Volk's hand settles on my shoulder. Gentle despite everything, anchoring me to the present instead of the past.
I look down at what remains of the man who shaped my entire existence. He looks smaller in death. Less terrifying. Just meat and blood and the fading echo of a monstrous life finally ended. I can’t tell if I want to laugh or cry at this moment. The rush of emotion is as confusing as it is powerful.
"It's done." The words taste strange, foreign, like a language I'm only beginning to learn.
Ten years of planning. Ten years of hate. Ten years of becoming something sharp and deadly and barely human. All of it led here. To this room. To this body. To this moment of silence after the storm. I wait for the satisfaction to come. The closure. The peace I've been chasing since I crawled out of that desert more dead than alive. Instead I feel empty. Hollow. Like I've been holding something inside me for so long that now it's gone, I don't know what's supposed to fill the space.
Volk helps me stand, steadying me. His eyes find mine, and I see understanding there. Recognition of what I'm feeling because he's felt it too. The aftermath of violence that changes nothing except everything.
CHAPTER 21
Volk
SONG: ECHO BY TRAPT
Blood poolsacross the carpet like a dark tide as I stand three feet from his body, chest heaving, lungs burning from exertion I haven't felt in years. The room smells like copper and the unique stench of death that never quite washes away. No matter what anyone does in the future, this room will never be clean again. My arm throbs where a bullet and several knife wounds cover it, and my knuckles are split and swelling. I can feel blood dripping from my body in more than one place. None of it matters.
What matters is her. What matters is that there is still one last step to take.
Sofiya stands over what remains of the man who destroyed her. Blood covers her like war paint, streaking her face, soaking her clothes, dripping from fingers that still clutch the knife she used to end him. Her breathing is ragged and uneven. Her eyes hold something I've never seen before. Not triumph. Not peace. Something rawer. Something that looks almost like loss.
She's beautiful. Terrible and beautiful in ways that make my chest ache with feelings I spent decades learning to suppress.
Our eyes meet across the carnage. Ten years collapse into this single moment. Every choice I made, every sin I committed, every night I spent wondering if she survived the desert. All of it led here. To this room. To her standing victorious over the monster who made us both into who we are.
But it's not finished. Not really.
I know what she hasn't said. What she's been carrying since that first night at the club when recognition flickered behind her careful mask. I was on her list. I am still on her list. The fifth name she never speaks aloud but carries like a stone in her chest.
Volk. The wolf who dragged her to slaughter and walked away.
I reach for my gun, the weight feeling familiar in my palm, comfortable in ways that should disturb me but don't. I've held this weapon a thousand times. Ended more lives than I could ever count with its cold efficiency. But I've never held it quite like this. Never with this intention.
Sofiya's eyes track the movement, and her body tenses, instincts overriding exhaustion. She expects betrayal. Expects the wolf to show his teeth now the hunt is over.
Instead, I flip the gun around, offering it to her grip-first. "It's not finished," I say. My voice sounds foreign, hollow in ways that match the emptiness spreading through my chest. "We both know there is one last task. One last name to cross off your list."
She stares at the weapon, then me. Confusion fades and understanding crosses her blood-streaked features.
"Volk."
"I was there that night." I step closer, keeping the gun extended between us like a bridge or a barrier. "I dragged you into that room. Watched your mother die. Delivered you to those animals in the desert." Each word costs me something I can't name. Something that might be the last remnants of the man Iused to be. "You can't have peace until everyone responsible is dead. And I'm responsible, Sofiya."
"You saved me." Her voice cracks on the words. "In the desert. Tonight. You've saved me over and over."
"I left you." The truth burns but I force it anyway. "I left you broken and bleeding and barely alive. Drove away and spent twenty minutes debating whether to go back. Twenty minutes, Sofiya. While you dragged yourself through sand and rock toward a rescue that should never have been necessary. That's not salvation. That's cowardice with a water bottle."
I can still see her hesitating, so I say the one thing I know will work. The one thing guaranteed to give her the anger she needs to finish this.
“You know, I was the one that cut out your mother’s tongue.”
That does it. She takes the gun from my hand, her fingers brushing mine during the exchange, and I feel the contact like electricity, like the last warmth I'll ever know. She holds the weapon loosely, not aimed, just present. A question waiting to be answered.
"I've imagined this moment." Her voice drops to something barely above a whisper. "Hundreds of times. Thousands. How I would make you pay for leaving me there and walking away. For choosing the Bratva over doing what was right."
"And now?"
"Now, I don't know." Tears cut tracks through the blood on her face. She looks younger when she cries. More like the girl I left dying than the woman she became. “I’m standing here covered in my father's blood and I should want you dead but I don't. I can't."
