I turn just as Yevgeni lunges from his knees with a knife in his hand, blood still streaming from his shattered nose, and he’s not coming for me—he’s going for Anya, blade aimed at her exposed throat while her hands are occupied with mine.
My body moves without thought.
I throw myself between them, my damaged shoulder taking the impact as I barrel into Yevgeni’s charge, and the knife meant for Anya’s throat buries itself in my left arm instead, punching through muscle and scraping bone in a burst of white-hot agony that makes me roar.
But I don’t stop.
I grab his head with my left, squeezing with my right biceps, and I twist, pouring every ounce of rage and fear and desperate love into the motion, and his neck snaps.
Yevgeni drops.
I stand over his body, swaying, knife still embedded in my arm and blood running down to drip from my fingertips onto his cooling corpse.
“Anyone else?”
Silence.
Chernov drops to one knee, fist over his heart. “Pakhan. Tsaritsa. Blood and steel.”
The others follow, one by one, thirty-two men kneeling on concrete while dawn starts to bleed red through the factory’s grimy windows.
Anya’s hand finds my back again, warm and steady, and her voice comes close to my ear.
“You took a knife for me.”
“I’d take a thousand.” I turn my head enough to see her face, pale and furious and so fucking beautiful I can barely breathe. “You’re mine, Anya. Every inch of you. Anyone who tries to take you from me learns what happens when you threaten a wolf’s mate.”
Her eyes darken with something that isn’t just anger, something hot and hungry that makes my cock stir.
“We need to get that blade out. And then you need to tell me about Vadim.”
“There’s something you need to know.” I let her guide me toward the back room, away from the kneeling men and the cooling corpse. “About the massacre. About why this is more than succession.”
* * *
She cuts my shirt away with steady hands while I sit on a crate in the small office Chernov cleared for us, the knife still juttingfrom my left arm because she won’t let me remove it until she’s ready to deal with the bleeding.
“Talk.” She assembles supplies from the medical kit—gauze, antiseptic, and suture thread. “While I work.”
“The crypt massacre.” The words taste like copper on my tongue. “When I was twelve. The Chechen hit squad killed every Volkov male and my mother. I thought I survived because I was lucky. Wrong place, wrong time. Hiding in the crypt while they slaughtered everyone upstairs.”
Anya’s hands pause on the gauze, just for a moment.
“Three years ago, I found proof.” I destroy the last of her illusions about my family. “Vadim orchestrated it. Hired the mercenaries. Gave them the floor plans and the timing.”
She sets down the gauze and looks at me, really looks, putting pieces together.
“The hit squad didn’t miss you.” Her voice comes out soft, horrified. “They were told to miss you.”
“Da.” The word scrapes my throat raw. “Vadim killed my family and then raised me as his heir. Seventeen years of calling himdyadya. Letting him shape me. Becoming exactly what he wanted because I didn’t know.”
Anya doesn’t say anything. She takes my jaw in her hands and tips my face up.
“He made you to be a weapon.” Her thumbs stroke across my cheekbones, and her voice comes out fierce. “Forged you in guilt and grief and silence. And you still chose to be something else. You still chose the ledger burn. Not trafficking humans. The color system, when you could have just taken.”
“That’s not enough—”
“It’s everything.” She cuts me off, her grip tightening on my face. “He created a monster, and you chose to have a conscience anyway. That’s not weakness, Roman. That’s revolution.”
