Sofiya squirms in Rowan’s arms, those chubby little hands reaching for me with desperate, grabbing fingers. “Papa! Papa!”
My chest splits open at the sound. My daughter remembers me. Still wants me. I step forward, arms already extending…
… but then Rowan jerks backward. She pulls Sofiya tight against her chest like I’m contagious.
“Don’t,” she hisses, eyes flashing like a cornered animal.
My arms fall uselessly to my sides. Blood still drips from my mangled hand onto the pristine marble floor.
The pain is immediate and catastrophic. A bullet straight through my chest would’ve been more merciful. Thirty years in prison would bring less agony than seeing my daughter held just out of reach.
But the longer I stand there, the more betrayal in her eyes detonates something explosive in my chest. My blood shifts from ice to fire, fingers flexing at my sides. She left me. Took my child. Meanwhile, the goddamn FBI is dismantling everything I’ve built, threatening to strip away our future—and she’s worried about fucking Grigor Petrov?
I take a step toward her, watching her eyes widen. “While you’ve been playing hide-and-go-seek at the beach, I’ve been fighting for our fucking survival. The FBI has everything, Rowan. Everything.” The muscles in my jaw clench so hard I taste copper. “But please, tell me more about how I betrayed you while I was trying to keep our family from being destroyed.”
Sofiya whimpers against her chest, sensing the violence of my emotion. I’m scaring my own child. But I can’t stop the darkness now surging through my veins.
“Always the fucking hero, aren’t you?” she snaps back.
“I was trying to protect you,” I snarl. “While you were busy fucking kidnapping my daughter.”
“Our daughter,” she shoots back, “whom I took to protect from a father who was planning to murder her grandfather without even having the balls to tell his wife first.”
We’re circling each other on the doorstep, neither willing to give ground. Sofiya’s gone quiet now. Somehow, that hurts worse than her tears.
“You didn’t protect her,” I growl. “You exposed her. Your little beach house vacation? Might as well have put up a goddamn billboard. The feds have been watching Grigor. They photographed you together. Photographed my daughter with a man who’d slit my throat without blinking.”
“Don’t you dare—”
“I cancelled the hit!” I bellow in anguish. “The second I realized you were gone, I cancelled everything. Every operation against Grigor. Every fucking plan. Gone. For you.”
Rowan’s eyes widen. She shifts Sofiya higher on her hip and swallows. “And now?” she asks. “What’s this about the FBI?”
I drag my uninjured hand down my face, feeling the stubble rasp against my palm. How do I condense Carver’s ultimatum into words that won’t send her running again?
“Inside,” I manage. “Please. This isn’t a doorway conversation.”
“Like I’m going to let you corner me—”
“For fuck’s sake, Rowan! Do you see me?” I spread my arms wide, blood still dripping from my fingers. “I’m bleeding. I’m fucking destroyed. I haven’t slept since you left. You have all the power here.”
Something in my voice—the raw desperation, perhaps—makes her hesitate. Then, with visible reluctance, she steps over the threshold.
“Start talking,” she demands once we’re in the formal living room. She remains standing.
I sigh and drop onto the couch, toying with the bloodied edge of my makeshift bandage.
“Carver came this morning waving around a fully developed RICO case. Money laundering, weapons trafficking, the works. Thirty years minimum. That includes asset forfeiture—including the trusts I set up for you and Sofiya.” I force myself to meet her eyes. “They have Barkov. He’s cooperating.”
“That snake,” she mutters.
“It gets worse. They want me as a confidential informant. Against the Solovyovs, against my father, and—” I swallow hard. “—against Grigor.”
Rowan’s face whitens. “No.”
“I have twenty-four hours to decide. I either wear a wire or they bury me so deep I’ll never see daylight—or Sofiya—again.”
Her knees buckle. She sits down on the sofa across from me, clutching our daughter like a life preserver in open water.
“They can’t,” she whispers. “They promised me immunity.”
“For you. Not for me.” I keep my distance, though every cell in my body screams to cross the room, to touch her, to press my face into Sofiya’s hair and inhale the scent that’s been haunting me for days. “They used you, Rowan. And now, they’ve got us by the throat.”
My wife’s face hardens into something I barely recognize. “Sofi needs to sleep.”
It’s not what I expected her to say. But as frustrated as I am, I’m not about to argue.
“Her room is just as you left it.”
Rowan stands, still not allowing me near. “I’ll put her down. Then we’ll talk.”
I nod and watch them disappear up the staircase. Part of me is terrified she’ll slip out a window, vanish again. But I force myself to remain where I am, to give her the space she clearly needs.
The minutes stretch into an eternity. I pace the living room, leaving bloody fingerprints on everything I touch.
When Rowan returns, her face is a carefully constructed mask. “She’s asleep.”
“Good.” I gesture to the couch. “Please.”
She sits at one end. I take the opposite, maintaining the chasm between us. We’re like magnets with the wrong poles facing—so desperate to connect but repelled by forces beyond our control.
“What are you going to do?” she asks finally.
“I don’t know yet,” I whisper. “If I refuse, I go to prison and lose everything. If I accept, I’m signing my own death warrant. The Bratva finds out I’m wearing a wire, they’ll kill me. Worse, they might come after you and Sofiya as punishment.”
“And if we run?”
“Good luck. The FBI is watching every exit. Every account. Carver was very clear.”
Silence expands between us, pulsing like a living thing.
“I saw my father,” she says suddenly. “At the beach house. He found me.”
“I know.”
Her eyes flash. “No, Vince. You don’t know. He talked to me. About you. About us. About how respecting Mom’s choice to leave was the hardest thing he’s ever done.” Her voice cracks. “Do you understand what I’m telling you? The man you’ve spent years trying to destroy showed more restraint, more respect for my autonomy, than you ever have.”
My eyes dart to meet hers. “I’ve never tried to control you, Rowan.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” A bitter laugh escapes her. “You tracked me. You bugged me. You kept me on a leash with that fucking necklace—”
“To protect you!”
“No.” She shakes her head. “To protect yourself from the possibility of losing me. There’s a difference.”
I lurch up abruptly. “You’re right. The assault on the Petrovs, on Grigor—I kept you in the dark. If you hadn’t found out, I never would have told you. I’d have covered it up, buried it deep, just like every other sin I’ve ever justified in the darkness. That’s the kind of man I am.”
Rowan rises, too, though she’s careful to keep the coffee table between us. “Has anything changed?”
Has anything changed? Have I? Three days of hell without her, and I’m still the same man who would burn the world for what I want. The same man who sees violence as the first and best solution to any problem.
“I don’t know,” I admit finally. “But I want to change. I need to change. I’m fucking trying to change, Rowan. I swear to God I am.”
Rowan studies me for a long moment, eyes searching mine for any hint of deception. “It’s late. We both need to think. To sleep.”
She’s offering an olive branch—staying the night instead of fleeing again. But it’s clear from the rigidity of her posture that she’s not offering anything more.
“Take our bedroom,” I say. “I’ll sleep down here.”
She nods and turns to leave. At the staircase, she pauses. “Twenty-four hours isn’t much time to decide between a prison cell and a coffin.”
“No. It’s not.”
“Whatever you choose, Vince—” She looks back at me, those green eyes suddenly glistening with unshed tears. “Don’t make me tell our daughter that her father sacrificed himself for some misguided notion of honor or pride.”
“Would you rather tell her that her father is a rat? The lowest form of life in our world?”
“I’d rather tell her that her father is alive.” Rowan’s voice breaks on the last word. “No matter what it costs.”
I watch her disappear up the stairs, taking my heart with her. When her footsteps fade, I collapse onto the couch, bone-deep exhaustion finally claiming me. My last thought before darkness takes me is a question that has no good answer:
How do you choose between dying free or living in chains?
