The Don Shielded Her. So I Became Bratva Queen. novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: With the Lights On

"No," I said.

Vin shrugged and walked Romina out to the car where the shooter was waiting.

They pulled him out of the Schuylkill at six the next morning, under the Grays Ferry bridge.

Benno called me at seven.

He didn't say hello.

"It's on the scanner. Young guy, gold chain. Hands tied in front." He was quiet a moment. "I'm sorry, sweetheart."

I hung up and sat on the edge of Kirill's bed with the phone in my lap.

I kept seeing the shooter's face when they lifted him out of the chair.

He hadn't looked at Kirill.

He'd looked at me.

He'd fired a bullet at my head for forty thousand dollars, and I still couldn't stop seeing the clean shirt Nadia had ironed for him.

Kirill came out of the bathroom with a towel around his neck.

He saw my face and stopped.

"They found him," he said.

"Under the Grays Ferry bridge."

He sat down beside me.

I stood up.

"You gave him to them."

"Yes."

"You sat there and said take him."

"Yes."

"He was looking at me, Kirill."

"I know. I was looking at him too."

"Then why?"

He didn't stand up.

He stayed on the bed and let me stand over him, which I understood later was on purpose.

"Because if I said no to that table," he said, "by tonight there'd be forty Italians on Bustleton Avenue and every one of them would think they were right. My men would die. Nadia's kitchen would burn. And you would be the woman who started a war, and nobody in this city would ever believe a word you said again."

"So he died instead."

"So he died instead." His jaw moved. "That's on me. Not you. Me."

I hit him.

Not hard.

Flat-handed on his chest, once, then again.

He let me.

The third time he caught my wrist, not tight, just holding it against his heart.

"I chose," he said. "The way your husband chose. The difference is I'll tell you to your face, and I won't ever pretend it cost me nothing."

That was what broke me.

I cried for the first time since the restaurant.

Not pretty.

Loud, ugly, with my face in his shirt and my fists twisted in the towel around his neck.

For the shooter.

For my father.

For four years of being the strong one.

For eight stitches and a floor full of glass, and a husband who'd sworn on his father's grave to save the woman who'd paid for it.

Kirill held me through all of it.

He didn't say a single word.

When it was over, it was dark outside.

I'd lost the whole day.

I sat up, wiped my face on my sleeve and looked at him.

Then I got up, crossed the room and turned on every light.

The lamp.

The overhead.

The little one over the bookcase.

He watched me from the bed.

"What are you doing?"

"Last time it was dark," I said. "I want to see who I'm choosing."

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