“Roman.”
Anya is pressed against the wall with her chest heaving and her swollen eye struggling to focus, and her throat mottled purple and yellow. She sees the monster.
And she doesn’t look away.
“You’re bleeding.” Her voice is breathless, wrecked from Dmitri’s hands and the screaming and the smoke filling her lungs.
I step toward her and ignore the fire eating through my side. I cup her face with bloody hands, needing to feel her skin, needing to verify she’s real and breathing and here.
Something cold moves through my chest when I look at her throat. The fingerprints are layered over fingerprints. Dmitri’s. Pavel’s. Evidence of every second I wasn’t fast enough.
“Did he hurt you?” The words come out strangled.
“No. I shot him.” She looks at Pavel’s body, then back at me, and something in her expression is different now. Harder. “My gun jammed and I cleared it, and I shot him.”
“You did perfectly, solnyshko.” I press my forehead against hers and breathe her in. “You were fucking perfect.”
The floor tilts again. Steeper this time. Fifteen degrees and climbing, and below us, water is rushing into compartments that are supposed to be sealed, and the Nerissa is dying faster than anyone planned.
“We have to move. Now.”
I grab her hand.
The deck hits us with wind and chaos. Cold air slaps my face, carrying the smell of burning fiberglass, and the yacht is listing hard to starboard with flames climbing the superstructure and painting the night orange. Guards are running without direction. Buyers in tuxedos are fighting over lifeboats that won’t launch. The ship screams as the hull tears open.
We claw our way up the deck. My side is screaming with every step, the wound pulling tight, but Anya’s grip is iron in mine, and I’m not letting go until we’re off this fucking ship.
I look up.
Vadim is on the upper deck, backlit by the flames, watching his empire burn with the same expression he wore when he told me to marry the chemist or lose everything I’d built. He’s not panicking. He’s not running. Because beyond him, on the helipad, rotors are already spinning.
His eyes find mine across fifty meters of smoke and destruction. He smiles.
It’s not a happy smile. It’s a promise.Run, little wolf. This isn’t over. I will find you. I will take her. I will make you watch.
“Fuck you, Vadim,” I spit, even though he can’t hear me over the roar of the fire and the screaming of the dying ship. “Na huy, suka.”
“Roman!” Anya tugs my arm. “The water!”
I tear my eyes away from my uncle as he turns and walks toward his helicopter, unhurried, untouchable. One day, I’m going to put a bullet between his eyes and watch him drop the way his mercenaries dropped tonight. But not now. Now I have to get her off this ship.
We reach the railing. The Black Sea churns below us, black and cold and six meters down. The jacket Luka insisted I wear is already half off my shoulders, the emergency CO2 bladder built into the lining still intact despite the blood soaking through my shirt.
“Can you swim?”
“Yes.” Anya looks down, and I see terror flash across her face before she buries it. “It’s high.”
“I know.” I strip the jacket off completely, and the movement tears at my wound, sends fresh hot blood down my flank, but I drape the jacket around her shoulders and pull her close. “Put this on. Now. Wrap your legs around me. Don’t let go.”
She climbs me, arms around my neck, thighs locked against my hips, and even now, bleeding and cornered, the weight of her body against mine makes my head swim. Her chest is pressed flat against my chest, and her heart is pounding hard. I can feel it through both our clothes. The USB drive is a hard rectangle against my hip.
I press my lips to her forehead, to the only part of her face that isn’t bruised or bleeding.
“Deep breath, Anya. We go on three.”
The ship groans, a terrifying shriek of metal surrendering to physics.
“One.”
