Chapter 50 Marlena
The private jet was empty except for me and the pilot.
I sat in the leather seat by the window, watching Switzerland disappear beneath clouds, and felt nothing. Numbness had settled over me like a blanket, dulling everything except the constant ache in my chest that wouldn't go away.
The flight attendant had offered me food and drink three times. I'd refused each time. I couldn't eat, couldn't drink, couldn't do anything except sit and stare and replay Marlena's voice in my head. I want a divorce. Right now.
New York appeared below us finally, all concrete and glass and lights that looked cold even from the air. The city I'd conquered, the empire I'd built, the life I'd constructed piece by piece over fifteen years. It all felt meaningless now.
Anton picked me up from the private terminal in the Mercedes, his face carefully neutral as he took in my appearance. I probably looked like hell, still wearing the same blood-stained clothes, my hair uncombed, my face unshaven. I didn't care.
The drive to the penthouse passed in silence. Anton knew better than to ask questions.
When we pulled up to my building, I got out without a word and walked through the lobby like a ghost. The doorman nodded at me but I barely registered his presence. Everything felt distant, muffled, like I was moving through water.
The private elevator climbed to the forty-fourth floor and opened directly into the penthouse. I stepped out and the silence hit me immediately.
The space felt cold and too quiet, empty in a way it had never been before. Without Marlena's presence, without her voice or footsteps or the sound of her breathing, it was just an expensive shell. Beautiful and hollow.
I walked through the main room slowly, my eyes taking in details I'd stopped noticing. The white sofa where we'd argued. The dining table where we'd eaten in tense silence. The kitchen where she'd made coffee in the mornings, always too early, always needing caffeine before she could function.
My feet carried me to her old bedroom without conscious thought. I stood in the doorway for a long moment before entering, as if crossing that threshold would make everything real in a way I couldn't take back.
Her soft smell still hung in the air, faint but unmistakable. Vanilla and something floral I'd never been able to identify. It clung to the pillows, the sheets, the clothes she'd left behind in the closet.
I sat on the bed, my hands gripping the edge of the mattress. The room spun slightly and I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through the pain crushing my ribs.
One of her sweaters lay draped over the chair in the corner. That old leather jacket she'd hidden, the one from her real life before me, before all of this. I stood and crossed to it, picking it up with shaking hands.
The leather was soft and worn, carrying her scent stronger than anything else in the room. I held it close to my face and breathed in deep, and something inside me finally broke completely.
The tears came silently, hot and fast, streaming down my face and into the leather. My shoulders shook but I didn't make a sound, didn't let myself sob or gasp or do anything that might disturb the terrible quiet of the empty penthouse.
I cried for the baby we'd lost. For Marlena's trust that I'd destroyed. For the future we'd never have. For the man I might have been if I'd made different choices.
I'd broken the only person who ever made me feel like a real man instead of the monster my father had tried to create.
My phone rang, the sound cutting through my grief like a knife. I wiped my face roughly and checked the screen.
Marcus.
I almost didn't answer, but habit made me press accept.
"Nikolai." His voice was professional, careful. "You're back."
"Yes."
"How is she?"
"Don't ask about her." My voice came out rough, broken. "Ever."
Silence on his end, then: "Understood. I'm calling about business. The city is calm now. Viktor's old people are hiding or dead. Most of his network has collapsed without leadership."
"Good." I set down the jacket carefully, reverently. "I need you to do something."
"Anything."
"Sell everything. Every dirty part of the business. The money laundering operations, the offshore accounts tied to anything illegal, the shell companies Viktor used. All of it."
"Nikolai, that's a significant portion of our revenue –"
"I don't care." I walked to the window, looking out at Manhattan's glittering lights. "I want only clean money from now on. Legitimate businesses, legal investments. No more grey areas."
Marcus was quiet for a long moment. "This is about her, isn't it?"
"It's about me," I said. "About who I want to be when this is all over."
"Alright." He sounded surprised but professional. "I'll start the process immediately. It'll take months to unwind everything properly, but I can begin selling off assets this week."
"Do it."
"There's one more thing. The FBI agent, Damien Cross. He's been asking questions. Wants to know what happened in Monaco."
"Tell him Viktor Rousseau is dead. Natural causes. Heart attack in his villa. The local authorities have already signed off on it."
Another pause. "You bribed them."
"Extensively." I pressed my forehead against the cold glass. "Make sure the story holds. I don't need FBI attention right now."
"Consider it done. Anything else?"
"No. Just sell it all and get us clean."
I hung up before he could respond.
The city lights looked fake and far away, like they belonged to someone else's life. All those buildings full of people living normal existences, going to work and coming home, loving and fighting and making choices that didn't destroy everything they touched.
I'd never be one of them. Never have that kind of simple, uncomplicated life.
But maybe I could stop being the villain in everyone else's story.
I turned away from the window and walked to the private elevator, riding it up to the forty-sixth floor. The war room waited in darkness and I flipped on the lights, revealing all the screens and maps and files that had consumed fifteen years of my life.
Viktor's face stared at me from a dozen different photographs, surveillance shots taken over years of hunting. The man was dead now, his throat cut by my sister's knife, but his presence still haunted this room.
I found a metal bin in the corner and dragged it to the center of the space. Then I started gathering files, pulling them from drawers and shelves and stacks on the desk. Everything about Viktor. Every photograph, every document, every piece of evidence I'd collected.
The pile grew until it reached almost to the rim of the bin.
I pulled out a lighter, the same one I'd used for that cigarette in Monaco. My father's lighter, kept all these years as some kind of twisted memorial.
I flicked it open and held the flame to the corner of the first file.
The paper caught immediately, fire spreading across Viktor's photographed face with satisfying speed. I added more files, feeding the flames, watching years of obsession turn to ash.
The smoke alarm started screaming but I ignored it, just kept burning. Document after document, photograph after photograph. The heat made my eyes water and the smoke stung my lungs but I didn't stop until every file was consumed.
When it was done, I stood there watching the last flames die down to glowing embers in the metal bin. The smoke detector had finally given up, leaving only silence and the acrid smell of burning paper.
Fifteen years of my life, reduced to ashes.
I should have felt satisfaction. Relief. Something.
Instead, I just felt empty.
The revenge I'd built my entire adult life around was finished, but it hadn't brought back my mother or changed my father's choices or fixed anything that was broken in my family. It had just created more destruction, hurt more people, cost me the only thing that had ever really mattered.
Marlena.
I watched the embers glow in the darkness and hoped the fire could burn my past away too, but I knew better. Some things couldn't be burned. Some choices couldn't be unmade. Some wounds never healed, no matter how much time passed.