Nothing left to lose.
Ruslan Baranov took me from that hill in New York that night—away from my aunt’s cold control, from the Volkovs and their poisoned bloodline, from the ashes of everything I had once loved.
The car waited at the foot of the hill, its black frame gleaming under the drizzle. I remember the sound of the door shutting behind me, the scent of leather and smoke, the city lights blurring into gold streaks as we drove through the night.
I didn’t ask where we were going. I didn’t care.
All I knew was that I was leaving behind the boy I had been—and whatever innocence had still survived in me.
Ruslan brought me into his empire in Greece—a world unto itself.
Ruslan’s estate rose like a fortress above the Aegean, marble gleaming under endless sun, its walls guarded by men who killed without hesitation.
He gave me quarters in the servants’ wing—a bare room with white walls and a single window overlooking the sea. It should’ve felt like a prison, but to me, it was sanctuary.
His men trained me.
Taught me to fight, to shoot, to negotiate, to kill.
Extortion. Arms trafficking. Money laundering. Assassination. Political bribery.
The curriculum of survival.
From nineteen to twenty-five, I was forged in blood and fire. I rose from a nameless boy to a soldier, then to a capo—a man others obeyed, feared, followed.
Ruslan was a ghost even in his own empire.
He appeared rarely, his visits whispered about like omens. When he did appear, the halls stilled, and the air itself seemed to hold its breath.
Ruslan Baranov had taken me from that hill of blood and rain, and turned me into something else. Something dangerous.
He never asked for repayment. Never demanded allegiance. Not once did he speak of that night, or why he’d come for me when no one else had.
I asked him, once.
He only looked at me with those pale, unreadable eyes and said nothing. The silence was heavier than any truth.
I know he had his reasons—for finding me there, for bringing me to Greece, for shaping me in his own ruthless image. But he kept them buried, and the not knowing festered.
That question haunted me more than any nightmare.
When I turned twenty-five, Ruslan called me into his study—a dark chamber lined with books and silence.
“It is time.” He pushed a leather folder toward me.
When I opened it, the pages were a map of ruin—names, bank accounts, safehouses, a step-by-step route to claim the Volkov empire. All that was left was the one instruction he hadn’t written: finish them.
He didn’t need to tell me what to do.
That night, I returned to Lake Como.
I killed them all—my foster parents who’d ordered my father’s death, the guards who looked the other way.
I watched their mansion burn, fed by the records and ledgers I’d uncovered; their empire went up in smoke.
I took everything they’d built on other people’s suffering—fortune, name, power—and wore it like a wound.
I thought vengeance would cleanse me.
