Chapter 168

My phone sits heavy in my hand as I dial the number for my most discreet pilot.

“Prepare the jet,” I order. “Newport, Rhode Island.”

I hang up the phone and stare at the blood dripping from my mangled knuckles. It’s fitting that I’m bleeding all over this fucking house. This place has always fed on pain—first my father’s, then mine. Will Sofiya inherit that birthright?

Twenty-four hours. That’s all Carver’s giving me before he either gets me on my knees as his personal rat or buries me under a RICO case so thick that my daughter will be graduating college before I taste freedom again.

“Arkady,” I call out, knowing he’s never far. He materializes in the doorway. “Have the car brought around.”

“Vin, you’re bleeding.” His eyes flick to my hand, to the shattered glass, to the hole in the wall. “What happened with Carver?”

“What happened is that I’m fucked no matter what I do,” I spit, wrapping a handkerchief around my bleeding hand. “The feds have a RICO case ready to drop on my head. They want me to wear a wire against Grigor and my father.”

Arkady’s face pales. “Jesus Christ —”

“Exactly. So now, I get to choose between prison or a bullet to the back of the skull when the Bratva discovers I’m a fucking snitch.”

“What are you going to do?”

I laugh miserably. “Find my wife. Tell her that the man who just spared her father’s life is now being blackmailed into destroying him. See if she’ll let me hold my daughter one more time before everything goes to shit.”

“And if she doesn’t want to see you?”

I close my eyes, swallowing the bile that rises in my throat. “Then I die knowing I tried.”

I grab my coat, ignoring the blood soaking through the makeshift bandage. Pain is good. Pain keeps me focused at a time when every other thought is a waking nightmare.

“You need a hospital for that hand,” Arkady says.

“I need my fucking family back,” I snap. “Everything else is irrelevant.”

I storm down the hallway, my mind racing through contingency plans. Maybe I could get them all out of the country. Rowan, Sofiya—even fucking Grigor, if that’s what it takes. We could disappear before Carver’s twenty-four-hour deadline expires. Start over somewhere without extradition.

But I know better. There is no outrunning this. No clever escape. Just impossible choices, each stacked one inside the other like matryoshka dolls.

As I reach the front door, I pause for a moment. What will I say to her when I find her? How do I explain that the FBI used her against me? That her act of protection—taking Sofiya to Rhode Island—has only tightened the noose around all our necks?

I throw open the door, already rehearsing the speech I’ll never get right — And there she is.

Rowan stands on the threshold, my daughter clutched to her chest. Her green eyes go wide with shock at finding me here, at finding me like this— blood-drenched, wild-eyed, halfway out the door.

We freeze, caught in this surreal standoff. I drink in the sight of them. I’m desperate after days of emptiness. I could swear Sofiya’s dark curls have grown longer in just these few days. Rowan looks thinner, shadows bruising the skin beneath her eyes. She’s wearing a simple sweater and jeans, nowhere near warm enough for the autumn chill.

“Papa!” Sofiya squeals, reaching for me with her tiny hands, oblivious to the fucking nuclear wasteland between her parents.

“You’re bleeding.” Rowan’s voice is flat, emotionless.

I don’t move toward them, though every molecule in my body screams to close the distance. To grab them both and never let go.

“You came back,” I reply.

“As you were leaving, apparently.”

“I was coming to find you.”

Her gaze hardens. “How did you know where I was?”

I cringe. If I tell her about Carver’s photos, I have to tell her everything. The RICO case. The ultimatum. The impossible choice I’m facing.

But if I lie, if I say I tracked her through other means, I’m just proving I’m still the secretive, manipulative bastard she fled from in the first place.

Sofiya whimpers, sensing the tension. She stretches her arms toward me more insistently, her little face scrunching in frustration when neither of us moves to bridge the gap.

“We need to talk,” Rowan says, moving our daughter higher on her hip. “Something’s happened —”

“Yes,” I cut her off. “Something has.”

She studies my face, and I can’t tell what she sees there. Desperation? Defeat? The pathetic shell of a man who used to rule this city with an iron fist, now brought to his knees by the thought of losing her?

“You first,” she says.

And there we stand, my wife holding my child on the threshold of our home —so close I could touch them with one step forward, yet separated by a chasm of secrets and betrayals that seems impossible to cross.

“The FBI has a RICO case against me,” I say, voice ragged. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to decide what to do next.”

50

VINCE

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.”