Page 131 of Filthy Lies

Hope flares in my chest like a match struck in darkness. “He did?”

“Yep. It’s dead quiet over there. Nothing happening. He’s just waiting.”

Waiting. The word echoes inside me, rearranging my organs into a configuration that makes breathing possible again.

“I have to go,” I tell her, suddenly desperate to end the call. Too many emotions are threatening to overflow, and I can’t afford to drown in them. Not yet.

“Be careful, Row. And maybe… maybe consider that he’s trying to change.”

After hanging up, I curl into myself on the porch swing, letting the ocean breeze carry away the tears I can no longer contain.

Vince suspended the operation. He’s standing down. The knowledge soothes me as much as it tortures me.

Because now, I don’t know what to do.

Stay away and hope his reformation sticks? Return and risk him reverting to the monster who would murder my father while fucking me under the stars?

Before I can decide, the sound of a twig snapping jerks me upright. One of my perimeter bells jingles softly in the distance.

Someone is here.

I move silently inside and grab the gun I keep wrapped in a dish towel in the kitchen drawer. My hands don’t shake as I check the chamber. Another gift from Vince—teaching me to shoot without flinching.

The bells ring again. Whoever it is, they’re closer now.

I position myself between the front door and Sofiya’s room, gun aimed at the entry point. Blood rushes in my ears and drowns out everything but my daughter’s soft breathing from the next room and the approaching footsteps on the porch.

A shadow passes by the window.

The doorknob turns slowly.

The door swings inward.

“I thought I might find you here,” a familiar voice says as the breeze carries the scent of aftershave toward me. “Your mother always did love the ocean.”

The gun wavers in my hands as Grigor Petrov steps into the beach house, moonlight illuminating the face that’s half-mine.

48

ROWAN

“Dad.”

I’ve spent a lifetime not knowing this man. Now, he’s here, in the flesh, standing on weathered floorboards with salt-crusted windows at his back.

Ironic that the first time I call him “Dad” is down the barrel of a gun.

He steps into the moonlit beach house, blocking what little light filters through the doorway. My pulse throbs in my fingertips. Each beat is another moment where I don’t lower the weapon pointed at his heart.

He doesn’t look afraid. Just patient. Like he’s been waiting for this moment longer than I’ve been alive.

“Put the gun down, Rowan,” Grigor says. “If you wanted me dead, you wouldn’t have run from the man planning to kill me.”

The gun weighs a thousand pounds in my hand. “How did you find me?”

“This place belonged to my grandmother.” He moves slowly into the living room, hands visible. “I gave the address to your mother once. Told her if she ever needed sanctuary, this place would be waiting.” His eyes—myeyes—scan the room with a familiar sigh. “When I heard you’d disappeared with my granddaughter, I knew there was a chance you’d know it from my letters. Just a guess, but a good one, as it turns out.”

I finally lower the gun. But I don’t put it down. “Is Vince here? Did you bring him?”

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