“What do I need?”
“An empire.” She brings my knuckles to her mouth and presses her lips against the wolf tattoo. “That requires different hands. Hands that pull triggers. Hands that sign death warrants. Hands that hold your Tsaritsa when she’s covered in your enemies’ blood.”
“Tsaritsa.” I curl my working fingers around hers, the grip pathetic but present. “That’s a dangerous title to claim. It makes you a target for everyone who wants the throne.”
“Good.” Her mouth curves into something cold that makes me hard despite everything. “Let them come learn that the chemist knows forty-three ways to stop a heart. Twenty of them look like natural causes, and the other twenty-three make excellent examples.”
I pull her closer—awkward, graceless, my left hand barely able to grip her vest—and she comes, settling into the space between my knees, her palms flat on my chest, and her face inches from mine.
“Mishka?”
“Safe,” she breathes out. “Kolya has him. He’s dark.”
“Forever.” I catch her jaw with my left hand, thumb stroking her cheekbone because I need to touch her, need to feel her warmth against my damaged skin. “Your brother lives, or I die making it true. That’s a blood oath, Anya. Non-negotiable.”
She leans into my palm for just a moment, lets me feel the weight of her exhaustion, and then she straightens, and the Tsaritsa is back in her eyes.
“The men are restless.” She pulls away to collect the medical kit, checking supplies. “Thirty-three of them stayed, but having me give orders while you were unconscious didn’t sit well with some of the old guard. Chernov’s been managing them, but there’s been talk.”
“What kind of talk?”
“The kind that questions whether a man who needed a woman to save him can still lead.” Her voice stays flat, but I can see the anger underneath it, the fury she’s been swallowing while she kept me alive. “The kind that suggests maybe your Tsaritsa should know her place.”
Something dark and hot floods through my chest, and my left hand clenches, the weak muscles protesting.
“Show me.”
* * *
Chernov gathers them on the main floor of the factory, sodium lights buzzing overhead and casting shadows that make everyone look half-dead. I’m standing only because Anya’s hand is pressed against the small of my back, where no one can see it, her fingers a steady pressure against my spine that keeps my legs from buckling.
Thirty-three men in a loose circle. Armed. Watching.
Some of them look at me with respect, with loyalty. Others are looking differently, their eyes flicking to my right hand hanging useless at my side and my left hand shaking slightly despite my best efforts to control it.
The largest of them steps forward before I can speak.
Yevgeni. Old guard. He’s been with the Volkovskaya since before I was born and thinks that gives him the right to question.
“Pakhan. We’re glad to see you recovered.”
“Are you.”
He doesn’t flinch, but his eyes drop to my hands again, weighing whether the wounded wolf is still dangerous enough to fear.
“The men have questions.” He moves closer. “About capability. About leadership. About whether a Pakhan who needed a woman to drag him from the river and cut him open on a table can still—”
I move before he finishes the sentence.
My right hand is dead weight, but my left can still grab, can still pull, can still yank him off balance, and I use my forehead instead of my fists, driving it into his nose, cartilage crunching, and blood spraying hot across my face in a burst of copper-scented satisfaction.
He staggers back, hands flying to his shattered nose, and I follow because a wounded wolf is still a wolf, my knee driving into his gut while he’s still reeling. When he doubles over, I wrap my left forearm around his throat and squeeze until his face goes purple, and his hands claw uselessly at my arm.
“You want to question my capability?” I tighten my grip and feel his struggles getting weaker, his body going limp against mine. “You want to measure my leadership? I killed my first man when I was fourteen years old. I’ve put more bodies in the Moskva than you’ve had hot meals, and I didn’t use my hands for most of them.”
The other men are frozen around us, weapons half-raised, watching their Pakhan choke the life out of a man twice his size with one arm and a broken body. Adrenaline is the only reason I can move, the only reason I can lock my good arm and my dead one around his head and twist with everything I have left.
“My hands are damaged.” I release Yevgeni, and he drops to his knees, gasping and choking, blood streaming from his nose onto the concrete. “But I can still tear out throats with my teeth if I need to, and right now I’m feeling very fucking motivated.”
