Even now, five years into being Pakhan and bloodier than he ever wanted me to become, he still has that advantage. I feel it every time he redirects my force instead of absorbing it, every time he makes me spend more energy than he does, every time he lets me think I’ve got ground before he takes it back with one clean, efficient movement.
We trade hits hard enough to shake the mirrors. My split knuckles open more against his jaw. His elbow digs into my sternum and forces the breath out of me.
I slam him into the wall by the weight rack, feel the impact through both of us, then catch a knee to the thigh hard enough to numb my leg for a second. He takes one to the stomach and answers by driving his forehead into mine in a move so filthy and familiar I almost laugh through the pain.
“Still fighting dirty,” I snarl.
He hits me again. “You were never worth clean, Kolya.”
That stokes something hot enough to blind. I rush him then, losing the little shape the fight still had, and for a few secondsit’s just fists and shoulders and old hate and older grief finally getting a room to itself.
I think of his wife, the child, and of his silence. I think of him signing off on reprogramming because he thought Vincenzo was poison and me too stupid or too weak to know the difference between death and devotion. I think of him, knowing all these years, saying nothing while I pieced my life back together from ghosts and security footage.
I drive him back two steps. Then he takes control of the whole thing the way he always could when he stopped pretending to leave room for my pride.
He catches my wrist, twists, uses my own momentum, and suddenly I’m on my back hard enough to rattle the mat. He has one of my arms trapped above my head, his forearm across my throat, while his knee pins my hip.
My free hand drives once into his side, and he absorbs it like weather. I buck hard and get nowhere useful. He is still heavier through the leverage, still more disciplined in the hold, still infuriatingly capable of overpowering me when he decides the lesson matters more than the fairness.
I lie there breathing hard, blood in my mouth, his face above me sharp with effort and all the anger neither of us knows how to bury properly.
“Done?” he asks.
“Fuck you.”
“Not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you deserve.”
That makes his jaw tighten, and for one absurd second, I feel eighteen again.
I laugh, but it comes out rough and wrecked and half feral.
Arseniy’s eyes narrow. “What’s funny?”
“That you’re still a controlling bastard.”
“And you’re still a reckless cunt.”
There’s comfort in the familiarity of it, which is disgusting and probably says something terrible about our upbringing.
I stop fighting because the hold is real, and if he wanted to break something, we’d be past this part already.
My chest rises hard under his weight, my face throbs where he caught me, and my right knuckles are definitely worse now. I look up at him and, for once, don’t bother coating the question with pride.
“Why are you here?”
Arseniy doesn’t answer immediately. I watch the question hit him, watch the fury in his face shift shape around something harder to name. He keeps me pinned, but the pressure at my throat eases by a fraction.
I ask again, voice lower this time. “Why the fuck are you here?”
His gaze searches mine like he’s looking for the version of me that left the monastery years ago with memory missing and blood still wet on half the truth. Whatever he finds there now keeps him quiet for another beat.
Then he says, “Because if your memories are back, then you need to hear something from me before the rest of them finish tearing you open.”
That knocks the breath out of me harder than the fight did.
He sees that, too, of course, he does. There was never much I could hide from him face-to-face; only time and distance ever made that possible.
