“No.” I keep my eyes on his. “It’s the reason you lost.”
Viktor remains silent while the wind moves across the open lot. Then he releases a quiet breath. “You always were stubborn.”
He glances toward the dark skyline of the city beyond the harbor before returning his attention to me. “You still have an opportunity to make the correct decision.”
His words are calm, almost generous. “Walk away. Give me the Sovarin empire,” Viktor continues, “and I will allow you to leave tonight.”
His eyes lower briefly toward my hands before returning to my face. “You could disappear. Start a different life with the woman who means so much to you.”
The offer hangs in the cold air between us while my men remain motionless behind me and Viktor’s men wait the same distance away. No one moves. For a moment, the entire lot feels suspended in silence.
Then I give a slight shake of my head. “No.”
Viktor watches me carefully. A brief hint of disappointment touches his expression before the faint smile returns. “I suspected you would answer that way.”
Behind him, one of his men moves half a step forward.
Behind me, Mikel does the same.
I lift a hand without looking away from Viktor, and it’s enough to stop my men before tension can harden into gunfire. Viktor notices. His eyes dart once toward my men, then return to my face with a faint expression I remember from years ago, the one he used whenever I learned a lesson faster than he expected.
“This doesn’t need to cost them,” I tell him.
Viktor breathes in through his nose and glances toward his own men. “You would spare them for my sake?”
“For mine.”
His mouth curves slightly, though there is no warmth in it. “You still think in terms of personal responsibility,” he remarks. “That was always Nikolai’s flaw too.”
I take one step closer. “No. I think in terms of waste.”
The faint smile leaves his face. “If you want the Sovarin empire,” I continue, my voice low enough that only he can hear it clearly over the wind and the distant sound of the water, “you’ll have to kill me yourself.”
For the first time tonight, real interest shows on his face. He turns his head just enough to glance toward the men waiting behind him.
“Stay out of it,” he instructs without raising his voice.
I hear the faint rustle of coats and boots as his men hold their positions. Behind me, Mikel remains silent, though I can feel the force of his restraint from where he stands. He knows better than to interfere once I make a decision.
Viktor removes his gloves one finger at a time and drops them onto the hood of the nearest car. Then he takes off his coat and hands it to the man nearest him before stepping farther into the open space between us.
Snow lands in his hair and along the shoulders of his black shirt. He rolls one wrist once, then the other.
The movement pulls a memory from a place I haven’t touched in years. He used to do that before sparring sessions in Moscow, loosening his hands as if what followed mattered less than the air he breathed before it began.
“You always did prefer this lesson the hard way,” he murmurs.
I take off my coat and let it fall over the hood of my car without looking away from him.
“You always did confuse cruelty with instruction.”
His eyes narrow. Then he moves.
The first strike comes fast, aimed high toward my throat, and I catch his forearm with one hand while driving the other into his ribs. The impact forces air from his lungs, but he recovers immediately and twists out of my grip with speed that would surprise anyone who mistakes age for weakness. His elbow catches the side of my jaw hard enough to split the inside of my mouth against my teeth. The taste of blood spreads across my tongue.
I drive forward before he can widen the distance, forcing him back across the slick concrete until his shoulder hits the side of a steel support beam. He swings low toward my kidney. I block it, though the force still jars through my side, and answer with a blow to his sternum that makes the beam ring behind him.
Viktor grunts, then brings his knee up sharply into my abdomen. Pain blooms through muscle and old scar tissue all at once. I step back, and he uses the opening immediately, his fist slamming across my cheekbone with enough force to turn my head. By the time I face him again, he already has a knife in his hand.
