Page 86 of The Pakhan's Widow


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"We need to leave," Dimitri says, his eyes on the cracking ceiling.

But Mikhail doesn't move. He just stands there before the ruined altar, blood spreading across his expensive suit, that cold smile still on his face.

"You go," he says quietly. "This is where it ends for me. Where it was always going to end."

I see it then, the resignation in his eyes. He's not planning to escape. He's planning to die here, in this crumbling monument to everything he tried to destroy.

"Mikhail," Dimitri starts, but the older man cuts him off.

"No speeches,Dima. No last words of wisdom or regret." His smile turns sad. "I made my choices. I lived by the old ways, and I'll die by them. But you…" He looks at me, and for just a moment, I see the man he might have been before revenge consumed him. "You take care of him. Make sure he doesn't forget that hope you're so full of."

The ceiling cracks louder, a sound like thunder. A massive beam breaks free and crashes down twenty feet to our left, sending up a cloud of dust and debris.

"We're leaving," Dimitri says, reaching for my hand.

But Mikhail moves.

It happens so fast I barely process it. One moment he's standing still, resigned to his fate. The next, he's lunging forward, his hand coming up from his side. Moonlight glints off steel as a knife appears in his grip, the blade aimed directly at my chest.

42

DIMITRI

Time fractures into crystalline shards of awareness.

My Glock is already rising, my finger finding the trigger with the muscle memory of decades. The world narrows to a single point—the space between Mikhail's cold blue eyes.

I fire.

The shot echoes through the ruined chapel like the voice of God himself, reverberating off ancient stone walls that have witnessed centuries of prayers and confessions. The bullet finds its mark with perfect precision—right between those calculating eyes that once looked at me with something like paternal pride.

Mikhail's forward momentum stops as if he's hit an invisible wall. The knife slips from his fingers, clattering against stone with a sound that seems impossibly loud in the sudden silence. His eyes go wide, shock and disbelief written across features that are already slackening. A perfect hole mars his forehead, dark and final.

He stumbles backward, his expensive suit now just cloth covering a corpse. His body hits the floor with a heavy thud, limbs sprawling at unnatural angles. Those blue eyes that taught me everything about the Bratva, about power and survival, stare sightlessly at the crumbling ceiling above.

Dead.

Mikhail Volkov is finally, truly dead.

I should feel something. Grief for the man who was once like a brother. Regret for what we could have been if ambition hadn't poisoned him. But all I feel is cold certainty and overwhelming relief.

"Alina." Her name tears from my throat as I holster my weapon and move to her. My hands find her shoulders, her arms, her face, checking frantically for injuries. I pull her against me for just a heartbeat, feeling the rapid hammer of her pulse, the warmth of her body. Alive. She's alive.

Above us, the ceiling groans like a dying beast. Dust and small stones rain down, pattering against the floor like deadly hail. A massive crack splits the vaulted ceiling, spreading like lightning across ancient plaster and stone.

“Let’s get out of here." I grab her hand, my fingers threading through hers, and we run.

The chapel doors are blocked by fallen debris, so we head for a side passage I spotted earlier. Behind us, I hear the shriek of stressed stone, the crash of falling masonry. The entire structure is coming down, centuries of history collapsing in on itself.

We race through corridors thick with dust and smoke. A beam crashes down ahead of us, and I yank Alina to the side, shieldingher body with mine as splinters and stone fragments pepper my back. The eight-pointed star tattoo on my chest feels like it's burning through my shirt, a reminder of everything I am, everything I've survived.

"Keep moving!" I shout over the roar of destruction.

We leap over fallen stones, duck under sagging doorframes. The monastery is a maze of collapsing passages, and I'm navigating by instinct and memory, praying I'm leading us toward safety and not deeper into the death trap.

Alina's hand is tight in mine, her grip never faltering even as her breath comes in gasps. She's keeping pace, trusting me to get us out. That trust is more precious than anything I've ever possessed.

And more frightening. What if I fail?