He grunts, but doesn’t fall.
He wasn’t always an old man. That’s easy to forget. Kirill Volkov built half this city with violence before he learned to hide behind men with guns. His body remembers what his suits pretend he outgrew.
He hits me across the jaw. My head snaps sideways, and blood fills my mouth.
The hall erupts with movement, but Alexei snarls, “Stay back.”
Good. Let them watch.
I hit Kirill hard enough to send him into the banister. Wood cracks under his shoulder. He grabs my shirt and pulls me with him, driving his knee up toward my wound. Pain bursts through me, and for one second my vision whites out.
He uses it.
A fist to my throat. Another to my ribs. Then his hand clamps around the back of my neck, forcing me close enough that only I hear him. “You should have stayed outside the door.”
The words do more than the punches.
I slam my forehead into his face.
Bone cracks. Kirill stumbles back, blood spilling from his nose.
The sound that moves through the hall is not a gasp. These men have seen worse. It’s something lower, more dangerous.
The old king bleeding in his own house.
I advance. He swings again, but slower now. I catch his wrist, twist, and drive him into the wall. He fights like a man who refuses to admit his body is failing him. That earns a part of my respect I wish didn’t exist.
Then he reaches for the knife at his belt. I break his wrist before he draws it.
He makes one sound. Short. Bitter. I take the knife and throw it aside.
He’s breathing hard now. Blood runs down his mouth and chin. His white shirt is torn. One knee nearly gives, but he forces himself upright.
“Finish it,” he says.
There’s no fear in him.
I grab him by the collar and throw him down the last steps. He hits the marble hard, and Galina screams from somewhere above.
Dmitri shouts, “Father!”
Kirill tries to rise.
He can’t. His injured wrist hangs wrong. Blood spreads beneath his temple where he struck the floor. He looks up at me, breathing through his teeth, and for one second I see the man clearly.
Just a man. Old. Bleeding. Breakable.
I step over him.
Dmitri raises his gun again, but this time, I fire first. The shot hits his arm, and the gun falls from his hand. He cries out and stumbles back into the upstairs corridor.
I start toward him.
Kirill’s voice comes from the floor behind me. “Yaromir.”
I don’t turn.
“You kill him,” he says, breath ragged, “and there is no coming back.”
