Chapter 1
Maksim
17 Years Old
BLOOD.
The squelch under my boots is like stepping on fucking eyeballs. Iron floods my mouth. I’m drowning in the taste of pennies, choking on metal and marrow. The smell hits like railroad spikes hammered straight through my sinuses. Rage crushes my windpipe. I can’t breathe. Can’t fucking breathe. Sledgehammers beat against my skull, grinding bone into brain matter, while sirens scream behind my eyes—souls ripping out of bodies. Mine. Theirs. I can’t tell anymore.
BLOOD.
BLOOD.
BLOOD.
My fists are fire, burning, splitting, cracking skin open with every blow. I feel bone give—his. Maybe his jaw. Maybe his ribs. I don’t fucking care. I keep hitting because I can, because he’s still breathing.
I’m steadier than I feel. Or maybe I’m just too far gone to fall. My vision tunnels—black around the edges like the world’s closing in, but I don’t stop. Not until I reach the end of this.
My father.
The one who started it. The last one I’ll kill.
My boots land hard on the gravel of the compound, my father’s home in my sights.
A shadow eclipses me.
My father’s enforcer.
I drop to a knee, swipe my knife from my boot, and stand.
“Maks—”
That’s all he gets out before the blade slices his throat clean.
He gurgles. Crumples. I step over him before he hits the ground.
The front door is already open.
Father always did love a challenge.
The foyer stretches before me, marble and blood money. I used to run through here as a boy, before I understood the screams that echoed from the basement weren’t part of some game. Before he built the monster that will take him out.
“Maksim.”
Her voice stops me cold.
Mother.
She stands at the top of the staircase, backlit by the setting sun through the window. A ghost in designer clothes. Her hands clutch the railing like it’s the only thing keeping her upright.
Maybe it is.
“Don’t,” she whispers. But there’s no force behind it. No hope. Just resignation.
I see it in her eyes—those same blue eyes I inherited.
The defeat.
