Five minutes. The single biggest decision of my entire life, and I get exactly three hundred seconds to make it.
Ada cups my face with both hands, forcing my eyes onto hers—awkward, considering we are both folded underneath the counter. "Let me tell you something, and then I will say nothing else. That man is obsessed with you in a way I have never once seen before. You are the reason he breathes, Nora. If you walk out that door, you are not just leaving him. You are taking his air with you."
A tear slides down my cheek.
Whatever I choose in the next few minutes, I have to actually live with it.
If I run, I get freedom back. Safety. My conscience clean, exactly as it was before any of this happened.
But I lose Slava. The man who looks at me like I hung the stars myself. I don't wake up in his bed anymore. I don't get his hands on me at 2 a.m., or our stupid bickering over nothing, or his hands on me making me forget my own name.
I don't do Nataly's nails for prom, either, and I already promised her French tips. I don't help Ada in the kitchen anymore. I never find out what happens to any of them—whether they live or die.
I'd be betraying him a second time.
I pull my eyes off the door and back onto Ada's, and a smile breaks across her face like she knows my decision just from my facial expression.
It appears she does.
"Thank you, pakhanessa."
I don't grimace at the word this time. I made myself a promise a second ago that whatever I choose, I choose fully. I'm a sinner now. A criminal by association.
And in exchange for all of that, I get to keep him. I get to keep this strange, violent, unexpectedly warm family that's grown on me.
Sonya bursts through the doorway, relief flooding her face the second she spots me and Ada crouched together. She walks toward us, and a stray round catches the spot she'd been standing a second earlier.
"Come on, pakhanessa." She hauls me up and angles her own body between me and the open floor. Ada falls into step on my other side—they are positioning themselves so any bullet finds them first.
I don't feel guilty about that anymore. I told myself I'd live in this fully, and this is what "fully" costs—them doing their job, and my job being to survive it, so Slava doesn't lose his mind entirely if today goes the wrong way. So that the Bratva doesn’t go down with him.
We reach what has to be the safe room, a handful of women already inside when we duck through. Nataly's one of them, and she runs to me the moment she sees me, arms locking around my waist.
"Where's your mother?" I whisper against her hair, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
"With my father." Her voice wobbles once before she swallows it down.
"Fighting?"
She nods. "Fighting."
I hold her tighter and don't offer her false comfort, don't promise her anything I can't guarantee. Because I don't know how this ends.
I lose track of time completely after that. Minutes, maybe hours, I don’t know how long this goes on.
A hand brushes my cheek, and it comes away wet. Nataly whispers, "Don't cry, pakhanessa. Pakhan is strong. He always comes back."
I hadn't even realized I was crying.
What if I lose him? My head shakes on its own, refusing the thought.
Sonya crouches in front of me, pressing something into my hand. "For you."
A gun. Something I would have sooner cut off my own hand than hold three weeks ago, before any of this, before the choice I made. Now my fingers close around the grip without hesitation.
"Will you teach me to shoot properly, once this is over?" I whisper.
Something softens in Sonya's expression. "It would be an honor, pakhanessa."
