The shooting stops.
Yuri Chernov steps into the firelight with his hands raised and blood spreading across his shoulder from a wound that looks fresh. My cousin. The one Vadim promised my chair if I die. The one who would inherit everything I’ve built, including Anya, if my uncle’s men put a bullet through my skull tonight.
Four men behind him, weapons lowered, faces I recognize from a dozen Bratva meetings where they sat at Vadim’s right hand and nodded along to everything he said.
“Give me one reason not to put a bullet through your skull,” I say.
“Vadim sent sixteen of us to kill you both.” Chernov spits blood into the snow, and his voice is rough with pain. “I brought four men who feel the same way I do. Put two bullets in Vadim’s captain on the way here. That leaves ten of his loyalists in those trees.”
“Why?”
“My sister was on one of those trafficking ships.”
That’s all I need to hear.
Automatic fire erupts from the treeline.
One of Chernov’s soldiers takes a round through the throat and drops without a sound, blood spraying black against the snow.
I count fast: Me. Anya. Chernov. His three remaining men. Six of us against ten of Vadim’s loyalists.
Anya’s hand finds my shoulder. Steady. Warm. Her fingers dig in hard, and I know she’s fighting with my cum still wet between her thighs and my coat the only thing keeping her warm.
“Trust the math,” she says.
I look at Chernov across the firelight.
“Defensive circle,” I shout. “NOW.”
They move as one unit. Chernov’s three remaining men fall into formation with weapons up. Anya pressed against my side, her Glock steady, her body still trembling from everything, but her hands absolutely still.
We form a ring around the bonfire with the dark shape of the dacha at our backs.
The next volley hits before I can breathe.
ROMAN - Moskva Riverbank, 23:34
Eight of Vadim’s men are still standing in those trees, and I’ve got six rounds left in my Makarov, and Anya is at my left flank, firing a Glock with hands that should be shaking but aren’t, and I can’t stop watching her even though watching her is going to get me killed.
She drops a man with two rounds to the chest.
The recoil travels up her arms, and she adjusts her stance the way Luka taught her last month in the basement range, feet shoulder-width apart, weight forward. The coat rides up when she moves, and I see the red marks on her thighs. The steam rising from the barrel. I don’t look at the enemy. I look at her.
“Three o’clock,” she says, and her voice is calm and cold, and it goes straight to my cock even now.
Two more shots. Another body drops.
I’ll murder anyone who tries to take her from me.
“Roman.” Chernov’s voice cuts through the gunfire from somewhere behind me. “We need to move; they’re flanking east.”
I scan the treeline, and he’s right, I can see movement through the birches, three figures working around our position toward the riverbank where the snow slopes down to the frozen Moskva. If they get behind us, we’re dead, all of us. Anya will die, and I can’t let that happen.
“Anya.” I grab her arm, and she’s freezing under my fingers, her skin ice-cold from standing in the snow wearing nothing but cotton. “Tree line. Go. Luka’s got the vehicles two hundred meters north.”
She shakes her head and fires another round, and someone in the trees screams. “I’m not leaving you.”
“That wasn’t a fucking request.”
