He hissed.
I hit the same spot again before he could recover.
“You’ll be pissing blood,mudak,” I growled as he crumpled.
My men were already disarming the second man. Konstantin moved in with the zip ties.
I retrieved the torch and turned to the walls.
Maps. Pinned across the entire surface, marked at almost every key location. I scanned them carefully. Valentin’s location was absent—only three people knew it, for exactly this reason, and that had held.
Then I saw the photographs.
Iskra getting into a car. Tau and Radovan flanking her—close enough to make a direct shot almost impossible. Which explained the truck. A moving wall rather than a bullet.
Myself leaving the office.
My brother and father visible through the iron bars at the house.
Ruslan coming out of the club.
They had been watching everything. Everyone. For a long time.
“Take it all,” I said.
“You’re going to die,” Tolam hissed from the floor.
I looked down at him.
I smiled.
He had absolutely no idea what was coming.
Chapter 38
Iskra
They were all out hunting down the men who did this while I was left with thebyki—until Ruslan showed up at the hospital.
The tube was out of my throat. I was still badly bruised, still trying to grasp what had been taken from me.
My son.
No.
His son.
But somehow seeing my younger brother brought everything rushing to the surface. Perhaps it was the childhood memories—him as a baby, the weight of him, the particular smallness of someone who needed protecting. He didn’t say anything when I started to cry. His arms closed around me and he held on. The only real touch I had felt in months.
When I didn’t stop he began to talk—telling me about the things the men had made him do since joining. Theshestyorkawere treated with contempt as a matter of course. Being my brother had earned him nothing. No protection, no consideration, no softening of what they put the probationary members through.
“I told you not to join,” I sniffed into the crook of his arm.
“No—it’s taught me a lot.” His voice was steadier than it had any right to be.“I was so naive thinking education would change my life. But I work through the ranks knowing that one day I’ll be able to protect my sister.”
I lifted my head, surprised again at how much he had changed. We were both bound to the Bratva now—me through wedding vows and a despot’s prenuptial agreement, him through the Brotherhood’s code. Two Kozlov children on opposite sides of the same world, neither of us having chosen it.
I could see it in his eyes. The commitment. He wasn’t leaving.
