I move in, crouching down in front of the two of them, forcing their eyes to meet mine.
“You laid your hands on my wife.” My tone is anything but calm. “You ripped her tracker out and left her bleeding like an animal. You enjoyed it when she screamed, didn’t you, Elio?”
He doesn’t deny it. “She’s still alive, isn’t she? Don’t I get a thank-you for that?”
In an instant, I grab him by the collar and slam his head into the ground, the impact cracking through the dirt. The others flinch, but no one dares move.
Mud streaks his face, blood mixing with it, and I plant my boot on the back of his neck, grinding down until he groans.
“You’re not dying quickly.” I press harder. “You will feel every second of what you did to her. And you will die screaming.”
He wheezes out something that might’ve been a laugh…until Konstantin places the bone saw in my hand. Then the color drains from his face.
“What…what are you going to do with that?” he whispers.
“Teach you a lesson you will never forget. Not even in hell.”
Digging his face into the dirt, I let the rage take over as I slice through the length of his back, his screams adding to the beauty of the moment. I cut through flesh and grate against bone, just beside his spine.
When he cries, it doesn’t slow me. It feeds something feral inside me. I carve down the other side, the earth drinking his blood as the crack of his ribs echoes, flesh splitting beneath my hands.
Dropping the saw, I reach inside him, fingers slick with blood, and rip out his lungs, setting them carefully on his back like butchered wings.
“You are not laughing now, are you?”
He shudders, twitching in the dirt, his body broken, but he’s not dead yet.
“No, no, please!” Daniil breaks completely, sobbing like a coward.
I shove his body down, the saw slicing across his back. His scream tears through the air, and I leave him with his lungs on his back too, his face angled toward Elio so they can watch each other die.
When I straighten, my gaze drifts over to the rest of their men. The fear hits them all at once. Some beg. Others sit in silence, knowing there is no point. They will die today.
Lucky for them, I do not have time to drag this out. I want to get back to my wife, who needs me.
Picking up my gun, I level it at the first man’s skull and pull the trigger. One by one, they fall, and I feel nothing but the cold clarity of vengeance.
When the last one collapses at my feet, I walk away. From the blood, the wreckage, from death itself.
Because I have something worth living for now. And she’s the only thing that matters.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
FIONA
ONE MONTH LATER
It’shard to let things go. Especially the things that once defined you. The things you clung to like lifelines because they made sense in a world that didn’t.
But sometimes those very things—the beliefs, the convictions, the iron-clad rules you built your identity around—start to feel like chains instead of anchors. They stop fitting, and letting them go isn’t weakness. It’s growth.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself when I think about how much my life has shifted in just a few short weeks.
A month ago, I thought I knew who I was. Now I sit behind a desk I never imagined would belong to me, in an office with my name on the glass, and it still doesn’t feel real.
The sun spills across the polished surface—mine, all of it mine. I run my fingers along the edge, almost expecting it to vanish beneath my touch. Like I’ll blink and find myself back in the DA’s office. Back in my scratchy government-issued chair. Back to being a woman who thought justice was black and white.
But I’m not that woman anymore.
