Chapter 169 170

Chapter 169 170
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?

51

ROWAN

I wake up in our marital bed with my husband’s scent still clinging to the sheets like a curse.

I spent three days running from him, and where did it get me? Right back in his fortress, breathing his carefully regulated oxygen, trapped between Vince’s FBI nightmare and his empty promises to change. A promise I’ve heard so many times I could recite it in my sleep.

Men like him don’t change.

They just find better excuses for their monstrosity.

I stare at the ceiling. The unbearable weight of our broken marriage presses down on my chest. The rage I felt discovering Vince’s plans to murder my father hasn’t disappeared—it’s just been pushed aside by the more immediate threat of federal prison.

Always another fucking crisis to navigate. Always another reason to put off addressing the rot at the core of us.

God, this life is wearing on me in ways I never thought I could handle. I feel myself coming apart at the seams. The only question that remains is whether the pieces of me that are fraying into nothingness are essential or not. Is there a soul beneath all this shit? Does Vince have one?

Or am I a broken, empty shell, just like him?

Downstairs, I find Vince in his study, freshly showered, hand bandaged, dark circles forming crescent moons beneath his eyes. No trace of the raw, bleeding creature from last night. He’s put his armor back on.

“Good morning,” he says, voice careful, neutral. “Coffee?”

“I’m not here to pretend everything is hunky-fucking-dory, Vince.” I remain standing in the doorway, unwilling to enter his domain. “I’m here because federal prison is worse for Sofiya than a father who plots murders behind her mother’s back.”

His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t take the bait. “Carver will be expecting my answer by this afternoon. We need a plan.”

“And what exactly do you propose? Turning rat against my father?” I fold my arms and lean against the wall. “Or spending the next thirty years in prison while I explain to our daughter why Daddy can only see her through bulletproof glass?”

“I thought you’d have an opinion beyond sarcasm,” he says, eyes like blue fire. “Since you were so fucking eager to work with Carver before.”

The air between us vibrates with resentment. We’re poison to each other now, but still breathing the same toxic air.