My blood goes cold. “How close?”
“His helicopter landed at Volkovskaya forty minutes ago.” Chernov’s eyes flick between me and Anya. “He’s not coming to us. He’s waiting. He sent a message.”
“What message?”
“‘The wolf cub can come home now. I’ll be in your father’s chair.’” Chernov swallows hard. “He says he has a wedding gift.”
Anya’s hand finds mine and squeezes. I feel it even through the weakness.
“Then let’s not keep him waiting.” Her voice comes out steady, cold, every inch the Tsaritsa she’s claimed to be.
I love her.
Standing in this frozen factory with thirty-two armed men and a body on the floor and a war waiting, I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything.
“Move out.” I let my voice carry. “We end this today.”
Anya walks beside me toward the door, her hand warm in my weak grip, and I don’t let go.
ANYA - Volkovskaya Estate, 06:23
The tunnel swallows us whole. I refrain from grabbing Roman’s arm and dragging him back toward the factory, where at least the danger was familiar.
Eighteen steps down the stone passage before the ceiling drops low enough that Roman has to duck. He winces when the movement pulls at his shoulder, his jaw going tight with pain he refuses to acknowledge.
Twenty-three steps before Luka signals the first halt, and I press myself against the damp wall beside Roman, close enough that our arms touch.
Thirty-one steps before Dmitri Antonovich, the soldier with the shrapnel scar across his left temple, leans close to my ear and whispers that he has a daughter named Katya who just turned four and he hasn’t held her in eight months and he wanted me to know her name in case something happens tonight because hedoesn’t want to die as just another body count in someone else’s war.
I squeeze his forearm once, hard, and he nods and pulls back, and we keep moving.
Roman’s hand finds the small of my back when the tunnel narrows further, guiding me forward through darkness.
“Ostorozhno,” he murmurs against my hair when I stumble over an uneven flagstone, and his fingers spread wider across my lower back, holding me upright, holding me close. “Careful, solnyshko, I need you in one piece.”
The endearment settles into my chest and stays there, warm and fierce, while we descend deeper into the earth beneath the estate where his uncle has been waiting for twenty years to finish what he started in a church full of bodies.
Galina appears from a side passage so suddenly that three soldiers have weapons raised before anyone registers who she is, her small frame wrapped in the same black wool she always wears, rosary beads clutched in her fingers, eyes blazing with fury.
“Galina.” Roman’s voice cracks on her name, and his entire body changes, the Pakhan fading and the boy emerging. “Bozhe moy, I thought he’d killed you, they said he had you in the east wing—”
“He tried,” she cuts him off with the sharp dismissal of a woman who has survived worse men and refuses to be impressed by this one’s cruelty. “Kept me in a locked room for three days, wanted to use me against you, threatened things he thought would frighten me into compliance.” Her hand finds Roman’s cheek, her palm covering the jaw. “I survived Stalin’s purges when I was younger than your bride. Vadim Volkov is nothing but a man with borrowed power and borrowed time.”
Roman’s eyes close for a moment.
The sound he makes isn’t quite human, and I step closer on instinct, pressing my body against his side, sliding my arm around his waist because he’s shaking and I don’t think he realizes it.
“Ya s toboy,” I tell him, the Russian feeling strange and necessary on my tongue. “I’m with you, Roman, whatever happens up there, I’m with you.”
Galina’s attention shifts to me, and I force myself to hold her gaze
“You love him.”
“Da.”
“You’ll kill for him.”
“Already have.”
