Page 169 of Inevitable Endings
Chapter 67
What Was Almost Ours
Isabella
His gaze traces every skin cell like a sin he intends to confess only with his hands. Those eyes, cut from winter and war, narrow once they find mine. There’s no patience in him tonight. None of that carefully measured silence he uses like a weapon in meetings. No. This is the man behind the myth. And he’s dangerous in a different way.
He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t speak yet.
The low light from the chandelier catches on the rim of his glass, half-full with vodka, slow-tilting in his hand. His other arm drapes over the armrest like a king holding court in a room he built with blood.
He’s been gone all day.
I knew better than to ask where, but now that we’re alone, I want it.
I want all of it, and I know I’m in the position to ask.
I walk to the center of the room, still barefoot, still in the silk slip I refused to change out of after dinner. His eyes follow the line of my bare legs, up my thighs, over the fall of the fabric against my hips. He’s looking like he’s already had me and wants to again just to confirm I’m real.
I stop in front of him and raise a brow.
“Well?” I tilt my head, fold my arms. “You disappear for hours, come home reeking of cold air and secrets, and don’t even thinkabout telling me what the hell you did? You better made sure no one saw you.”
He exhales through his nose. Sets the glass down beside him with that deliberate, unhurried grace that always makes me want to slap it off the table—or straddle him and steal the breath from his throat.
He doesn’t rise. He just looks up at me, sharp and slow.
“I met with Malik,” he says simply.
I blink. “Who?”
He tilts his head like he’s surprised I don’t know. “Malik Gusev. They used to call him theWhite Vulture.”
Still nothing. I lift my brows.
He leans back, voice colder now. “Weren’t you little Miss Detective once? He was the Bratva’s ghost architect. Ran ops out of Istanbul, trained ex-military into perfect shooters. He suddenly vanished. No one could find him.”
I cross my arms, half-curious, half on guard. “And you just… did?”
“He owed me a favor.” He picks up the glass again, takes a slow sip. “Now he pays it.”
“How?”
He looks up at me, and something in his eyes sharpens, like he’s finally showing me the razor beneath the calm.
“He’s sending men. Snipers. Precision shooters trained to see the whites of your eyes from rooftops. They’ll be watching from high ground across Brighton. Rooftops, towers, old tenement buildings. Their only task is to eliminate any man who moves without my command.”
I stare at him, the full weight of that calculation settling into my bones.
“You’re putting eyes in the sky,” I murmur.
“Not eyes,” he says. “Predators. Unseen. Untouchable.”
“And they’ll only listen to you?”
“They’ll listen to Malik,” he says. “Which means they’ll listen to me.”
A beat of silence.
