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Wait.

Sergei saw it. I knew from the brief tightening around his eyes. Dmitry didn’t see it. He was too busy watching the weapon, waiting for grief to pull Sergei’s finger against the trigger. Instead, Sergei slowly lowered the barrel, and I felt Dmitry smile against my hair.

“There he is,” he murmured. “The man who always arrives too late.”

CHAPTER 33

Sergei

“Let go of my wife,” I growled.

“Your wife calls, and you follow. My father understood you better than your own brothers ever did.” Dmitry’s cheek pressed briefly against Alessia’s hair as he looked at me over her shoulder.

“No,” Alessia said. “Yuri understood one version of him.”

The gun shifted against her skin.

“Shut up, girl.”

Her eyes never left mine.

Dmitry wanted me watching the weapon. He wanted every inch of my mind trapped inside the space between the muzzle and Alessia’s skull. He wanted Moscow, Mila, and the child I had never held crowding my vision so that I forgot the room, my brothers, and the woman I loved.

He wasn’t going to get that, though.

“Raffaele saved you thirteen years ago,” Dmitry continued. “But he only postponed this moment.”

I said nothing, and the satisfaction in his face flickered. He had rehearsed this. Perhaps for years. He had probably imagined me shouting Mila’s name, charging the gun, or begging for Alessia’s life while he held me in torment with his finger on the trigger.

He hadn’t imagined silence.

“Put the weapon on the floor,” he ordered.

I lowered it another inch.

“Do it,” Dmitry snapped.

I bent one knee. Dmitry’s eyes followed the movement. His attention left her face and settled on mine as he watched Sergei Morozov kneel before the son of the man who murdered his family.

That was what he had wanted.

My surrender.

The moment he believed he had it, his grip shifted. His forearm loosened across Alessia’s chest as he shifted her slightly so he could ensure I saw the gun clearly. His right elbow moved away from his body.

Alessia closed her hand into a fist.

Now.

Her left hand clamped around Dmitry’s gun wrist. She dropped her weight hard and twisted beneath the arm across her chest, turning toward the weapon rather than away from it. At the same moment, her heel hooked behind his knee and pulled.

Dmitry lost his balance.

The gun tore away from her temple and fired. The shot struck the concrete ceiling, showering the room with dust. I lunged across the distance between us before the echo died. Alessia dropped toward the floor exactly as we had practiced. I caught her around the waist, lifted her clear of Dmitry’s collapsing body, and turned until my body covered hers.

A second shot cracked through the room.

It was Maxim’s.