Page 116 of Ruthless Sin
The world stops.
Mama is dead.
Mama is dead and he knew.
“We met for weeks after that,” he says. “Building the extraction route. Mapping safehouses. She was...”
He stops.
“She was smart. Careful. I thought we were safe.”
“She trusted you.” Each word comes out separate. Careful. “She fed you intel. She built a route with you. She trusted you to get us out.”
His jaw tightens.
“Yes.”
“And then.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
Then he speaks again. Slower. Like the words are cutting his throat on the way out.
“The last meeting,” he says. “Alexei found out. Someone talked. A back-channel that wasn’t as clean as we thought.”
His hand tightens on the back of his neck.
“I woke up restrained. Concrete room.”
My vision blurs.
“I watched him torture her.”
No.
“She didn’t give me up,” he says. “She didn’t tell him I was there for extraction. She told him I was a buyer. That I’d been asking questions. That she’d been feeding me bad intel to protect the network.”
His voice breaks.
“He killed her anyway.”
My throat closes around something I can’t swallow.
“Was she looking at you.” Not a question. I’m not asking. “When he did it. Was her face turned toward you.”
The muscle in his jaw works.
“Yes.”
Yelena is dead.
Yelena is dead.
I can’t breathe.
Mama dead. Yelena dead.
Both dead.
