Page 82 of Filthy Lies

But he doesn’t.

He releases me.

And so I walk away.

I smell death on my mother before I even step into her room.

Not the stench of actual decomposition—not yet—but that faint hint of an extinguishing flame. The subtle difference between a person dying and a person allowing themselves to die.

The hospital corridor feels like a purgatory I’ve walked a thousand times before. Each step costs me, not in money, but in pieces of my soul I’ll never get back.

Mom’s gotten smaller since I saw her last. Cancer is greedy that way—it takes and takes, never satisfied until it’s consumed everything. Her skin stretches like tissue paper over the failing architecture of her bones.

She spent the night at the hospital for an exploratory procedure. Results are still pending, but the doctors didn’t seem hopeful.

She’s sleeping now, which is good, because the truth is that I didn’t come to see her. The hospital was just perfect cover for what I really needed to do today.

But I still have a few minutes to kill, so I linger by Mom’s bedside. Her skeletal hand reminds me of a bird’s claw. Only when I’m sure she’s not waking anytime soon do I carefully ease myself from the chair.

As the door clicks behind me, I shed the role of dutiful daughter like a skin I’ve outgrown. It won’t serve me for what comes next.

A trio of nurses passes me in the corridor. I offer them a watery smile—the universal expression of someone with a dying loved one. It’s a perfect mask because it’s not entirely false.

I check my phone: 10:22 A.M. I slink past the ward security camera, keeping my face angled low just like Vince taught me. There’s a blind spot at the emergency stairwell. I count to thirty, watching for any of the usual surveillance signs Vince’s men employ.

Nothing.

I take the stairs down two flights to the basement level.

The smell hits me first—formaldehyde, so intentionally, scaldingly clean, but it still can’t quite mask the underlying scent of death.

The morgue.A fitting place to meet, considering that what I’m about to do would result in my funeral if Vince ever found out.

Agent Carver stands beside a steel examination table, his reflection distorted in its polished surface. He’s not alone. “Mrs. Akopov,” he says, voice neutral. “This is AUSA Reynolds.”

I assess the unfamiliar woman next to him—mid-forties, immaculate pantsuit, and eyes sharp enough to fillet me where I stand.

“Let’s be clear,” I blurt. “If either of you is wearing a wire, I’m walking out.”

Reynolds’s mouth twitches. “Bold demand from someone who’s married to the FBI’s most wanted Bratva heir.”

I shrug off my jacket and lift my shirt just high enough to prove I’m not wearing one myself. “Your turn.”

They comply after a moment of tension.

No wires.

“I don’t have much time,” I say, perching on a metal stool. “So I’ll make this quick. I can give you the Solovyov organization. Names, operations, evidence of their trafficking operations—enough to cripple them for good.”

Carver’s eyebrows inch toward his hairline. “And in exchange?”

“Immunity. Full and irrevocable for me, my daughter, my mother. And a path for Vince to transition Akopov operations to legitimate business with minimal prosecution.”

Reynolds laughs. It sounds like a door creaking in a horror movie. “You think we’d let Vincent Akopov walk? After everything he’s done?”

I shrug, as nonchalant as I know how to be. “I think you want the Solovyovs more. I think you want Barkov and his corruption network. I think you’re smart enough to recognize that sometimes you need to let one shark swim free if you want to catch the whole school.”

The morgue’s fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting everyone in a sickly glow. One of the body drawers isn’t fully closed. I spot pale toes with a tag dangling between them.

---