Nora's POV.
Railway Station Lot:
I couldn't feel my body anymore.
Only the cold metal of the gun barrel digging into my sternum and the white-hot agony in Mikhail's eyes.
He had just shown me the photographs.
Me at a café with Lucien Hayes.
Elias at the bar with the same man.
My voice on a recording begging for escape.
None of it was real, and all of it was real enough to kill us.
I laughed until I choked on it.
Until tears and snot and blood mixed on my face.
"Aleksei was right,"I rasped, tasting copper. "I was never a person to you. Just a toy you could break and go running back to her the second she crooked her finger."
Mikhail flinched like I'd shot him.
"Don't,"he warned, voice shaking with something feral.
"Ingrid,"I spat anyway,
