Page 128 of Filthy Lies

“My study,” I breathe, already moving.

I tear through my desk like a man possessed, searching for what she might have seen. Nothing seems disturbed. Nothing seems?—

The folder.

The Petrov operation.

The fucking blueprint for her father’s assassination.

“She knows,” I say, collapsing into my chair. “She must’ve found the plans for the Petrov compound raid.”

“Fuck,” Arkady mutters.

The pieces click into place with sickening clarity. “She thinks I’m going to kill her father.”

“Aren’t you?” Arkady lifts an eyebrow. “That’s the plan, right? Eliminate Petrov, consolidate power. You’ve been planning this for months.”

Have I? The exhaustion of the past two days makes it hard to remember why I’d been so determined to take out Grigor. Was it strategy? Jealousy? Some twisted need to eliminate any other man who might have a claim on my wife’s affection?

It all seems so pointless now, with her gone.

“We need to suspend the operation,” I say. “Indefinitely.”

“What?” balks Arkady. “But everything’s in place. The team is ready. We’ve never had a better shot at taking out Petrov.”

“I saidindefinitely.” My voice leaves no room for argument. “If there’s even a chance it helps bring Rowan home, we scrap it. All of it.”

Arkady studies me with something like pity creeping into his expression. “And if she doesn’t come back?”

I cringe and turn away. The possibility that Rowan might never return, that Sofiya might grow up without me, that I might never hold either of them again—it’s too much to contemplate.

“Then none of it matters anyway. None of it fucking matters.”

I stare at the door she walked out of. I wonder if she hesitated. If she looked back. Did she cry when she removed the necklace that bound her to me?

“You know what kills me?” I ask Arkady, my voice so raw it hardly sounds human. “She’s right to run. Everything I touch turns to blood.”

“That’s not?—”

“Don’t.” I cut him off. “Don’t say it’s not true. We both know it is. I would have killed her father without a second thought, without even telling her. I would have robbed my daughter of her grandfather because I couldn’t stand the idea of sharing them.”

Tick. Tock.Painful seconds drag past like broken glass shredding my skin to ribbons.

“So what now?” Arkady finally asks.

I dig my fingernails into my palms. I need the physical pain to drown out the emotional agony.

“Now, we wait.” I meet his eyes, letting him see the devastation there. “We stand down.”

“And if she still doesn’t come back?”

“Then I’ll spend the rest of my life proving I can be the man she needs me to be. The man I promised I would be.” I run a hand through my hair, silver-streaked and unwashed. “Even if she never sees it. Even if I never hold my daughter again.”

Arkady nods. “That’s growth, Vin. That’s putting them first, for real this time.”

“It’s too late, though, isn’t it?” I laugh hollowly. “I spent so long trying to protect them from external threats that I never realized the greatest danger was right here.” I tap my chest, where my heart used to be, before Rowan took it with her. “It was me. It was always me.”

“For what it’s worth,” Arkady says quietly, “I think she loves you too much to stay away forever.”

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