Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88902 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
"Four brothers," I continue. "Alexei runs the operation. Strategy, finance, the decisions nobody wants to make. Andrei handles security. Physical protection, threat assessment, the work that requires someone who doesn't flinch at violence." I pause because the next part is mine and it tastes different when I'm saying it to her. "I handle enforcement. The people who owe the casino money, the debtors, the ones who disappear."
"The ones you send to rehab."
I go still. "How do you know that?"
"You told me your father was a gambler who lost everything. You told me a casino owner destroyed him. And you told me you make people disappear." She's studying me with those eyes, clear, unblinking, reading me like she reads a body on her table, and I can see her assembling the final pieces, turning them over, checking the fit. "You're not killing them. You're saving them. You're doing for strangers what nobody did for your father."
I have been assessed by intelligence officers. By military psychologists. By Alexei himself, who can dismantle a man's motives in three questions. None of them saw it that fast. None of them delivered it with that much certainty, like it were obvious, like the math were simple and she'd finished it before I'd set up the equation.
I'm sitting across from her with my chest cracked open and she's in my shirt with her knees pulled up and she just named the thing I have never named to anyone, the real reason, the actual reason I do what I do, and she spoke it like she was reading it off my ribs.
"And Anton?" she asks.
"High-roller relations. Guest-facing. He's the charm. The one who makes billionaires feel comfortable losing money in our casino while we use their data to trace the network." I lean back. The railing behind me cuts the sky into sections. "Alexei doesn't smile. Andrei smiles once a year. Anton smiles enough for all of us."
"Who does Artem smile for?"
She asks it like she asks everything: straight, no performance, no buildup. Just the question. The voice she used when she asked why don't you sleep on the upper deck and what changed at his door and was Curtis using the right pressure. Just the question.
"You," I tell her. "Apparently."
The lopsided thing happens. Hers, not mine. A half-smile that mirrors the one I didn't know I had until she found it, and the sight of my own expression on her face does something to me that I couldn't explain if I had a thousand years and a vocabulary to match.
"And Mila fits in how?"
"Eleven years of fieldwork. Contacts I don't have. Intelligence channels from before the family operation existed. She's been tracking the witness through shipping manifests, port registries, encrypted communications. The gallery gives her cover and access to the ship's guest list."
"And she reports to Alexei."
"To me. But Alexei knows everything."
Star is still for a moment. The sea is black beneath us. The ship rocks, that constant motion that has become invisible, like the sixty-two hertz, like her hands, something so present it disappears into background.
"She's in love with you," Star says.
Not a question.
"I know."
"You've always known."
"I've known for years. I chose to treat it as loyalty because it was useful and because I didn't want to lose the best operative I've ever worked with." My jaw tightens. "That was a mistake."
"One of several."
"One of several."
She unfolds her legs. Plants her bare feet on the deck. Leans forward, elbows on her knees, chin on her fists, and she's twenty years old and wearing my shirt and I've just told her that the man she loves runs an intelligence operation funded by a Bratva casino and she hasn't taken a single step backward. Her feet are on the deck. Her chin is on her fists. She's thinking.
"I'm not afraid of your world," she decides.
"I know."
"I'm not afraid of your brothers. I'm not afraid of Mila. I'm not afraid of the man who killed your father."
"You should be afraid of him."
"Maybe." She tips her head. "But I'm not afraid of you. And that's the one that matters."
I stand. Cross to her chair. Take her face in my hands, and my palms fit against her jaw the way they always do and my thumbs find her cheekbones and she tilts her face up to me and her eyes are full and fierce and she is not afraid. She's not afraid and I've given her every reason to be and she's sitting in my shirt with her feet on my deck and she's not afraid.
"I love you, Star."
Her hands come up to cover mine on her face. Her fingers on my scarred knuckles. "I love you, Artem."
I kiss her. None of the desperate corridor energy. None of the fierce reunion or gallery collision or private deck ambush. A slow, careful, thorough kiss, the kiss of a man who has told a girl his worst secrets and she's still here, and the taste of her mouth right now is the taste of someone who has chosen to stay.