Ghost (Boston Underworld #3) - A. Zavarelli Page 0,89

to her eyes, and I feel guilty for saying it. But it needed to be said.

“You do.”

“Okay, maybe a little, but only because I want what’s best for my friends.”

“But you can’t shame them into it, Mack. You can’t force people to change. To cope with everything the way that you do. People are different. They all deal with things differently. You need to understand that.”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” Tears spill down her cheeks when she looks at me. “I pushed you into it. That trip with Dmitri. Because the last time I saw you… we argued.”

“You didn’t push me into it.” I shake my head. “I would have gone regardless.”

“But if I hadn’t been so pushy. So… judgy. And then I asked Alexei to save you.”

“Mack.”

I’m crying too, so it’s the only word I can get out. We both stand up and close the distance between us. Healing all of the hurt and anger with a single hug.

I cry in her arms, and she holds me. And I don’t know how long we stand there like that, but I only know that a piece of my heart feels like it isn’t dead anymore. Like this is exactly where I need to be right now.

It takes me over an hour to say the words. To accept what it is that I need to do.

That I will need to hurt Alexei to protect myself.

And that I will hate myself for it.

But I don’t see any other choice.

“I want to stay here,” I tell Lachlan with a shaky voice. “I’m going to stay here.”

49

Alexei

“Viktor keeps calling,” Nikolai tells me from the passenger seat of the car.

“Ignore it. I will deal with him later.”

“I don’t think it’s about Arman,” he tells me.

He keeps scrolling through his phone, checking through messages and missed calls. And when he tenses beside me, I know something is wrong.

I pull over to the side of the road and give him my full attention. We are an hour from home. I just want to get back to the house. To figure out this mess. To ask Talia who sent her the photos again.

I’m clinging to that, because it’s all I can do to continue down this path I have set out for myself. She has betrayed me. I could not have been so wrong about that. That is the only acceptable thing for me to believe.

But then Nikolai turns to me, and his face is pale. Worried. He’s holding up his phone, and Viktor is already on the line, through a video chat.

I’m not prepared for what he is about to say, so I delay the inevitable. My mind is turning, my hands clenched at my sides.

“I will come to speak with you this evening,” I tell Viktor. “To explain my actions. And to retrieve Talia.”

“Lyoshenka.”

His face is full of emotion. Something that Viktor rarely ever shows. But it’s there now. And it’s triggering the emotion inside of me too. Something I do not like. Something I try to avoid at all costs.

He isn’t angry. And he should be angry with me. He knows I have gone against his orders. Killing Arman was an unsanctioned act. He should be discussing his punishment with me. Instead, he is showing clear pity for me.

“What is it?”

My stomach drops out and I die inside before I even read his words.

“Talia is dead.”

The basement floor is coated in blood.

Corpses, stacked in the corner.

My hands, itching for more.

For all out war.

But Viktor is beside me, talking of nonsense. Telling me to keep a rational head.

“Those trucks were delivered from your house,” I remind him. “Someone has betrayed us.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “But you have killed the men responsible for delivering them. Now we must wait. Be patient.”

“I have no patience left,” is my reply. “My wife is dead. My unborn son, dead. Franco, dead. And you ask me for patience?”

“We will right these wrongs,” he assures me. “In time. When we have discovered the traitor. There will be no mercy for him, Lyoshenka. None. But you must be patient.”

“I have waited too long already,” I answer. “There isn’t even a body for me to bury…”

The words die off, and I take a breath. I cannot think about that right now. Think about my Solnyshko that way. In my mind, she is still up on the third floor. Where I left her. Where she is beautiful and perfect and mine, even when I break her heart. When I destroy her as I always knew I