I’m looking out the window, at the sky flushed with the last tinges of sunset. No stars yet.

Maybe Adrian knows where Yelena went. He won’t tell me if he does.

His voice startles me, speaking after so many hours of silence.

“You underestimate my father,” he says.

I look over at him, considering this statement.

“I don’t think I do,” I say, at last.

“He’s brilliant,” Adrian says. “And relentless. He’s a force of nature. Anyone who’s tried to stand before him has been swept away.”

“Is that why you betrayed Yelena for him?” I ask Adrian, coldly.

His face flushes, and I can see his arms straining against the rope holding his wrists bound behind him.

“Yelena turned her back on us,” he says, coldly. “She proved herself to be exactly what my father always said she was—a woman, with a woman’s weakness.”

“You and your father have a man’s arrogance.”

“The endgame will tell if it was arrogance or accuracy,” Adrian says.

His use of the word “endgame” jolts me.

“You play chess?” I ask him.

“Of course I do,” he says, coldly. “All the best masters are Russian.”

A ridiculous statement—I could ask him, “What about Jose Raul Capablanca, or Magnus Carlsen?” But that’s an argument we would have if we sat across from each other in this room as brothers-in-law. Not as bitter enemies.

In another life, we could have been friends. Yelena told me that Adrian is an athlete too—that he did boxing, fencing, and gymnastics in school, that he likes to run and swim. She told me of his humor, and his kindness to her.

I don’t see any of that in his face now. Just hatred, and the burning desire to finish the task he failed to complete in the Orthodox cathedral.

“This house is a shithole,” Adrian says. “And your father was half-senile. We did you a favor killing him.”

He’s trying to make me lose my temper. Maybe because he doesn’t want to be used as bait against his father. Maybe he thinks I’m stupid enough to untie him so I can beat the shit out of him better.

What he doesn’t realize is that all my wild emotion has been burned away. I’m finally taking my father’s advice—the last piece he gave me.

Play the endgame like a machine.

I’m a fucking android now. Nothing will stray me from my course. Rodion dies. Yenin dies. Adrian dies. There will be no loose ends this time. No forgiveness. No enemies left alive to seek their revenge on me and my family.

The room is almost fully dark now. Adrian looks unnerved that I didn’t even respond to his taunt.

“I wonder if you’ll feel sorrow when I kill your father in front of you,” I say to him. “I did, when you shot Papa in the face. My father was a good man, and he loved me. I don’t think you can say the same. You might be surprised by the relief that washes over you. If you’re alive to see it happen at all.”

Adrian looks frightened, and that makes him look young.

A seed of sympathy tries to sprout up inside of me. I crush it at once.

My phone buzzes in my pocket with a text message from Mikolaj:

They’re coming.

I go back to the window so I can see the three black SUVs creeping down Meyer Avenue, with Yenin’s armored car in the center of the group.

My mother’s music room is one of the only rooms in the house that faces the street, unobscured by the massive oak and elm trees crowding round the house.

I stand in front of the colored-glass window that runs floor to ceiling, almost the exact same height as my 6’7 frame.

Now it’s me who takes out Vale’s phone and dials.

After a moment, Yenin answers. He doesn’t actually speak—just picks up the call, listening silently.

“I must have a terrible memory,” I say, “because I thought we were meeting in Midewin.”

Two of the SUVs are pulling up to the curb. I watch Yenin’s men jump out, dressed in dark clothing, their faces covered by Halloween masks. I see a Michael Meyers, a Slenderman, a Jigsaw, and a Scarecrow. In their hands, they clutch dark, cylindrical objects that I recognize too well. I sigh, knowing what’s coming next.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I say to Yenin.

With that, I flip on the lamp next to the window, illuminating the room in which I stand. I can’t see Yenin inside his car, but I know the light will draw his eye up to my window. He’ll see me standing there.

With three swift strides, I grab the back of Adrian’s chair and drag him over in front of the window. Now it’s Yenin’s son who is silhouetted in front of the glass, while I stand to the side of the window frame, shielded from any gunfire.

“I’ve got your son,” I tell him. “Your daughter, too.” That part is a lie, but I doubt Yenin knows that. Wherever Yelena might have gone, it’s not back to her father. “Will you sacrifice them both to get your revenge?”

“I’m only sixty,” Yenin says, with chilling calm. “I can make more.”

Responding to his unseen signal, his men rush my house. I don’t see Rodion’s massive frame amongst them, but he must be here, maybe in Yenin’s armored car. There’s no way Yenin would come to the last dance without his top lieutenant.

I stay next to the window, watching.

Just as I’d hoped . . . just as I’d assumed . . . Yenin has stepped out of his armored car. He can’t help himself. He has to watch the culmination of his efforts. Not through glass—out in the open. Unprotected.

There’s at least a dozen soldiers, masked and armed. They break down the front door and throw their incendiary grenades inside. I hear a deafening boom, and the entire house shakes on its ancient frame.

I’m wearing a Kevlar vest, but that’s not going to do much good against grenades, or the collapse of the entire structure. I immediately start running toward the back of the house.

“WAIT!” Adrian screams after me.

I don’t even look back at him. As the next grenade detonates, I hear Adrian’s chair topple over behind me.

I run to the back staircase. Instead of going down, I’m going up—all the way to the rooftop. I spent the last few hours in my family home in my mother’s sanctuary. Now I’m going to my father’s.

I sprint across the deck, beneath the pergola laden with grapes so heavily ripe that they’ve almost turned to wine on the vines. I see my father’s favorite chair, next to the little table where we always set up his chessboard. His worn woolen blanket still sits neatly folded on the seat cushion.

Already smoke billows up from the windows below. The house creaks and groans as the ancient wood succumbs to the immense heat of the fire.

I hear gunfire breaking out on all sides beneath me. Mikolaj and his men are attacking Yenin’s soldiers, closing in from two directions, aided by Bosco Bianchi Antonio Marino, Stefano, Zio, and Tappo.

Still, we’re slightly outnumbered, so I’ve got to get down there. This battle has to be swift and decisive, before the cops arrive. Yenin isn’t slipping away from me this time.

Reaching the corner of the patio, I scrabble across onto the branches of the ancient oak tree that grows right next to the house. I’ve lived here all my life—I know a dozen different places where I can climb down unseen.