“I came here for you,” Bone said, spearing the woman with her gaze.
The woman smiled at her and nodded. “I know. Joseph told me it would be so and it is.”
“You have sold children to The Collective but more than that you sold your own into the clutches of the devil. You abandoned your family and ordered your husband murdered,” Bone stated and it rang throughout the room.
A cold wind drifted in from the tower window holes but it did nothing to cool her rage.
“Ninka was mine. She was Bullet’s, Arrow’s, Blade’s, and mine.”
The woman’s face lost its mask of indifference and it was if she were a demon clothed in flesh. “She was mine to do with as I wanted. No one understood that true power comes from your ability to control life. I did what had to be done. The child was weak. I sent her to Joseph so she could be more and she failed me! All of my children were weak. Their father was as well. They deserved what they got,” she hissed, hands forming claws as she lost her cool and attacked Bone.
Bone sidestepped and chopped the woman in the back of her neck. She fell and looked back, horror on her face, fear a shadow in her eyes. They thought they’d broken her. Never.
One of the men attacked Bone and she stood tall, meeting his rush with a single punch to the chest. She channeled the rage, let it grow in her chest and then pushed it through her fist into his body. She’d struck him right over his heart. He fell without a single sound, unmoving, dead. The other guard, the one not holding Dmitry, ran. Her body protested but her mind demanded more.
The guard holding Dmitry began to push him to one of the window holes.
“Get to your knees,” Bone demanded of the woman.
“Dostoyev, take her!” she screamed.
“Dostoyev won’t help you now because he knows what you do not—I will kill his precious daughter when I finish with you should he take a single step in my direction. I am flesh and blood, Svetlana Asinimov, but I am death and you cannot stop me.”
“No,” the woman whispered, fear pinching her features.
“Joseph should have prepared you better. He gave you warning and you took it as a chance to eliminate me. It is almost as if he wanted you gone, eh? How he has orchestrated every move you’ve made over the years. You are pathetic,” Bone taunted her.
Bone reached down, grabbed her by the hair of her head, and pulled her up. The woman sobbed. Bone did not care.
“It was you!” the woman exclaimed suddenly, nails tearing into the skin of Bone’s hands as she struggled.
Bone knew fear then, the insidious creep of it through her mind and heart. Not because the woman struggled, but because now she would face the truth she had never wanted Dmitry exposed to. Here, now, they would both face the truth.
“You killed Sacha,” the woman said on a cry. “Dmitry? Your lover,” she spat the word, “killed your precious father.”
Dmitry’s head swiveled to her then and on his bruised face she saw he now knew the truth. “No,” he said gutturally. “He could have been a good man.”
She steeled her spine and sliced her gaze to him. “No. There was no hope for that. As there is no hope for your mother.” She would not fail in this duty. She cocked her head at him.
“No!” Dmitry’s voice was tortured. “Do not do this, Bone!”
Bone looked at his mother and her mind cleared. She blanked her face but let all the hate she felt in that moment shine through her eyes.
“Vengeance is the Lord’s,” Svetalana told her, desperation painting her words and her features.
Bone took the woman’s head in her hands and Svetlana sobbed. “I will apologize if I ever meet Him,” Bone whispered.
“Don’t do this,” Dmitry pleaded again.
Always he pleaded for her to stay her hands. She could not.
The man holding Dmitry grinned at her and with a flash of memory, Bone realized who the killer was…Cain. The Sciariorum. “Kill her, Bone Breaker,” he challenged. “Make the son hate you.”
She nodded, accepting it would happen and with a harsh breath she whispered in the woman’s ear. “Zeh mah shevesh.” The words of her father scraped her throat raw but they were all she could offer in this place of death and truth.
She twisted the woman’s head, no remorse, no hesitation, killing her much faster than she deserved. “For Ninka,” she yelled.
Dmitry moved then, bashing his head into Cain’s nose. Cain twisted from the movement, pushed Dmitry away and what happened next seemed in slow motion to Bone.
Cain pulled out a handgun, aimed and fired at Dmitry. Their proximity to the window hole combined with the force of the gunshot pushed Dmitry to the sill, where he hovered, his gaze meeting hers before he toppled out.