Page 123 of Blood Code

I pressed Enter again, pausing the video, and turned back to Severin.

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “She died in that explosion.”

I shook my head. This video wasn’t the truth. Obviously, I knew it wasn’t, but everything about his demeanor suggested he believed it.

I rubbed the back of my neck, studying him, then I pulled his laptop into my lap.

Lowering the knife from his throat, I opened the video’s metadata and poked around. Hmm. Interesting. Nothing immediately suggested the footage had been altered, and it looked authentic. But it couldn’t be.

Fascinating. I wanted to look into how it was possible to create such a convincing fake. Because it was excellent. If I didn’t know exactly what happened that day, I would have believed it too.

I cracked my neck, closed the laptop, and set it aside.

“The video isn’t real,” I said, returning the knife to his throat. “Xeniya was sold to the Order, blinded by a psychopath so she couldn’t see any of their faces, and raped for three years before a serial killer murdered her.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is.”

“It can’t be.” His voice cracked, and the sound broke something inside me. “That can’t be true. The video…”

“It’s a really good fake,” I hissed. Then my voice softened. “The video is fake. I promise you, it’s fake.”

“No.”

Silence stormed between us. He wanted to refuse to believe me, but something deep inside him seemed to recognize the truth. Or at least consider it.

“How do you know that happened to her?” he asked, barely loud enough for me to hear.

“I just do.”

His brow furrowed as he stared into my eyes, searching for something I couldn’t give him. His face fell. Devastation seemed to hollow him out. Utter, complete, unrelenting devastation.

He was a destroyed man.

I rubbed my chest over my heart. If he believed everything he was telling me, then it changed everything.

Because if Severin was telling the truth, my family most likely had nothing to do with the Order either. Whoever created that footage would have needed to fool my father, and that was a massive undertaking. Before tonight, I would have said no one else in the New York Bratva had the skill set to make this video.

Except Damon existed, and he might be a better hacker than me, and I didn’t say that lightly.

I bit my bottom lip. Fuck. If all of this was true, Severin might not have given me to the Order. What if he’d spent the last thirteen years believing I was dead?

Could it be possible?

Even remotely?

“This can’t be true.” A sob tore from his chest. “Because if it is, I failed her so completely. If it’s true…”

His voice trailed off. Then his eyes snapped back to mine, and he looked at me again. Really looked at me, as though seeing me for the first time.

And I knew.

My throat worked.

Because he knew. He finally saw me.

“Kill me,” he whispered, leaning so far into the knife that I had to pull it away from his neck. “Kill me, Moy Oduvanchik.”