“It’s okay, Hannah.” I keep my voice level. “Don’t worry.”
She doesn’t look convinced. Neither am I.
Beside me, I feel Timur calculating—his eyes moving to the nearest weapon, measuring the distance, running the same numbers I’m running. Even if he could find a gun, Popov’s two men would cut him down before the barrel came up. We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and one of us is still bleeding through a torn shirt onto the concrete.
The math just doesn’t work.
It hasn’t worked since the gun came out.
Popov exhales through his nose—almost disappointed, like he expected more from me than stillness.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Niko.” His tone is almost conversational. “You and I understand each other. Two men who built something from nothing, who know what it costs to protect what’s theirs.” He tilts his head slightly. “All I’m doing is removing the threat.”
“I’ve heard that before.” I scoff.
Something shifts in his eyes. “Meaning?”
“Liz Watson.” I hold his gaze. “Am I the next cautionary kill?”
The laugh that comes out of him is confirmation enough. Brief, unguarded, the kind that surfaces before a man can stop it. It tells me everything I didn’t want to be certain of.
Lauren spent years trying to find who took her mother from her. She only stopped looking when Hannah was born.
I knew. I’ve knew it before the alliance, before we got back to Atlanta. I made the calculation that she couldn’t be told. That if she knew the man standing with us against Aslanov was the same man who killed her mother, she would have burned the plan to the ground and been right to. So I said nothing, and carried it, and told myself it was the only move available.
“Your girlfriend’s mother?” Popov’s amusement hasn’t fully faded. The muzzle scrapes against my forehead as he adjusts his grip. “Come on, Niko, you know how these things go. She was collateral. Same as you’re about to be.”
The smile drops.
His finger moves to the trigger.
I close my eyes and wait for the flash.
His finger begins to squeeze the trigger.
The shot splits the morning air—sharp and immediate, cracking across the open yard and rolling out into the pale sky beyond.
But I don’t fall.
The ringing in my ears settles, but I’m still standing. Still breathing. The concrete is still beneath my feet and the dawn is still doing what it was doing a second ago, indifferent and unhurried.
I open my eyes and look at Popov.
Everything that made him dangerous is leaving his face at once—the composure, the cold intelligence, the absolute certainty that he was the last man standing. It drains away and what’s left is nothing. Plain and still and already gone.
He drops.
The sound of him hitting the ground is heavy and final.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lauren
My hands are shaking.
The gun is still raised, smoke threading from the barrel. I’m standing at the edge of the tree line with my pulse in my throat watching Popov as he falls to the ground. There is no clear thought in my head except that it’s done and Nikolai is still standing.
I don’t feel what I expected to feel. I don’t even know what I expected to feel. There’s no space for it yet—just the ringing in my ears, the weight of the gun in my hands, and the sight of Nikolai across the yard, upright, breathing, alive.
