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The round struck Dmitry’s right shoulder as he tried to bring the gun back toward us. His arm snapped sideways. The weapon he held hit the concrete and skidded beneath the steel table.

Dmitry scrabbled for Alessia with his other hand. I drove my boot into his chest and sent him backward.

“Don’t move!” Maxim’s voice rang out as he stepped forward with his gun trained on Dmitry. With Maxim covering us, I carried my wife away from him. I moved her behind a concrete support column and lowered her to her feet.

“Where are you hit?”

“I’m not.”

I checked her anyway. My hands moved over her face, throat, shoulders, ribs, and arms, searching for an injury she hadn’t felt yet. Blood darkened her lip. Bruising had already begun around one wrist. The torn fabric near her shoulder exposed skin but no bullet wound.

“Sergei. I’m fine.” She glanced past me toward Dmitry. “Finish it.”

I moved her farther behind the column and placed my backup weapon in her hand.

“Stay here.”

Dmitry had recovered enough to push himself against the far wall. One arm hung uselessly at his side, blood spreading across the black fabric over his shoulder. Maxim stood between him and the main door, gun raised. The nominee Levon had brought lay face down near the wall, hands laced behind his head, with a suddenly discovered profound respect for surrender.

The rear loading door opened, and Nikolai entered first. Blood covered his knuckles and one side of his shirt, though none of it appeared to be his. His chest rose heavily from the fight outside, and the humor normally alive in his blue eyes had vanished.

Aleksei entered next with Ivan beside him. Aleksei’s suit jacket was gone, his white shirt slightly dirtied at one cuff, and a thin line of blood ran across his jaw. Ivan held the physical Veles key inside a clear evidence pouch in one hand and a pistol in the other.

“Sokolov?” I asked.

“Still alive,” Aleksei answered. “I’m pretty unhappy about it.”

“Sokolov stays alive,” Maxim replied. He touched his earpiece. “The prosecutor’s task force is waiting at the neutral dock with a sealed warrant. Ivan duplicates the archive, then they take Sokolov, the key, and an authenticated copy. Their paperwork begins there. No Morozov person, vehicle or weapon enters the federal record.”

Aleksei stood to Dmitry’s right, Ivan to his left. I remained in front of him.

“She killed Levon,” I said, looking toward the body beside the table. Pride edged into my voice.

“Nice shooting,” Nikolai exclaimed.

Alessia answered from behind the column, my good girl having not moved from where I put her. “Thanks.”

Dmitry’s eyes flicked toward her voice, and I stepped into his line of sight.

He smiled again, though the expression had become strained. “Do it, then. Give me what you came for.”

“You inherited your father’s hatred and spent years working to make me watch another woman I love die.” I shifted my eyes for the briefest moment to Alessia, who was watching me from her safe place. “And you thought you’d do it again.”

Dmitry’s breathing had begun to roughen.

I raised my weapon, focusing on him with a certain icy coldness I felt deep in my soul. “You failed,” I said.

I fired once.

The round struck in the middle of his chest and drove him against the wall. His knees folded beneath him, but he remained conscious, one hand pressing uselessly against the spreading blood.

I crossed the final few feet.

Dmitry looked up at me, searching my face for the wild man he had spent years trying to ruin. I gave him nothing.

My second shot ended the Volkov vendetta for good.

The sound rolled through the loading room and faded into the larger warehouse, where my brothers’ men were securing weapons, prisoners, and exits. Dmitry’s body went still against the concrete. I lowered my weapon and turned away from him, securing the gun in my holster as I walked away.