Page 107 of Black Ledger

No one was coming to save me.

I was being frozen to death.

What was left of my vision darkened to a smear. Sound flattened and ebbed. Then there was stillness and silence and one final regret. One last beat of my heart. One last rattle of breath, and then nothing.

Cold. Empty.

Death.

Chapter Forty

Severin Volkov

Age 36

Present

She disappeared between my fingertips. Actually disappeared. I blinked, testing my eyes, because what I had just seen—and what had just happened—was impossible.

She was a ghost.

The message on the wall wasn’t an illusion. The video wasn’t doctored. The woman was invisible, just like she had been then.

I rubbed the veil between my fingers. The small black grooves scratched against my fingertips.

My brain could not comprehend what I’d just seen… and felt. I had felt her skin dissolve under my fingertips. To say it was unsettling would be an understatement.

I had no idea how to process all of that, so I decided not to.

Mirko had raped her, strangled her until she nearly died. I kicked his dead body. He deserved so much worse.

She spoke of a prison. Of confinement. Did that mean she was trafficked? But by the Bratva?

My eyebrows drew together. I thought we’d outlawed trafficking thirty years ago. But what if Aleksandr hadn’t wanted to follow his father’s wishes—my grandfather’s decree?

What have you done, Father?

I swallowed and studied the room. I knew in my bone marrow that she was still here—still watching.

“Ghost?” I asked, turning, trying to find her, sense her somehow.

“Yes?” Her voice came like a whisper on the wind.

“What now? What do you want?”

“I want them all dead,” the voice seethed. “I want you all dead. I want your fear, and I will take everything from you. I speak with the voice of death. I act with death’s vengeance, for all those who have come before me and for all those who will come to follow.”

I clenched my jaw.

“I understand men like Mirko, but why all the rest of us?” I asked.

“You know why?” The voice moved, and it felt like she was circling me.

My throat worked. “I don’t.”

“Your Order killed me, and I am not going to stop until I destroy you all.”

My Order?