I close the distance between us. Slow. Deliberate, giving her every opportunity to raise the weapon, to end this the way she’s planned for ten years. She doesn't move. Just watches me approach with eyes that hold too many emotions for me tocatalog. When I'm close enough to touch, I take her hand, the one holding the gun, and guide it upward until the barrel presses against my chest, directly over my heart.
"Then let me make this easy." The metal is cold through my shirt. Cold like that night when I made the worst decision of my life. "Pull the trigger. Finish what you started. Be free of all of it." I finish speaking as I snap the safety off.
"Daniil."
The name hits me like a physical blow. I haven't heard it spoken aloud in any recent memory. Haven't been that person since before the Bratva claimed me, before I became the wolf that hunts without conscience or mercy.
She presses the gun harder against my chest. Her hand trembles but her eyes stay locked on mine. "Daniil Vasiliev. Born in Moscow. Orphaned at twelve. Recruited by the Bratva at fifteen. You were a person once. Before they made you into this."
"That person died a long time ago." I try not to show my shock that she’s managed to learn more about me than anyone else ever has. Too bad it doesn’t matter. It won’t help either of us now.
"Did he?" Her free hand comes up, touching the X tattooed below my eye, tracing it with fingertips still sticky with her father's blood. "Or did he just hide? Bury himself so deep that even you forgot he existed?"
I don't have an answer. I don’t know if one exists.
"I love you." The confession tears out of her like something that's been caged too long. "I hate that I do. Hate that after everything, after all the pain and the planning and the person I became to survive, I still love the man who could have saved me and chose not to."
"Sofiya—"
"Let me finish." She takes a shuddering breath. "I love you. And I don't know how to reconcile that with what you did. Withwhat we've both done and all the blood on our hands that will never wash clean."
"You don't have to reconcile anything." I cover her hand with mine, the one pressing the gun to my chest. "You just have to act. Right here. Right now. Daniil Vasiliev needs to die tonight with all the other monsters."
"That's not a fair.”
"Nothing about this has been fair." I lean forward, pressing my forehead to hers. I feel her breath warm on my face, her pulse hammering where our bodies almost touch. "I love you too. Have since the moment I saw you walk into that club and realized the girl I left for dead became something magnificent. Something I didn't deserve to look at, much less want."
"Then why are you asking me to kill you?"
"Because you need to finish this. You’ve more than earned this ." I pull back far enough to meet her eyes. "Not because I'm offering or because it's easy, but because you've spent ten years with someone else writing your story. Your first real choice in life was when you decided you would survive. This has to be on your terms. No one else's."
She stares at me for what feels like hours. The gun trembles against my chest. Her finger rests on the trigger, not pressing but present. Ready.
“And because I love you enough to want you to have everything you ever wanted. To see you have your revenge and go live a happy, peaceful life. Never having to experience, or see, or feel this nastiness ever again.”
I see the war playing out behind her eyes. The future versus the past. The woman she wants to be versus the weapon she became. The love she has for me versus hate.
"Daniil." She says the name like a prayer, like a curse, something she's afraid will break if she holds it too tightly. "I need you to know something."
"Tell me."
"Whatever happens next." Her voice steadies, hardening into something that sounds almost like resolve. "Whatever I decide. You gave me back something I thought was lost forever."
"What?"
"Choice." She steps back, creating distance between us that feels like a canyon opening in the earth. "The ability to choose who I want to be and not what they made me. Not what revenge demanded. Just me. Choosing." The gun stays aimed at my chest, her finger curling around the trigger. "And I’ve chosen," she whispers.
Then she pulls the trigger.
CHAPTER 22
Sofiya
SONG: LOVESONG BY SNAKE RIVER CONSPIRACY
The bullet buriesitself in the wall three inches to the left of his head. Daniil doesn't flinch, doesn't even move. He just stands there with plaster dust settling on his shoulder and his eyes locked on mine like he's trying to memorize every detail of my face. Like he expected to never see anything again, but the world has surprised him by continuing to exist.
"You missed." His voice comes rough, unsteady in a way I've never heard from him.
