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I turned.

Bruno stood a few paces away, gun leveled at my heart. Nico lay sprawled by a crate, unmoving, blood pooling beneath his body. Two of Bruno’s men were still standing. I possibly had a concussion, fractures in my face, and only a piece of pipe in my hand.

Fuck.

Stas, I have to break my promise to you.

“Even if I die tonight,” Bruno rasped, “I’m taking you with me.”

He tightened his finger on the trigger.

A thunderous explosion ripped through the building. Dust rained from the rafters, and the ground shook under my boots. Bruno stumbled back, gun wavering, and his shot went wild.

“Yuriy!” Stas’s voice came sharp and furious.

My throat tightened, and my knees nearly buckled from relief. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I nodded as the shadows shifted and Stas stepped inside.

Cold. Controlled. Commanding.

Everything inside of me finally let go. All the pain screamed to the surface.

Stanislav was finally here.

34

STAS

Two nurses rushed Yelena down the hallway on a rolling gurney, her coat discarded somewhere between the house and the SUV, her hair plastered damply to her temples. She winced through another contraction, fingers curled so tightly around my hand that her knuckles went white.

“Papa, don’t look at me like that,” she said, voice trembling but stubborn as ever. “I’m not dying. I’m just having a baby.”

Like that made it easier.

My little girl was having a baby, and the man who meant the world to me was probably fighting for his life.

The fluorescent lights overhead flickered by in hard, bright strips as we moved. Christmas wreaths hung unevenly on the walls, red tinsel drooping. Somewhere, a speaker played a soft instrumental version of “Silent Night”. It felt cruelly out of place, too calm for the hurricane tearing through my chest.

“Contractions every four minutes,” one nurse said, adjusting the monitors hooked to her belly. “Blood pressure elevated.”

“Papa,” Yelena whispered again, squeezing my hand. “Look at me.”

I forced my eyes off the monitors and onto my daughter. My brave, stubborn little girl who should have been warm at home, feet up, waiting for her husband to return with stupid pickled cherries. But instead, she’d received a phone call that broke her, and the shock had snapped something inside her body loose.

“I’m here.” I brushed the back of my hand against her cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”

A lie. A soft one. But still a lie because although I was there in person, my heart, mind, and soul were with Yuriy.

The nurses pushed her into a delivery room and transferred her off the gurney, fitting monitors to her stomach while another checked her dilation. They’d already confirmed that I could be in the room in place of her husband. Everything smelled like antiseptic, sharp and clean, and my heart hammered so hard I felt it in my throat.

Yelena’s breath hitched. She turned her face toward me, eyes glittering with pain and fear. “Zasha,” she whispered. “Papa… he’ll miss the birth.”

Or worse.

“Yuriy will find him,” I said with confidence, even though the words scraped raw on the way out.

She clutched the front of my coat. “But he’s alone.”

“No,” I said automatically. “I sent my men to provide backup.”