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“Yeah, he was,” she says. “It was during one of the good times.”
She stops there. I decide not to pry. Her eyes slide to the dirty towelette in my hands. The red blood stains feel jarring all of a sudden.
“I’m okay,” she breathes, but it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than me.
“I know you are,” I say. “The same principle applies here as it did there, June.”
She frowns. “What principle is that?”
“Just dance through the pain.”
I can see her processing that. Her shoulders seem to gain strength as we sit there in the silence.
“Where’s Geneva?” she asks after a few minutes have passed.
“Still in the car. Milana is trying to calm her down.”
She takes a deep breath. “I… I thought I could do it. It was stupid.”
“Do what?”
“Hold my own. He… Iakov, he had a message for you,” she says, trying to remember through the fog of shock. “He had a deal.”
“I know.”
She raises her eyebrows. “You do?”
“I knew that one of Ravil’s lieutenants was unhappy, but until tonight, I wasn’t sure which. When I saw Iakov, it all clicked.”
I don’t let her know what a huge blow tonight has been. I intended to have a conversation with Iakov at the end of the night. After making him run in a few circles first. Instead, he had chosen to approach June. He had chosen to intimidate her, scare her.
And the sight of that fucker forcing my—forcingJune—to her knees in front of all those people… It was the first time in a long time I’ve taken such leave of my senses. It was the first time I hadn’t bothered pretending to talk myself out of something I knew I shouldn’t do.
It was a short-sighted move, and I’m going to pay a steep price for it. But looking at June now, I can’t find it in me to regret what I did.
The fucker deserved to die for his sins. I’d cut his throat a thousand times over to keep her safe.
“I-I know this has created problems for you,” June says in a timid voice. “But I can’t deny that I’m happy you did what you did. I’m happy that asshole is dead. I—” The rest of her words are drowned out by a heaving sob. A tear slips down her cheek and she looks at me through her eyelashes. “Thank you, Kolya. Thank you for what you did for me tonight.”
That breathtaking hazel pierces through me for a moment. It makes me forget that I have a massive problem on my hands, and very little in the way of solutions. When she looks at me with thatthingin her eyes—that trust, there’s no other name for it, that’s all it can be—nothing else matters.
“You should get some rest,” I say gruffly, breaking eye contact.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asks instead. “Why can’t you just kill Ravil?”
It’s an unexpected question from her. “Because he’s my cousin. We’re family.‘Krov. Killing one family member cost me more than half my Bratva. Killing a second would spell the end.”
She swallows noticeably. “Did you really kill your father?”
“I did.”
More silence follows. It’s thick enough to choke on because there are so many things we aren’t saying. So many things I haven’t told her that she needs to know. But we’ve come so far that telling her now would ruin everything.
So I keep them in the darkness. That’s where they belong.
“Kolya.” June is looking extremely pale all of a sudden. “I—I don’t know how to ask this… She takes a breath, her eyes turning wary. Nervous. “Adrian’s d-death… you had nothing to do with it, did you?”
I should probably have expected this question at some point, but it takes me off guard. “No,medoviy. I had nothing to do with Adrian’s death.”
