Chapter 35: Chapter 35

Black waves crash beneath me.

For a moment, I think I’m still asleep, and dreaming. It feels like I’m floating out over the ocean, or flying.

But when the dark, surging surf smashes against the rocks again, my pulse jangles, and reality claws shrieking into my heart.

I’m not flying.

I’m falling.

I choke on the scream as it all bubbles up into reality. I flinch, jerking around, feeling for something to grab onto before I slam into the ocean. But I realize I’m still wrong.

I’m neither flying nor falling.

I’m…dangling.

I shudder, my eyes wide as my head jerks side to side, seeing my arms spread wide and bound with thick rope to the metal at my back. That’s when I look down again, and I realize where I am.

Sweet Jesus…

“I hope you can appreciate the poetry of killing you here.”

I gasp sharply as I snap my head around, my eyes going wide when I see him.

“Milos!” I scream, “Milos, help me! I⁠—”

And then it slams into me as the final fog clears from my head: Drazen’s apartment. The man in the shadows that I thought was him.

The chemical smell as I faded out of consciousness.

Oh fuck.

Milos’ lips pull to a dark grin as he sees recognition slicing into me like a blade.

“Why?!” I choke, my eyes wide as my heads shakes side to side. “Why are you doing this?! Why here?!”

His eyes narrow coldly.

“Because this,” he snarls, “is where my family died. This is where your family got them fucking killed.”

The surf under the bridge from Elba to Drazen’s island crashes below. The moon is out, glinting like sharp blades off the waves as they slam into the rocks. The wind whips my hair around, and my pulse thuds as the tug of gravity pulls at my shoulder sockets where I’m tied to the metal guardrail on the edge of the bridge, my legs dangling over the abyss.

“Milos,” I choke, turning to stare at him with wide, terrified eyes. “Milos, please!”

He just shakes his head, staring at me.

“That night, after those bastards got inside, I lost my father.” His furious gaze blazes into me. “He was my world, my father. He taught me everything. He saved me time and time again through the horror I grew up in. After the war took my sister and my mother, he was the only family I had left.”

Tears trickle down my face.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper into the wind. “Milos, I⁠—”

“I don’t want your fucking apologies,” he says evenly. “They mean nothing. But what does mean something to me is the biggest lesson my father ever taught me.” His gaze levels lethally with mine. “When they take something from you, you take something more from them. When they cut you, you cut them back, deeper,” he snarls. “I lived those words throughout the war. I’ve always lived them,” he hisses. “And tonight, I’m finally going to cut back, after I was cut.”

“Milos—” I choke. “Milos, I⁠—”

“Your father’s men massacred everyone I knew that night. Everyone I had left in the world. Friends. Mentors. Men who were like family to me.” He pauses. “My father took a bullet to the stomach when the first attacks came. And when the car carrying the fucking traitor tried to escape, he gave his last breath in service to his duty to protect the Krylov family.”

Milos’ throat bobs as he looks up and down the length of the bridge.

“Did Drazen ever tell you that those same security measures from before are still in place?”

I shake my head, my stomach knotting.

“When we rebuilt his island, with the new house, and the new bridge, I made sure that every possible scenario was accounted for. So that what happened here could never fucking happen again.”

He turns to level a cold look at me.

“Just as the first one was, this bridge is rigged to detonate. In case of a breach, if things are critical, someone with the trigger…this trigger…can blow the bridge into the waves below, cutting the island off.”

He holds up something that looks like the remote control for a toy car, with an antenna sticking out the top of it.

“No…” I whisper before I finally find my voice. “NO!” I scream. “NO! HELP!”

Milos shakes his head.

“We’re alone,” he growls quietly. “I run the security for the island. I make the schedules of who guards where, and when.” He turns to look over the waves. “Scream all you like. No one will hear you. We’re alone tonight.”

“Drazen thinks of you as a brother!” I hurl at him. “How⁠—”

“Drazen is my brother!” he snaps at me. “We became blood the first time we spilled it together. When we fought a war as fucking children together! You’re goddamn right he’s my brother!” he snarls. “Tonight, I’m doing my brother a favor. I’m removing you from his life. I’m cleansing him of the traitorous poison.”

“He’ll kill you,” I hiss, my voice trembling.

Milos shakes his head. “He’ll embrace me, as a brother, after I show him the proof that your death was the last work of Vadik, to hurt Drazen by killing his wife. Drazen gets full justification for killing that snake. And I rid him of you.”

“Please don’t do this,” I choke as my eyes tear. “Please!”

Milos just looks away. “My father was my whole world,” he growls quietly. “And when someone cuts you, you cut them back. Deeper. An eye for an eye.”

“I didn’t kill your father!!!” I scream. “I don’t remember anything about that night!! Even if it was me who tried to drive across that bridge⁠—”

I choke as Milos surges into me, bringing the blade in his hand to my jugular.

“Please,” he snarls viciously. “Please tell me that it’s his fault. Please try and tell me that him blowing the bridge, and doing his sworn duty, makes it his own doing that he died!”

Tears start to roll down my face.

“Milos,” I whisper hoarsely as he whirls and stalks away angrily. “I’m so, so sorry for what happened to your father. But I didn’t kill⁠—”

“I know you didn’t.”

I shudder as his eyes narrow to thin, vicious slits as a cold smile curls his mouth.

“Your twin sister did.”