His grip on my wrist disappears as both hands fly to his face, blood and vitreous humor streaming between his fingers, and I stagger backward until my spine hits the wall.
Mishka’s face flashes behind my eyes.
I can’t die here.I won’t fucking die here.
“You fucking cunt—” Dmitri lurches toward me with one ruined eye socket streaming crimson and the other burning with something worse than rage. His hands find my throat before I can run, and suddenly I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything except claw at his wrists while the world narrows to a pinpoint of light and my lungs scream for air.
“I was going to make it good for you.” His thumbs press harder into my windpipe, and the edges of my vision go grey. “Now I’m going to make it hurt.”
The door explodes inward.
Roman crosses the distance in three strides, and his fist connects with Dmitri’s temple. I hear the crack of bone against bone. Dmitri’s grip goes slack, and I slide down the wall, gasping, choking, dragging air into lungs that burn with every breath while Roman slams his cousin’s skull into the marble floor once, twice, until Dmitri stops thrashing and goes limp.
But Roman doesn’t let him stay down.
He drags the half-conscious body away from me by the collar, flips Dmitri onto his back, and drops his full weight across the man’s hips to pin him flat.
“You touched her face.”
He takes Dmitri’s right hand in both of his.
“This hand.” Roman examines it with detached curiosity while Dmitri groans and tries to focus his remaining eye. “This hand hit my wife.”
Three fingers break at once with a sound that makes my stomach lurch. Dmitri’s scream tears through the office, rawand animal, and his legs kick uselessly against the marble, but Roman’s weight keeps him pinned.
Roman rotates the wrist joint past its natural limit until something inside it pops wetly.
“Roman—” My voice comes out shredded, barely a whisper. “Roman, the USB—”
“I know.” He doesn’t look at me. His entire focus is on the man bleeding beneath him. “I also know my cousin was planning to fuck my wife after he choked the fight out of her. Weren’t you, Dmitri?”
Another finger breaks. The screaming gets louder.
“Weren’t you?”
“Yes—” Dmitri’s voice is a wet gurgle through blood and tears. “Yes, fuck, please—”
“Na huy.” Roman draws his Makarov from his shoulder holster with the smooth motion of a man who’s done this a thousand times. “This is for hitting her.”
The first shot takes Dmitri’s left kneecap.
“This is for threatening her.”
The second shot takes the right.
“And this—” Roman presses the barrel against the ruined socket where Galina’s hairpin did its work, and his voice finally cracks, finally shows something underneath the ice. “This is for thinking you could ever take what’s mine.”
The third shot paints the marble red.
Silence crashes through the office like a wave.
Roman stays kneeling over the body for three heartbeats, four, five. Then he rises in a single fluid motion, holsters his weapon, and turns to face me.
I’m still pressed against the wall with my bare feet tucked under the ruins of my dress and my throat on fire and blood drying on my cheekbone from where Dmitri’s knuckles split the skin. My hands won’t stop shaking. My vision keeps blurring atthe edges. I drove a platinum hairpin into a man’s eye socket, and I don’t recognize the woman who did that.
Roman crosses the room and drops to his knees in front of me.
“Solnyshko.” His hands frame my face so gently that it makes my eyes burn. “Look at me.”
