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His face falls. “I thought you were the only one who could detect lies, but even I know that’s not the truth.”
I swallow hard. “I’m fine,” I insist.
With a look of concern, he wipes his hands on a cloth like one might wipe them after an oil change rather than a man who justtortured someone mercilessly. He reaches his hand to me and places it on my shoulder. To my credit,thistime, I don’t flinch.
“Go sit down, Renata,” he says softly. “We’re almost finished here.”
He holds the man upright in front of him and asks one more question. “Where is Carlos?” Ollie’s voice is low, deadly calm, every syllable a promise of pain if the answer doesn’t come quickly.
“He’s here,” the man says in a sob. “He’s here. It’s too late.”
He slumps over in the chair dead. Blood thrums in my ears, and ice pulses in my veins. I stare at Ollie, who pulls out his phone and dials Mikhail. They have a hurried, intense conversation in Russian where Ollie relays all the information he’s just extracted from the corpse seated in a chair in the tiled pathway of the room. The carpet is immaculate, not a drop of blood anywhere.
“We have what we need,” Mikhail says. “Lock everyone down.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ollie
He’s here.In America. The Cove. Or worse, right here—in our fucking home.
I stand with my phone still in my hand, the words of the conversation I just had with my brother echoing in my ears.
Lock everyone down.
The order is given. Protocols snap into place like clockwork, but none of it fucking matters because he’s already here.
If I know my brother, he's already bringing Isabella back from the hospital with a doctor. But none of this matters because the one thing I've spent years trying to avoid is now staring me in the face: our enemy has come to us. Everything we've done, everything we've trained for, the safety protocols—it's all gone up in fucking flames. He could be in our home, and it could be too late.
I turn to look at the slumped-over body of the man I killed, wishing I had maybe slowed shit down a little. I wanted more details. His last words ring in my head like a death knell.
He’s here. It’s too late.
And in that moment, I feel dread. The kind of cold, bone-deep fear I've trained myself to push aside—so foreign to me at first, I don't recognize it. But this time, it's different.
This time, I have Renata.
I look at her—her face pale, eyes distant and hollow—and I know I’ve lost her, piece by piece, with every drop of blood that stains my hands. The horror of what I just did and what she witnessed is written across her features. I should’ve kept her away from this—from the monster I am—but I didn’t. I let her see it all, the blood, the brutality, the fucking darkness that festers inside of me. I let her see it all, and it's not the first time. I can still feel his blood on my hands like a second skin, and a part of me wishes I could feel more than that.
It’s all the time I spend dwelling on this shit. We need to move.
"We don't know what he meant," I say, my voice cold, distant, almost disembodies, as if it's coming from an overhead speaker. I want to reach out and pull her close to me and tell her it will be okay, but I can't because I don't believe that anymore. The worst has come to our doorstep—Carlos has found us, and I've exposed Renata to the very thing I swore I'd protect her from.
When her eyes meet mine, I see all of it—the doubt, the fear, the realization that I will never change. She doesn't say anything at first, but she doesn't have to. I can see it in her eyes. She's utterly terrified of me.
"What did that mean?" she says, trying to summon whatever strength she has left, even though she looks as if she wants to collapse. She's been through a lot tonight. First, Isabella's scare. Then, the realization that our house security was penetrated when the paramedics arrived. Witnessing me stab a man and make him bleed out on the floor. She's seen it all.
If anything, it feels like a death by a thousand cuts. She's seen me at my worst, time and time again.
“I don’t know.” We’re silent for long minutes.
The silence between us is suffocating, and all I can think is that I did the exact thing I set out not to do.
I knew better than to fall in love. I knew better than to think I could have this, that I deserved it. Because the second I let my guard down, the worst possible scenario played out. I exposed the only person—the only woman I’ve ever loved—to the demon that rages inside me. And now, I can't even protect her.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out, the words hollow because I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for. For falling in love? For failing to protect her? For letting her see the darkness inside me? For not protecting her—from him, from me?
But the words hang in the air—too little, too late, a broken promise. I reach out to her, but she steps back, the distance between us growing. What started as a crack is becoming a chasm. And that's when I know it. The worst possible outcome to this whole situation is staring me in the face.
