I wonder if she had any idea how dark it would get? If she could have imagined the way it would end—on her knees, her tongue cut out, her own daughter forced to watch as her brains painted the Persian rug.
I haven't looked at this clipping in months. I can't afford to. It cracks me open every time. Letting things leak out—grief, longing, the girl I used to be. Things I can't have if I'm going to survive. If I'm going to finish this.
But tonight I need to remember. To ground myself in the reality of why I'm doing this.
Tonight I let the emotion flood back in.
Momochka'svoice when she was happy—not just the sound but the feeling of it wrapping around me like security I'll never know again. The old Russian lullabies she sang, songs her own mother taught her, passed down through generations of women who loved their daughters, even as they prepared them for hard lives.???-??????-???, ?? ?????? ?? ????.Her voice wasn't trained, wouldn't have filled concert halls or won competitions, but it was perfect the way all mothers' voices are to their children—the first music we know, the sound that means safety and love and home.
I remember dancing for her in the den while she worked her needlepoint at six, maybe seven years old, spinning in circles until the room tilted, showing off some routine from ballet class. She'd applaud every time, even when dizziness sent me crashing into the side table. Her hands never stopped moving through the fabric, creating something beautiful from nothing but thread and patience. "My little dancer," she'd say. "So graceful."
A lie. I was all sharp elbows and scraped knees, too much energy for my body to contain. But she saw grace in me anyway. Saw the best version I might grow into.
How she braided my hair before school in those early years, before Irina took over. Stolen moments when Father traveled on business , tension leaving her shoulders the moment his car pulled away. We'd make cookies together, her hands guiding mine through measuring flour and cracking eggs. Getting more on myself than in the bowl. Her laugh when I'd inevitably make a mess—warm, genuine, the sound of a woman who might have been happy in a different life.
"You're just like I was at your age," she'd say, wiping flour from my nose. "Too curious for your own good."
I remember the day everything changed with painful clarity. The absolute finality of watching her die, of understanding in one terrible moment she was gone forever. Being pulled from the room by Volk, his hand on my arm the only thing keeping me upright. The Jeep's storage area, curled into myself while my mind fractured. Hours of torture under the desert sky—hands that hurt me in ways I didn't know humans could hurt each other. Voices that laughed at my pain like it was entertainment. Anatoly's especially, high and delighted, the sound of someone who'd found his calling. Innocence ripped away in the most brutal ways imaginable, pieces of myself carved off and left bleeding in the sand.
I take a steadying breath and accept the truth I’ve been circling since the beginning. I accept that I will not survive this revenge. If I'm lucky, not immediately. But there will be consequences. An entire Bratva seeking justice for their murdered Pakhan, men loyal to Father who won't get distracted by power struggles, who won't let the opportunity to seize control blind them to the need for vengeance. Men who willhunt me until they succeed in erasing me from existence the way Father tried to do ten years ago.
This outcome doesn't surprise me. Because this life—lived in hiding, consumed by hate, existing as this damaged and warped version of who I might have been—isn't living. I'm caught in a holding pattern, suspended between past trauma and future violence. I'm both prisoner and executioner. At least I will have avengedMomochka.
I think about Volk. About the X beneath his eye that mirrors mine. About the way he looks at me, like he sees all the broken pieces and recognizes them because they match his own. About what it might mean that he's kept my secret, that he hasn't exposed me even though doing so would probably earn him favor with Father. About whether I could actually kill him when the time comes.
The answer should be simple. He drove away that night. Left me bleeding in the desert to die or survive on my own. Saving my life doesn't absolve him of abandoning me to face that choice alone.
But the answer isn't simple anymore. Nothing is.
I set the clipping carefully on my nightstand. Something I haven't done in years—usually I seal it away immediately before grief can take root and grow into something that might choke out my carefully cultivated rage. Tonight, I let it stay. Let my eyes find it as I lie down, my body sinking into sheets that smell like lavender detergent. The only softness I allow myself.
Tomorrow I'll put the photograph away. Tomorrow I'll return to being Sofiya. The dancer, the spy, the weapon I've been forging myself into for a decade. All sharp edges and lethal intent.
Tomorrow I'll continue this delicate, dangerous dance with Volk. Move closer to the end game that will destroy us all—him, Father, me. Maybe the entire Bratva if I'm lucky.
The photograph stares back at me from where I’ve set it on the nightstand. I wonder what she would tell me if she could. Would sh want me to spend my life on this crusade for her, or do what she never got the chance to do.
But it's too late for that now. Has been for years. I've gone too far down this road to turn back. Invested too much—time, pain, the pieces of myself I've sacrificed on the altar of revenge. Stopping now would mean all of it was for nothing. So tomorrow I'll wake up and be Sofiya again. Put on my armor of makeup and attitude. Go to the gym and punish my body until it remembers what it's for, not pleasure or comfort, but precision. Violence wrapped in grace.
Tomorrow I'll go back to the club and dance and wait for Volk to appear again, knowing every moment with him makes this harder. Every touch, every word, every loaded glance—they're all cracks in my resolve. Small fissures that might one day become a complete break. The tears slow, eventually stopping, and I lie in the darkness of my apartment with its cheap furniture and cheaper walls, listening to the neighbors fighting two doors down. The distant wail of sirens. The sound of a city that never sleeps.
CHAPTER 6
Volk
SONG: GOD IS A WEAPON BY FALLING IN REVERSE FT. MARILYN MANSON
A golden glowcrawls across the horizon through my large floor- to-ceiling windows. Soon the city wakes. Soon I go back to being the man everyone expects. Right now, in this stolen space between darkness and day, I let myself feel the weight.
She knows I've figured her out. Knows I'm a threat to everything she's planning. Knows there's no scenario where we both survive this—not with the Pakhan between us, not with ten years of rage driving her forward. She knows killing me is part of her revenge, integral as breathing.
And I'm letting her come anyway.
That should keep me awake. But that's not what drives me to pace this apartment like a caged animal.
It's her.
Those haunted eyes that can't hide their sadness no matter how expertly she applies her makeup, the smile she wears like armor, the way she moves through Lush like violence wrapped in silk. I understand something she doesn't yet; this isn't about justice. Not really. She tells herself it is, calls it closure, vengeance, righteous fury. All the pretty words wronged peopleuse to justify destruction. But revenge is simpler than that. Darker. It's about creating the same pain in someone else that was created in you. About passing the damage forward like a disease. There's no scenario where she emerges from this unscathed. She thinks she's already broken beyond repair, but she has no idea how much further there is to fall. If anyone knows, I do.
