Page 9 of Last Hand

I don’t know if Mikhail monitors his own calls. Probably not—he’s arrogant enough to believe he’s untouchable. Men like him always are. Surveillance is for people he doesn’t trust, so he has no reason to monitor himself.

Still, I can’t risk it. I can’t say my name. I can’t say where we are.

Because if Mikhail finds out I lied all those years ago—if he finds out I had a family before him he won’t just kill me. He’ll kill Nathan. He’ll kill Fallon. He’ll make me watch.

So I reach for a memory. One so buried, so specific, that only Nathan would ever understand it.

The cabin. Back when he first met me, I was high on God knows what, and he found me passed out at a bus stop. I can’t even remember where I was going, I just remember waking up in the barn, where he used to live with his mother in the middle of nowhere. No noise. No neighbors. At first, I thought he was kidnapping me. I had no memory of the night before. Instead, he hid me in the barn so his mother wouldn’t find me. I was barelyeighteen. Just trees that scraped the sky, and darkness so quiet it was like time didn’t exist out there.

The first few nights, I couldn’t sleep. I kept waking up, convinced there were lights in the window. I’d curse the stars, groggy, twitchy, and sore, telling him they were too bright, that they were watching me.

He laughed quietly and said, “They’re not stars, Starling. Just fireflies.”

I didn’t even know what a starling was. Later, he told me it was a kind of bird, small, loud, and hard to get rid of. He meant it as a joke, and it stuck. I was forever hislittle Starling.

Nathan was a few years older than me, and I had nowhere to go. I was just a homeless kid, and he was a safe option, safer than the beds I would find myself in, the ones where I had to earn my keep where drugs took away the used feeling it left behind. He had no one to help with his mother’s small farm, so it was a good fit. Eventually, it turned into something more. His mother, though, was horrible once she learned I was there; she hated me. Eventually, we moved to the city to escape her.

It rings once. Then— “Hello?”

God, that voice. It cuts right through me. I press a hand over my mouth, fighting the sudden ache in my throat. Sixteen years of silence, and all I want is to say I’m sorry that I love him. That I never stopped. There is no time for that.

“Nathan,” I whisper.

Silence. Then, sharp and low—“Yes, it is. Who is this?”

“I don’t have time,” I say quickly, ensuring to keep my voice. “It’s Fallon. Mikhail has her. You need to get a message to Leone. He needs to come now.”

“Who is this? Where is my daughter?”

“Do you remember the cabin? The one with the blue door. Where the trees reached so high it felt like they touched the stars… how the lights were too bright in the barn window?”

A pause. Then I give him the name only he ever used.

“It’s your Starling.” A sharp inhale.

“…Rebecca?”

“I’ll get her home. Leone just needs to find the cabin.”

“Wait, Rebecca,” he says.

I choke back some emotion before saying. “Don’t hate them for what I did.” I hang up before he can say anything else. My fingers fly across the screen, erasing the call log. Gone. Just like that. I flush the toilet to make it real, splash cold water on my face, and breathe.

Don’t break. Don’t break. Don’t break. I try to breathe around the emotion threatening to strangle me.

When I open the door, Igor is standing just outside, hand raised to knock. I narrow my eyes.

“What?” I sneer. “You want to wipe my ass now, Igor? You’re already so far up it you might as well.” His lips curl, and he steps aside. I walk past him without looking back. The kitchen looks the same as I pick up my stone-cold coffee and peer out the window.

Mikhail is gone. I freeze. The girls are still in the yard only he’s not with them.

Instead, one of his men stands at the edge of the garden, arms crossed, watching the twins. My stomach flips. I slide the phone from my pocket and set it gently back on the counter, fingers fumbling slightly as I grab the charger cord and plug it back in. The screen lights up. Charging.

Behind me, the chair creaks again as Igor sits muttering under his breath. I don’t turn. Ican’tturn. Not until?—

“Where did you go?” The voice is right behind me.

I spin, nearly gasping. Mikhail stands in the doorway.

---