“You always were impatient,” I tell him, voice flat, cold. “Couldn’t even wait for the corpse to cool.”
He laughs, sharp and bitter. “You thought you could hide behind your fortress? You think you can keep her from me?”
Clara’s name never leaves his lips, but I hear it anyway. She’s upstairs, hidden with two men I trust with my life. She won’t see this. She won’t have to.
Ivan lunges. Gunfire cracks the air, shattering glass, gouging holes in marble and wood. I move, years of muscle memory making me smaller, harder to hit. My knife catches his arm, blood blooming bright as he curses. He’s strong, but I’m faster. The pistol clatters away, lost under a table.
We’re close now, too close for anything but fists and blades and old hatred. Ivan swings wild, knuckles splitting against my jaw. I taste copper, blink blood from my eye, but my grip stays firm. My father’s knife sinks deep, just under his ribs. He howls, tries to wrench away, but I don’t let go.
“You ruined everything,” he spits, voice gone ragged. “You could have joined me.”
I twist the knife, feeling the hot flood of blood coat my hand. “You could have left well enough alone.”
Ivan buckles, strength leaking out with every heartbeat. I drag him down, face pressed to the cold floor, the old tile stained with a thousand secrets. His hand scrabbles for purchase, eyes wide, mouth working for air.
“I did it for us,” he chokes.
“For yourself,” I say, and then I drive the blade home, ending it.
When the fight is over, the silence is complete. Ivan dies where he stands, blood soaking the entryway, his legacy snuffed out in a moment. I stare down at him, chest heaving, but my hands are steady. My heart isn’t racing; it’s quiet, purposeful. For the first time in months, maybe years, the world feels still.
My men sweep the house, checking for stragglers. I barely hear the reports over the rush of my own pulse.
I wipe the blade on Ivan’s coat, step over his body, and open the front door to let the rain-washed air inside. Every muscle aches, but I won’t let myself collapse. Not until I know Clara is safe.
She’s waiting at the top of the stairs, eyes wide, lips parted in a question I don’t let her ask. I nod once, and it’s enough. It’s finished.
As the last echo of gunfire fades, I exhale. Not relief, not triumph, but something close to it—a quiet pride, maybe, or the dull, uncertain peace that comes with surviving one more night. For once, I’d been one step ahead.
Tonight, that was enough.
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Clara
The safe house is too quiet. Ivan moved me here as soon as his plan was put into action, but now I’m restless without him.
There are voices in the next room, footsteps up and down the hall, but none of it helps. Every sound echoes in my chest, feeding the dread that knots tighter every minute Lukyan is gone.
The guards might as well be ghosts—hard-eyed, unsmiling, watching me like I’m made of glass or maybe a bomb about to go off. They offer nothing but their silence and the weight of their guns.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my hands clenched in my lap, forcing myself to breathe through another spike of panic. The curtains are drawn tight, yellow lamplight turning everything stale and flat. I keep glancing at the door, waiting for it to open.
I listen for his voice in every scrape of a chair, every car that passes on the road outside.
No one comes. The night crawls on, thick and endless.
I try to read. The book lies open in my lap for an hour before I realize I haven’t turned a page. Words blur and slip away, crowded out by darker thoughts. My mind replays every argument we had before he left, every warning I tried to force past the edge of my fear. I should have said more. I should have begged him not to go.
Instead, I’m here: boxed in, powerless, all my sharp words and stubborn pride worth nothing now that he’s stepped out into danger alone.
Restless, I pace the room, counting the scuffs in the floorboards, the cracks in the plaster. I try to write, but my hand shakes too badly to hold the pen steady.
All I manage is a half page of scribbled questions and broken lines. Did he make it? Did the plan hold? Did Ivan see through it all?
I remember the feel of Lukyan’s hand under mine, the way his pulse thrummed as I begged him not to go alone. The memory is sharper than the bite of cold air leaking under the door. I wonder if he thought of me at all when the gunfire started—if he cursed my worry or clung to it.
A guard knocks. His voice is muffled, his words pointless: “All quiet, Miss.” He doesn’t know what to do with my thanks, so he disappears again, leaving the door ajar. I close it with trembling fingers, then press my forehead to the wood, willing it to be solid, willing time to move faster.
I lose track of how long I wait. Minutes tangle into hours. I imagine every possible ending, each one worse than the last. The Lukyan in my mind dies a hundred different ways… alone, outnumbered, betrayed by someone he trusted. My chest aches with every new vision.
