CHAPTER 75

CHAPTER 75
‘Why?’ The question rumbles from my throat, the sound echoing off the basement walls.

Nadya keeps her silence, a statue of defiance.

In a swift move, I grab the back of the chair she’s tied to, jerking it closer. ‘Look at me and explain. Now.” I lean forward, the intensity of my gaze drilling into her.

Despite her bandaged neck and the wound that we expertly patched up so she wouldn’t bleed out, there’s no chance of Nadya redeeming herself. But I need her to confess the sins she’s committed before I send her to her death.

For a moment, Nadya looks as if she might maintain her steely resolve, but then her façade begins to crack. A single tear escapes, tracing a path down her cheek. ‘You’re not the only one who’s experienced heartache. I’ve loved and lost, and my loss is directly because of Masha and Kira. The man I loved died in the attack they launched on Oleg. They took everything from me,” she spits. “Kira was going to take you too. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Her words send a jolt through me, upending everything I thought I knew about Nadya. “Kira didn’t take me from you—I was never yours. You had no fucking right to play God with my life.” I slam my palm against the stone wall behind her, a sharp crack echoing through the basement.

Kira was right. Nadya’s loyalty was nothing but a twisted, unhealthy obsession with me.

I’m an idiot for not heeding Kira’s warning, and it nearly cost me everything

Nadya’s voice drips with venom, her gaze piercing me with a look of scorn. “You’re too good for her, Maxim, like you were too good for Irina! With Irina, you didn’t know, but with Kira … it’s obvious what she is. A traitor to her family.”

In a swift motion, I grab the chair I was sitting on and hurl it against the wall. It crashes with a resounding thud, splintering into pieces.

‘You’re the traitor. You’ve been lying, manipulating everything around you—including me. You call that loyalty?’

Her lips thin into a hard line. “I did what I had to do.”

I clench and unclench my fists, desperate for release. “I found your stash. Pieces of my life you insisted on keeping. It’s fucking twisted. You’re sick. And I am a fucking idiot for not seeing it sooner.”

‘You remind me of him … Arkady.” Nadya’s voice breaks as she clings to her memories of the past. “The man I loved. Your sense of honor, your reverence for our heritage, and the way you uphold the bratva’s loyalty oath. You brought back a part of him to me.”

“Your lover? A man stupid enough to be loyal to scum like Oleg Antonov?”

‘Stupid? No, he was wise in ways you can’t comprehend. His loyalty was to the code, to the bratva oath,’ she counters fiercely, her restrained position only intensifying the strength in her voice. “My devotion was always to you, wanting only the best for you. You’re blinded by her… But you’d be better off without that whore.”

“How very wrong you are,” I say through clenched teeth. “She’s the only thing in my life worth living for. The best thing that’s happened to me since Ilya, and you nearly took her from me. You have no idea what it would have done for me if I lost her, and our child.”

“Maxim, listen to me⁠—”

“Shut up.” There’s nothing she has to say that I want to hear.

But there is one more thing I want to know.

I pull out the pictures of Masha’s murder scene and show them to her, pointing to the corner of the frame where my Zippo lies. “What is this doing here? Were you trying to frame me for Masha’s murder?”

She huffs out a heavy breath. “I … I kept it as a memento. I know it was a gift from Irina, but it reminded me of you. It was carved with your initials. I couldn’t throw it out. I had it on me that day in case we needed to destroy the evidence. I lost it in the chaos.”

“You’re pathetic,” I growl. “Pathetic and deranged. I can’t listen to another word.”

The urge to get the fuck out of here overwhelms me as my worst instincts—the ones that lead to violence—rise within me. I yearn to see Nadya suffer as Kira did. I want her death to be slow and excruciating, a retribution for all she’s done. But Kira pleaded with me to leave her execution to someone else. She doesn’t want that stain on my soul.

“I did this for you. How can you not see that?” Nadya implores, her voice a haunted whisper.

I turn away, leaving her to the darkness of the basement. I nod at Konstantin on my way out the door—his cue to finish the job.

Nadya’s fate is sealed. But it won’t be me pulling the trigger.