Much worse.
I watch his hands as he works, steady despite the red crust staining his knuckles. His touch is gentle, careful as he brushes antiseptic across raw flesh and lays clean gauze in place. His brow is furrowed, lips pressed tight, his breath caught in that space between control and collapse.
When he finally ties the bandage, his fingers brush against my collarbone, light as a whisper. He pauses, just for a second, then reaches up to brush hair from my face, tucking the damp strands behind my ear. His palm lingers, warm against my temple, and for the first time since the shot rang out, I feel safe enough to close my eyes.
When I open them again, he’s still there.
He checks my temperature with the back of his hand, muttering something under his breath in Russian that I can’t catch. His eyes, usually cold steel, are softer now. Tired. Haunted.
He doesn’t leave my side. Not when the fire dwindles in the stove, not when the shadows shift across the walls. He sits vigil, his frame bent toward me like he could hold back death itself by sheer force of will.
The silence between us stretches. My defenses, the walls I’ve built so carefully, feel paper-thin in the quiet. The numbness I’ve wrapped around myself—through blood, through war, through every dark choice we’ve made—splinters beneath the weight of his gaze.
The truth presses out of me before I can stop it. My voice is raw, fragile, but the words come anyway.
“I never meant to fall for you.”
His head lifts, eyes locking on mine. He doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, just waits.
“Not you,” I whisper, breath hitching as the confession breaks free. “Not the man who kidnapped me. Not the heir to a blood-soaked name.” My throat tightens, the ache in my chest worse than the wound in my shoulder. “Somewhere along the way… between your fury and your restraint, your sacrifices… I did.”
I turn my face into the pillow, shame burning hotter than pain. “I hate myself for it, but it’s true.”
The silence after feels endless. My heart hammers, every second stretching longer, crueler. I can’t look at him, can’t bear to see pity or triumph or disgust written on his face.
Then his hand closes gently around my wrist. His thumb strokes over the tender skin, slow, reverent, like he’s memorizing the shape of me. I force myself to glance up, and what I see breaks something inside me.
His expression is unguarded. Aching. Every wall he’s spent his life building has fallen in this moment, and the raw truth in his eyes leaves me breathless.
He doesn’t answer with words. He doesn’t need to.
It’s there in the softness of his touch, in the way he looks at me as though I’ve become something sacred, something he doesn’t know how to hold but refuses to let go of.
The weight of that realization fills the room, heavier than smoke, sharper than steel. My body throbs with pain, my mind with fear, but beneath it all something fierce takes root—a connection neither of us chose, but one neither of us can escape.
His thumb keeps tracing slow circles against my wrist, steady, almost absent, but it anchors me more than his words ever could. I should turn away, push him back behind the walls I know too well, but I don’t.
I let him touch me, let him look at me like I’m not the daughter of the man his father murdered, not the woman who once swore to see him ruined.
The fire snaps in the stove, throwing brief light across his face. For the first time, I see the boy he must have been beneath all the violence—the weight of his father’s name carved into his bones long before he was old enough to understand it. It makes my throat ache.
“You should hate me,” I murmur.
His hand tightens slightly around mine. His eyes don’t leave mine, and for once they aren’t cold, aren’t guarded. They’re raw. “I don’t, not anymore anyway.”
The honesty in his voice terrifies me more than any lie could.
I close my eyes, too tired to fight it, too weak to pretend. His hand stays on mine, warm, unyielding, until the darkness finally drags me under again.
Chapter Twenty-Six - Alexei
The final phase begins with silence. No declarations, no grand speeches, no ceremony. Just names on a list—names once scrawled in fury and grief, then sharpened by intelligence, refined by patience.
Each one is a reminder of betrayal. Men who enabled my father’s rise, who closed their eyes to the alliances he struck with crooked politicians, who helped build the machine that chewed through Vivienne’s life and countless others.
This was never about ending the Bratva. That was never my intention. The Bratva is in my blood, my marrow, the bones I stand on.
I can’t carry it forward chained to their sins. Fear alone can’t build an empire anymore; it leaves us stagnant, eating ourselves from the inside. What survives must be leaner. Stronger. Clean, as much as blood can ever be clean.
