VERA

He watched me for six weeks before he said a word.

I know because I counted, after. Every Thursday, the same black car outside the laundromat on Bustleton Avenue. I thought he was a cop. I thought about bringing him a coffee.

Then men I didn't know put me in a van, and the man in the black car took me back.

Not politely. Not gently.

He killed four people and his face never changed once.

Now I live in his house, and I've worked out who he is, and it's so much worse than a cop.

Kirill Barsukov runs this city. Every man my father ever poured a drink for answers to him. He is thirty six years old and he has not been told no since he was nineteen, and he says my name like it's already been signed for.

I have been the quietest person in every room of my life. My father. My uncles. Every man at every table. Not one of them ever noticed I was listening.

He noticed.

That frightens me more than the bodies did.

He thinks I'm a loose end.

He has no idea what my father put inside my head when I was six years old.

Neither do I.

KIRILL

Nobody sent me to that street.

That is the part she will not understand for a long time. I sat outside a laundromat for six weeks in my own car because what that girl is carrying could end me, and there is not one person in this city I would trust to go and look.

Six weeks. Then Kolesnik put her in a van, and I took her back, and I brought her to my house instead of the place I should have brought her.

She should be terrified of me. Everyone is terrified of me. It is the most reliable thing in my life and she ruined it in nine days.

She makes my coffee wrong on purpose and sets it down in front of me like a dare.

I have been the last word in every room I have walked into since I was nineteen years old. She argues with me in my own kitchen at two in the morning, barefoot, wearing my clothes, and I let her, and I have started to look forward to it.

I know what she is worth. I know exactly what I am supposed to do with her, because I am the one who decided it.

Whatever is in her head can burn this city down, and I am going to keep it. And her.

This is the first book in The Silence Pact series. Reading order:

The Silence We Bury.

The Silence We Break.

The Silence We Bleed.

The Silence We Bury: Dark Mafia Romance

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