I have relied on Timur for many things over the years. I never thought walking would be one of them. My good arm is slung across his shoulders and he takes my weight without comment, the two of us moving in an uneven rhythm across the floor.
Drag, step.
Drag, step.
The sound of it is the only sound left inside the building. Everything else has gone quiet in the particular way that follows violence—not peaceful, just emptied out.
Hannah holds Timur’s free hand. She hasn’t let go since he picked her up.
“Close your eyes,” Timur tells her, his voice firm and low as we move back through the main room. “Keep them closed until I say.”
She doesn’t ask why.
The aftermath of a firefight is something you never entirely adjust to. Two decades in the Bratva and the smell still finds you—copper and heat and something underneath both of those that has no cleaner name. Bodies are everywhere, impossible to route around. Most of them are Aslanov’s men. The rest belongs to Popov, identifiable by the tattoos at the backs of their necks.
“Hold your nose as well,” I tell Hannah quietly. She presses her free hand to her face without opening her eyes.
Timur navigates us through it, picking a path with the calm efficiency of a man who has learned to keep moving in rooms like this. I let him lead and focus on keeping my legs under me as much as I can. Outside, the dawn is waiting—pale and indifferent, doing what dawn does regardless of what the night produced.
The air hits us when we clear the doors. Cool, open, thin with early light.
I peel two strips from the lower hem of my shirt and press them against the wounds—thigh first, then the bicep—wrapping each as tight as I can manage one-handed. It costs me. I keep my face still because Hannah’s eyes are open again now, watching me with a careful attention that reminds me of her mother.
“Well.” The voice comes from my left, unhurried and faintly amused. “Look who walked out of there alive.”
Popov. Arms crossed, studying the state of me the way a man studies a deal that’s come in under value.
“Barely,” I say.
His eyes move over me—the makeshift bandaging, the leg that won’t take full weight, the arm hanging at an angle it shouldn’t. “Aslanov?”
“Inside. Alive, for now.”
Something crosses his face—not quite satisfaction, but close. He snaps his fingers once and his two remaining men turn back toward the building without being told. A moment later, the sound of something heavy being dragged across concrete carries out into the morning air.
“Eyes away, Hannah.” I put my working hand up before she can look.
She turns her face into Timur’s side.
Aslanov comes through the doors feet-first, one man gripping each ankle, his body leaving a dark trail across the threshold. What’s left of his face catches the early light in pieces.
“You worked him properly,” Popov observes, with something approaching professional respect. “Didn’t know you had that left in you.”
“Neither did I.”
He almost smiles. Then his hand moves to his jacket.
The gun comes out slowly. He raises it with the unhurried certainty of a man who has been patient for a very long time and has decided that his patience is finished. The muzzle closes the distance between us until it’s level with my head, and the morning goes very still around it.
Blyad.
I had considered this possibility.
Considered it, weighed it, and decided the alliance was necessary regardless. That calculation made sense twenty-four hours ago. Standing here now, with two bullet wounds and nothing in my hands and Hannah three feet away watching with her small face gone rigid—the math still holds, but the cost of it is considerably more immediate than I’d accounted for.
I meet Popov’s eyes over the barrel and don’t move. He doesn’t care. What he cares about is taking out the remaining competition.
From the edge of my vision, I see Hannah’s mouth begin to tremble.
