Volk takes the one on the left. I take the right. My knife slides between ribs, directly into his lung with surgical precision. The technician stiffens, tries to speak, but blood fills his mouth before words can form. I ease him forward onto the console, his forehead resting against the keyboard like he's simply fallen asleep.
"Disabling cameras now," Volk says, fingers flying across controls. "We have maybe three minutes before someone notices the feeds are down."
Three minutes. I count them in heartbeats while he works. The screens flicker. Go dark. Come back showing nothing but static.
"Move."
We descend through passages I remember from childhood games. The route to Father's office, to his private quarters, to the reinforced safe room he installed after the first attempt on his life fifteen years ago. I know every turn because I mapped them obsessively during my years of planning. Every corner, every potential ambush point, every place where guards might lurk.
Thor appears at the junction leading to the east wing. I recognize him immediately. Big man, Nordic features, blond hair cropped military short. He used to escort me on my errand runs to the mansion. I see the moment he sees me too. Recognition flashes across his face, followed by confusion, followed by understanding that hardens into duty.
"Sofiya." His hand moves toward his weapon. "Don't do this."
"Step aside, Thor." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "This doesn't have to involve you."
"Can't do that." He draws his gun but doesn't aim it. Not yet. "You know I can't."
"Then I'm sorry." I move before he can react. Years of training compress into a single fluid motion: inside his guard, where our vast size difference can’t help him. I keep my knife angled upward, blade finding the gap between his tactical vest and throat, slicing through his skin like a warm knife through butter. Thor's eyes go wide. His gun clatters to the floor. Blood pours over my hand, hot and impossibly red.
He gives one last bubbling exhale as he slides down the wall. His blood covers my forearm like a glove. His eyes stare at nothing, already glazing over.
Volk's hand closes on my shoulder. "We need to move. Now."
I pull the knife free, wiping it and my hands on Thor's jacket before I keep walking.
The east wing opens into the long corridor leading to Father's safe room. We're close now. So close I can almost taste the revenge I've dreamed about for a decade. My heart pounds against bruised ribs. My wounded knee screams with every step. But none of it matters.
Not until we round the final corner and find them waiting.
Ten men. Armed. Positioned in a tactical spread that covers every angle of approach. They've been expecting us. Cameras we didn't know about or informants we didn't suspect. It doesn't matter. What matters is the wall of guns pointed at our position.
"Drop your weapons." The voice belongs to a man I don’t recognize. Rage erupts through my system like wildfire. Hot and consuming and absolutely beyond rational thought. To be this close and have this man think he can stop me? I don’t think so.
"Fuck you." I fire before the words finish leaving my mouth. The shot takes the man on his left in the center of his forehead. He drops , and I'm already moving, diving behind a decorative pillar as return fire shreds the air where I stood.
Volk appears from somewhere I don't expect, flanking right, his shots precise and devastating. Two more guards fall. Three. The corridor fills with the deafening percussion of combat, muzzle flashes strobing the darkness like a nightmare disco.
A bullet grazes my shoulder, burning like fire, but it doesn't slow me down. I swing around the pillar and put two rounds into a guard trying to advance on my position. His body armor stops the first shot but the second finds his throat.
Their leader screams in Russian, ordering his remaining men forward. They come as a unit, five of them now, moving with the practiced coordination of soldiers who've trained together for years.
Volk intercepts two of them before they reach me. His fighting style is brutal efficiency, no wasted movement, every strike designed to kill or incapacitate. One man goes down with a shattered knee, then a broken neck when Volk follows him to the ground. The second takes a knife to the eye and stops moving entirely.
Three left. Including the man who has become my sole focus.
The first one reaches me before I can bring my gun around. His fist connects with my injured ribs, and I hear something crack and feel the sharp agony of bone grinding against bone. I gasp as all the oxygen in my body flees. I double over. His next blow aims for the back of my head but I'm already moving, letting my legs fold, dropping beneath the strike and coming up with my ankle knife buried in his groin.
He screams, falls and keeps screaming while I twist the blade.
Then the leader is there.
His hands close around my throat before I can defend myself. He's still strong, stronger than he should be for a man his age. The pressure against my windpipe is immediate and absolute. Stars explode across my vision, and my lungs burn for air that won't come.
"Little, Yelena," he hisses, using my real name like a curse. "Should have stayed dead in that desert."
I claw at his hands. Kick at his legs. Nothing works. He's too big, too strong, and I'm too weakened from everything that came before. The edges of my vision go dark. Sound becomes distant, muffled, like I'm hearing it through water. Angel's face flashesthrough my mind. The blood on my hands. The crack in my armor widening into a chasm.
Then the pressure releases.
