She's already been forced into this world, forced to marry me, forced to navigate the brutal politics of the Bratva. But this—taking a life with her own hands, her father’s life—this is a line that once crossed, changes everything.
I take another step, close enough now to see the tears streaming down her face, to see the way her finger hovers over the trigger.Her hands are rock-steady, but her chest is heaving with barely controlled emotion.
"Let me do it," I say quietly. "Let me take this burden. You don't need to carry it."
Viktor laughs a wet, bubbling sound that makes my jaw clench. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, mixing with the crimson spreading across his shoulder. The shoulder wound is worse than it looks. He's losing too much blood, and from the sound of his breathing, the bullet might have nicked a lung.
If he doesn’t get medical help soon, he will die.
"How touching," Viktor rasps, his accent thicker with pain. "The great Dimitri Morozov, trying to save his little bride's soul." He coughs, more blood spattering his lips. "But we both know she's already damned. She married you, didn't she?"
"Shut up." My hand moves to my weapon, ready to end this myself. To spare Alina this choice. This moment. This memory that will haunt her.
But Alina speaks first, her voice cutting through the tension like a blade. "You don't get to talk about damnation. Not after what you've done."
"What I've done?" Viktor's laugh turns into a wet cough. "Everything I did, I did for our family. For our legacy. To keep us strong in a world that devours the weak."
"You killed your own daughter." Alina's voice cracks on the words, but the gun doesn't waver.
"I made strategic decisions." Viktor's eyes flash with the old arrogance, even now. Viktor's expression twists into something ugly and he fixes his gaze on Alina. "Your precious little sister. Soweak. So pathetic. Do you want to know how she died, Alina? Do you want to know what her last words were?"
I see Alina flinch, see the gun dip slightly. "Don't listen to him," I say urgently. "He's trying to manipulate you. It's what he does."
"Papa, please." Alina's voice breaks, and I see her arms start to shake. "Don't do this."
But Viktor has always been a man who can't resist twisting the knife. Who sees vulnerability as an opportunity, love as a weakness to exploit.
"She begged," he says, his voice gaining strength from cruelty. "Cried for you. Called your name as I wrapped my hands around her throat." He demonstrates with his free hand, fingers curling into a strangling grip, his face contorting with the memory. "She couldn't understand why I would do it. Kept asking 'why, Papa, why?' Like a child." His smile is horrible. "She was too weak to fight. Just like you're too weak to pull that trigger."
The words hang in the air like poison.
I watch Alina's face. Watch the tears stop. Watch something behind her eyes shift and crystallize into something harder, colder.
"Alina," I say carefully, recognizing the change. "Whatever you decide, I'm with you. But make sure it's your choice. Not his."
She doesn't respond, doesn't acknowledge me at all. Her entire being is focused on the man who gave her life, who shaped her childhood, who destroyed everything she loved.
The man who's about to learn that he's always underestimated his eldest daughter.
I watch Alina's shoulders straighten. Watch the trembling stop. Watch something fundamental shift in her posture.
"You're wrong," she says, her voice steady as stone. "I'm not weak. Not anymore."
"Alina—" I start, but she's already moving.
Three shots ring out in rapid succession, the sound deafening in the narrow corridor, each one precise, controlled, placed exactly where Sergei took his fatal wounds. Center mass. Right over the heart.
25
ALINA
The gun weighs a thousand pounds in my hand.
I stare down at my father's body, at the three dark holes in his chest that mirror the wounds that killed Sergei. Blood spreads across the concrete floor in a widening pool, creeping toward my feet. I should step back. Should move. Should feel something.
But there's nothing. Just a vast, echoing emptiness where my heart used to be.
"Alina." Dimitri's voice comes from somewhere far away, even though he's standing right beside me. "Give me the gun."
