Roman’s hand absorbs the recoil with mine.
The bullet tears through Vadim’s throat, and arterial spray paints the Louis XIV wallpaper in a shade of red that will never match the original décor.
He goes down choking on his own blood.
Hands scrabbling at the wound that has opened his neck.
I slide off Roman, press a quick kiss to his forehead that tastes of sweat and gunpowder and victory, and walk toward the man who murdered his mother and kept her son as a trophy andbuilt an empire on the bodies of girls young enough to be his grandchildren.
His soldiers are all dead.
Luka’s team secures the perimeter, calling out clear after clear while Galina moves through the carnage with her rosary clicking against her palm.
But I’m not looking at anything except Vadim drowning in his own blood on the marble floor where he’s eaten thousands of meals paid for with suffering.
I crouch beside him.
He’s trying to speak, bubbles forming in the red ruin of his throat.
“You called me doctorushka.” My voice comes out calm. “Little doctor. You thought my expertise made me harmless.”
I press the Glock’s barrel against his forehead, feeling the metal indent his skin, watching his eyes widen with the understanding that this is how he dies.
I lean closer until I’m the only thing he can see, until his world narrows to my face and my voice and the gun pressed against his skull. “I am not harmless.”
I empty the magazine.
Chest. Chest. Face. Chest. Chest.
Keep pulling the trigger after the slide locks back, clicking, clicking, clicking, rage and grief and every emotion I’ve buried since November converting to bullets that reshape him into something barely recognizable as human.
“Solnyshko.” Roman’s voice reaches me from the floor where Luka has helped him sit upright against an overturned chair, his face pale with blood loss, but his eyes burning. “He’s dead, lyubov moya. He’s dead, and you killed him and—”
His voice breaks.
“—and I have never wanted you more than I do in this exact moment, Anya. You’re beautiful. You’re perfect.”
I lower the weapon.
Walk back to him.
Drop to my knees beside him and let him pull me close with his one working arm, let him press his forehead against mine, let him breathe the same air I’m breathing.
“You’re the monster now, Anya. My beautiful, terrifying monster.”
“Takes one to marry one.”
I kiss him. Nothing else matters in this moment except the way his mouth tastes and the way his hand fists in my hair and the sound he makes against my lips.
“I need to stop your bleeding,” I tell him when we break apart.
“Da.” His hand finds my jaw, tilts my face toward his, thumb stroking across my cheekbone with tenderness that makes my chest ache. “In a minute. Let me look at you for one more minute, solnyshko. Let me see what we made together.”
The dining hall doors burst open, and I have my empty gun up before I register that the men flowing through are Bratva captains, the ones who swore, the ones who waited for the outcome before declaring allegiance, Chernov limping but alive at the front with his hand pressed against a wound in his side and determination in his eyes.
They see everything.
Vadim’s corpse.
