His smile is sharp and gleaming against the hellscape that we’ve turned this restaurant into. His arm is locked around a small body that is pressed against the front of him like a shield. When I look down, my blood runs cold.
Leo.
A Glock digs into the side of my son’s head, the barrel pressed against his delicate temple. Leo’s eyes are wide, confused, terrified.
But at least he’s alive.
My hands clench around my weapon, sights lined directly at Mikhail’s skull. For one wild heartbeat, I think I can do it, snap the shot clean, thread the needle, kill him before his finger twitches on his own trigger.
But then Leo moves, whimpering when his eyes happen to glance around him and see the carnage surrounding him. The angle in front of me shifts, the clear shot no longer as clean as seconds ago.
It’s too close.
Too much of a risk to take.
I hesitate.
The room seems to fall away, noise muffled by the rush of blood in my ears. It’s just us. Me, him, and the boy he’s dangling at me like a pawn.
Mikhail grins wider, voice slick with satisfaction. “Go ahead,Pakhan. Show me what kind of father you really are.”
My finger hovers on the trigger. Every instinct screams to pull it, to end this war, to watch him bleed out on this floor. But my son’s life is pressed against the same line as my enemy’s.
For the first time in years, I don’t know if I can win.
17
MAKSIM
I’ve trained for years to steady a weapon in worse storms than this. I’ve stood on rooftops in sleet and wind with a sniper scope biting into my cheek. I’ve stared down men twice my size and outlasted sieges that broke lesser soldiers.
But nothing—nothing—compares to staring at the muzzle of a gun pressed against my son’s head.
Leo’s wide, tear-bright eyes flick up to me. His chest rises in tiny, panicked jerks against Mikhail’s arm. The barrel of the gun digs into his temple, dark metal against soft skin. My stomach turns inside out.
“Let him go,” I growl, my voice rough. It doesn’t sound like a request. It’s a threat I don’t even bother to dress up with fake pleas.
He laughs at me. He shifts his grip, bending slightly, his arm snaking tighter around Leo’s small frame until my boy’s feet barely scuff the floor. He lets out a strangled cry, and I take a step forward without meaning to.
“Maksim Antonov, always issuing orders. Still pretending you’re the one who gets to decide who lives and dies… Isn’t it fascinating how quickly the tides can change?”
Behind me, there’s a soft rustle of Roman adjusting his stance and Katya shifting her weight. I can feel the tension radiating off both of them like a coiled spring. They’re waiting for my signal, ready to move, but the wrong twitch will get my son killed.
“Let him go, Mikhail.” My tone sharpens.
Another chuckle. Darker this time. “Of course. I’ll let him go the very moment you put your own gun to your temple and pull the trigger.”
Katya lunges before I can stop her, a hiss tearing from her throat. Roman reacts on instinct, catching his sister around the waist and hauling her back with a grunt. Her boots scuff against the floor, her nails biting into his arm, but thankfully, she doesn’t break free.
Mikhail’s eyes flick toward them just for a second, but it’s enough to make his grin deepen, wolfish and delighted. He thrives on this, on the chaos. On watching me bleed without lifting a blade to my skin.
Rage claws up my throat, a white-hot thing, threatening to choke me. My trigger finger itches where my hand grips my own gun, the weight of it suddenly alien. Every part of me wants to put a bullet between Mikhail’s eyes. But every part of me also knows one wrong move and my son’s blood will be on the floor before I even take the shot.
Mikhail continues to speak. “It’s quite simple, a father’s sacrifice. You end yourself, and your son walks free. He goesback to his mother and back to the life you tried to rip him from.”
I bare my teeth. “You’re bluffing.”
His eyes narrow, his laughter dying almost instantly. “Am I? You willing to take that risk?”
