Page 105 of Reaper & Ruin
Didn’t know how to feel about the fact my brother had abandoned me.
Didn’t know how to feel about my new reality.
For years, I’d been a ghost—living under someone else’s rules, following someone else’s orders, killing for someone else’s gain. I’d been the perfect tool for The Company, my handlers, my jailers. But I wasn’t their tool anymore.
I’d been freed. A few short, surreal days since I was free.
As far as The Company was concerned, Danika Smith was dead, buried, and forgotten. And I liked it that way. I liked being dead. It was the only thing I’d wanted for as long as I could remember—to disappear, to slip into the shadows and live without chains for the first time in my life.
But freedom, I was beginning to learn, was its own kind of burden.
For the first time, I didn’t have anyone telling me what to do, where to go, or who to kill. For the first time in my life, my life wasmine. But I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t know how to live without a leash.
So I did what I knew best—I drifted. Quietly, invisibly, leaving no trace as I moved where I pleased, always keeping myself in the dark. The world was open, the future full of possibilities…
Yet, I’d ended up here. Watching Atlas. Watching mybrother.
I didn’t want to tell him for real. Didn’t want to talk about the picture I’d handed to him. I didn’t even want him to know I was here. What would I even say? How would I begin to share the thoughts burning through my brain?
No. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t the kind of person who knocked on doors and made heartfelt confessions.
And yet… there was something about him. Something that made me linger in the shadows a little longer than I should. Maybe it was the way he carried himself in his new life. The way he seemed okay with his trauma and life filled with the dark.
He seemed… happy.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
The sound of a door creaking open snapped me out of my thoughts.
I tensed, pressing myself lower into the shadows as the back door swung open. A figure stepped outside, briefly illuminated by the light spilling out from the dining room before the door closed behind him.
It was Emilio.
I’d seen him earlier through the window—still just as tall as I remembered, muscular in a bulky way that made me grin, and carrying the kind of tension in his shoulders that suggested he had a thousand problems he didn’t want anyone to know about. He didn’t interest me much beyond eye candy, but as he stepped farther into the garden, I noticed the phone in his hand. I also didn’t normally listen when a man spoke, they usually offered nothing of value, but this one was pretty enough for me to fake interest for a minute or so as I held Yakov in my free hand, poking my finger gently into his spikes.
My loyal little cactus was the only thing of Danika Smiths that I’d kept. He was my ride or die. My best friend.
I would have died before I abandoned my fleshy little son. He was all I had left now.
Emilio brought his phone to his ear, his voice low as he answered the call.
I slipped silently through the bushes, moving closer without a sound. I wasn’t planning to stay long—I’d just been here to watch, to see Atlas, to remind myself why I hadn’t disappeared entirely. But curiosity tugged at me because I was many things, but nosy bitch was definitely one of them.
“I don’t care about rumors,” Emilio was saying, his tone clipped. “I need proof. Something solid.”
I crept closer, crouching low behind a row of hedges until I could hear him more clearly.
“The Romanovs aren’t playing,” he said, the name rolling off his tongue with disgust. “I need something I can use. They’ve already locked me into this bullshit arrangement, and I need a way out.”
The name sent a ripple through me. My breath hitched, but I kept still, forcing my body to stay motionless even as my pulse quickened and my finger poked hard enough into Yakov that I pierced my skin.
That name had haunted me for years.
Sergei Romanov was a monster, even by my standards. He’d worked with my biological father back when they’d been carving out pieces of the underworld for themselves decades ago. I’d crossed paths with Sergei once as a teenager, and the memory of it still made my stomach turn. He was known for being cruel, sadistic, the kind of man who enjoyed breaking things just to watch the pieces scatter.
I’d wanted to kill him. I’d tried to kill him, for what he’d done. But I hadn’t been able to do it now. I’d been too weak.
Now, I wasn’t.
