Dmitri steps forward and catches my arm lightly. Not rough. Just firm. “You are not running toward an active situation.”
“He walked into that warehouse without even knowing I existed,” I fire back, pulling my arm free. My voice shakes but I refuse to lower it. “He went in because Volkov was a threat, not because he was trying to rescue me, and when he found me chained to that wall, he did not hesitate. He could have stepped back. He did not. So do not tell me to stay behind glass and wait.”
The image slams into me without warning. The smell of oil and dust. The cold metal biting into my wrists. The sound of boots on concrete. His voice. Calm. Furious. Focused.
He did not hesitate.
Silence stretches between us, thick and heavy.
“You care for him,” Dmitri says quietly.
“I care that he saved me,” I answer, though my chest aches in a way that makes that sound like a lie. “If he dies and I stayed here because it was safer, I will not forgive myself.” That part is the truth. Brutal and absolute.
My father studies me for a long moment. I see the war in his eyes. Not between business and family. Between control and reality. I am not a child. I am not a bargaining chip standing obediently in the corner.
He looks at Mikhail. Mikhail nods once. “Two cars,” my father says. “Full detail.”
Relief and dread crash into each other inside me. The drive to Perdition is fast and silent. The city lights blur past the window in streaks of white and gold. No one speaks. The men in the front seats communicate in quiet, coded murmurs through earpieces. I sit in the back, hands clenched in my lap, staring straight ahead.
When we pull into the lot, my pulse spikes. Roman is standing outside the clubhouse. He is upright, thank God. There is a bandage wrapped tight around his upper arm, the white already stained through at the center. His knuckles are scraped. There is dried blood at his temple. He looks furious but alive.
Men I recognize as Iron Reapers stand around him like a wall of muscle and ink and barely restrained violence. Their expressions are dark. Protective. Lethal.
Relief hits so hard my vision blurs. My lungs finally expand fully for the first time since I heard the word hit.
The SUV barely slows before I shove the door open.
“Anya,” someone hisses behind me.
I do not stop. My boots hit gravel and I move toward him, my father’s security detail fanning out automatically behind me.
Roman sees me and his entire body goes still. For one heartbeat, we just stare at each other. He looks shocked. Then angry. Then something else. Something that twists low in my stomach. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demands, voice rough.
I ignore the question. “You’re bleeding,” I say instead, reaching him. My hand lifts before I can think better of it, hovering near the bandage on his arm. “They said you were hit.”
“I am hit,” he mutters. “It’s a graze.”
“That is still being shot,” I snap.
His mouth twitches like he is fighting a smile and losing.
Behind him, one of the Reapers shifts, clearly clocking the fleet of black SUVs and the armed men stepping out around me. Roman’s eyes flick past me to my father. “I had it handled,” he says quietly to me.
“You should not have had to,” I fire back just as quietly. “It happened after I left. After Volkov. After everything.”
His expression hardens. Not at me. At the implication. “You think this was about you.”
“I know it was.”
His jaw flexes. “You don’t know that.”
For a moment, the world narrows to just the two of us standing in a parking lot full of armed men and bad blood.
“You should not be here,” he says again, but his voice is different now. Not angry, protective.
“You walked into that warehouse and saved someone you did not know,” I say softly. “Do not tell me I cannot walk into a parking lot for you.”
His eyes search mine like he is trying to find hesitation. He won’t find any. Something shifts in his expression then.Something raw. Something that looks dangerously close to feeling. “Damn it, Anya,” he mutters under his breath.
