an answer.
When he finally speaks, his words land like hammer blows. "She's a threat to the organization. Threats are eliminated."
"No."
"She knows too much. Even if you could convince her to forgive you, she'll always be a weakness others can exploit. Like Zhukhov is doing now." He gestures toward my phone. "How many other enemies will use her against you? How many times can we weather attacks aimed at your heart instead of your head?"
"I said no."
"Then what's your solution? Lock her up? Keep her prisoner until she learns to love her captor again?" Vincent shakes his head sadly. "That's not love, Cassius. That's Stockholm syndrome. And it won't hold once she's had time to think clearly."
I drain my glass, feel the burn of expensive alcohol do nothing to warm the ice in my chest. "There has to be another way."
"There is. Tell her the truth yourself. Control the narrative. Make her understand why it had to happen, how her father's investigation would have destroyed innocent people along with the guilty."
"And if she tries to kill me?"
