The convoy pulled away from the clinic. Behind us, I could hear shouts as our people finished securing the facility—evidence for the feds, leverage for negotiations, proof of what Brand had been doing in his basement.
I didn't care about any of it.
The only thing that mattered was the woman in my arms. Breathing. Whole. Alive.
I pressed my lips to her forehead and made promises I intended to keep.
Never again. Never out of my sight. Never outside protection.
She'd probably fight me on all of it once she woke up. Would probably call me overprotective and controlling and a thousand other words that meant I love you but you're too much.
I didn't care about that either.
She was alive. Everything else was negotiable.
The city blurred past the windows as we drove toward home, and I held Maya against my heart, and the monster finally, finally went quiet.
Chapter 19
Konstantin
Threemonthslater.
Something attacked my foot at 6:47 AM.
Not a blade or a bullet or any of the hundred ways I'd cataloged to die over thirty years of bratva life.
No. This was much more dangerous than any of those things.
This was twelve pounds of black-and-white chaos named Zmeya, who'd somehow convinced herself that feet moving under blankets were enemy combatants requiring immediate tactical response.
She wasn't kitten-sized anymore. Three months had turned her into a proper cat—still convinced she was terrifying, still launching ambush attacks on anything that dared to twitch. I felt claws through the comforter, the weight of her pouncing, the concentrated fury of a predator who'd cornered her prey.
"Fucking hell," I muttered, yanking my foot away.
Zmeya chirped. Triumphant. Like she'd just taken down a full-grown man, which—technically—she had.
Malysh watched from Maya's pillow with the serene judgment only cats could manage. He'd claimed the warm spot she'd vacated for the bathroom, sprawled across the Egyptian cotton like he owned it. His purr rumbled through the quiet morning. Content. Unbothered by his sister's violence.
The shower was running. Steam crept under the bathroom door, carrying the lavender scent of Maya's shampoo. And her voice—off-key, slightly muffled by water, singing something that took me three bars to recognize.
The Bluey theme song.
She'd been on a binge. Four episodes last night while I read intelligence reports, her head in my lap, occasionally providing commentary about cartoon dogs that I pretended not to find endearing. The music had lodged in her brain like a splinter, apparently. Now it was lodging in mine.
I lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, and tried to remember the last time I'd woken up calculating threats.
It had been months ago. Back when every morning started with a tactical assessment—entry points, weapon locations, the mental checklist that had kept me alive through decades of violence. Back when sleeping meant vulnerability, and waking meant immediate alert.
Now I woke to cat attacks and off-key singing. To Malysh's purr vibrating through the mattress and Maya's voice carrying through the door like something fragile and perfect I didn't deserve.
The monster in my chest didn't stir.
That was the strangest part. For years, I'd kept it caged. Fed it violence when it demanded blood, restrained it when the fury threatened to spill over into destruction. The beast that lived in my bones, the thing that made me good at hurting people—I'd spent my whole life either using it or containing it.
But it wasn't caged anymore.
It was just . . . content. Fed on something better than violence. Satisfied in ways brutality had never managed.
