My chest felt empty. Hollow.
But I had enemies to hunt and to do that, I needed backup.
Later — Airport Tarmac
Konstantin stood beside the jet, Chicago-bound in a few days. He looked at me, saw the storm raging inside me that I tried unsuccessfully to hide.
“You shouldn’t have left her.”
A snort escaped me, making little clouds in the air. “Weren’t you the one telling me I should terminate my connection to her? Hell, you initially told me to terminate her.”
“Yes. But you never listen to me.” He shrugged one shoulder and met my gaze. “They are going to try to get to you through her.”
“I know.” I glanced off in the distance, the icy wind stinging my cheeks. It was unseasonably cold for this early December. Winter was definitely coming in like a banshee.
Konstantin and I had talked on the drive here. I told him my suspicions, and he confirmed he’d had the same thoughts. I didn’t tell him that I had received information from inside Russia that there was a crack in what we thought was an impenetrable wall.
“Still, you’re doing the right thing.”
“Honestly, I don’t care.”
He smirked faintly. “And they say you don’t have feelings.”
I boarded without commenting. Feelings didn’t matter at the present time. Results did.
And I would not return without the confirmation and manpower to destroy whoever wanted to fuck with my friends… and take her from me. I wasn’t doing this for Boris, or for Konstantin, or for any of my other brothers in the Bratva.
I was doing this to ensure I had men that I trusted implicitly.
Moscow, Russia
The jet touched down on Russian soil like a blade settling into a sheath.
Cold slapped me the moment the door opened. Winter wasn’t coming here—it permanently resided here. Snow whipped and swirled across the runway, hard and stinging, driven sideways by a punishing wind. The kind of weather that stripped softness from men and made steel out of what remained.
I breathed it in. Let it burn through me.
This place made me. Yes, my brothers in the Bratva and I had all immigrated with our parents to America when we were small, but my father had sent me back to train with his youngest brother each summer. He didn’t believe in having a weak son.
Which was why I knew it could unmake me too.
A convoy waited on the tarmac. Black SUVs. Armed security. My past, lined up neatly and waiting for orders.
And beside the first vehicle?—
Viktor. My uncle.
Older than me by a little more than a decade, built like a granite wall in a coat too thin for the weather. Face carved in stone. A thick scar that ran over the top of his ear from the time he refused anesthesia and let one of our doctors sew it back on.
My boots crunched over ice as I stepped down the stairs from the plane. The wind gusted and sucked the air from my lungs. Viktor watched me like he was measuring what remained of the man he trained.
We didn’t hug. We didn’t shake hands. We just nodded.
“Maksim,” he rumbled. “I was sorry to have to give you the news that you have an enemy in your ranks. But my loyalty is to family. Therefore, when I found out, I called.”
“While I wish you’d been wrong, I thank you, Uncle,” I answered in Russian. “And Boris thanks you for the reinforcements.” His comment about loyalty to family was one I’d heard often from him over the years. He didn’t think much of the Bratva in America. He believed loyalty belonged to actual blood family—not chosen brothers. Which was why I needed to tell him about Sofia’s pregnancy. It would make things clear to him.
“But of course. I will always have your back. However, this isn’t for Boris or any of those other so-called brothers you have. If it was anyone but you, I would not be offering up my men.”
