“No.” He backs toward the warehouse entrance, shaking his massive head. “You made your choice, sestrenka. Now live with it.”
He turns and runs—not from cowardice, but from the impossibility of processing what’s just happened. His father dead, his sister transformed into something unrecognizable, his world collapsing around him in the space of minutes.
I watch him disappear into the night and know I’ll probably never see him again. Another casualty of the choice I’ve made. Another piece of my heart I’ll have to learn to live without.
“Kira.” Rafa’s voice is gentle now, concerned. “Are you hurt?”
I look down at myself, checking for blood that isn’t there. Father’s knife never reached me. Rafa was too fast, too decisive, too willing to cross any line necessary to keep me safe.
“No,” I manage. “I’m not hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I know he was your father, but?—”
“He stopped being my father the moment he tried to kill me,” I interrupt, surprised by how steady my voice sounds. “You saved my life.”
“I couldn’t let him hurt you.”
“I know.”
Vito approaches Father’s body, confirming what we all already know. “It’s done,” he announces. “The threat is eliminated.”
Eliminated. Such a clinical word for the death of the man who raised me. Such a sanitized description for the end of my childhood, my family, my connection to everything I used to be.
“What happens now?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
“Now,” Vito says with something approaching gentleness, “you become what you were always meant to be. What you’re strong enough to be.”
“The head of the Petrov organization.”
“If that’s what you choose.”
I look around the warehouse—at Father’s body, at the blood staining the concrete, at Rafa still holding his weapon with steady hands. This is what power looks like in our world. This is what leadership costs. This is the price of choosing survival over sentiment.
“It’s what I choose,” I say with finality.
Because someone has to lead what’s left. Someone has to rebuild what can be salvaged. Someone has to prove that love doesn’t always make you weak—sometimes it makes you strong enough to do what needs to be done.
Even when what needs to be done costs you everything you used to be.
“Then it’s done,” Vito confirms. “Long live the new head of the Petrov family.”
The words echo in the warehouse like a coronation, binding and irreversible.
I am no longer Vadim Petrov’s daughter.
I am Kira Petrov, and I rule myself.
Kira
The warehouse floor is cold against my knees, but I can’t seem to stand up. Can’t seem to do anything except stare at the spreading pool of blood that used to be my father and try to process what just happened.
He’s dead.
Father is dead.
Shot by the man I love while trying to kill me.
The logical part of my brain—the part that’s kept me alive and functional through years of family politics—understands perfectly. Rafa saved my life. Father was going to murder me in a fit of rage and betrayal, and the only way to prevent that was immediate, decisive action.
