My fingers curl against the wall, my nails scraping uselessly against stone as the truth slams into me with brutal clarity.
He’s gone.
This time, he’s really gone.
For a second, everything inside me threatens to fracture.
Grief rises fast. Violent. Suffocating.
But it has nowhere to go.
No space.
No time.
Because the same thought crashes in right behind it:They will come for me next.
My eyes snap open.
Breathing sharpens.
Focus returns.
Anton didn’t just kill my father.
He took everything.
The house.
The men.
The name.
The power.
And if he’s done that, then I’m the last loose end.
The last threat.
The last thing standing between him and complete control of the Petrov empire.
That means he won’t stop. Not until I’m dead.
The grief doesn’t disappear.
It freezes.
Hardens.
Locked somewhere deep where it cannot slow me down.
I push myself away from the wall.
And I run.
The passage is narrow and dark, the air cold and stale as it stretches endlessly ahead of me. My breathing echoes too loud, my footsteps too fast, but I don’t slow down.
I can’t.
