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"By betraying us to his enemies?" The words tear out of my throat like broken glass. "By giving them the ammunition they needed to destroy him?"

"I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't think?—"

"You never think!" I'm screaming now, and I don't care who hears me. "You never think about anyone but yourself and your debts and your stupid, selfish choices!"

Batyareaches for me again, but I step back, putting distance between us.

"If Nikolai dies," I tell him, my voice deadly quiet, "it will be your fault. Not the Zharovs’. Not some anonymous kidnappers. You. Your greed. Your cowardice."

"Anya, please?—"

"You've done enough,Batya." I turn my back on him and start limping toward the estate. "You've done more than enough."

I don't look back as the guards escort him off the property, don't listen to his voice calling my name, begging for forgiveness I don't have to give.

Back in the infirmary room, I curl up on the narrow bed and wrap my arms around my stomach, trying to hold myself together. The silence presses in from all sides, broken only by the steady beep of monitors and the distant sound of helicopters somewhere over the city.

Rolan is out there in the darkness, hunting the people who took our son. And I'm here, useless and broken, waiting for news that might never come.

I close my eyes and try to breathe through the crushing weight of helplessness. Somewhere in Moscow, my little boy is scared and alone, surrounded by people who plan to hurt him just to hurt us.

And there's nothing I can do but wait.

28

ROLAN

The hunting lodge squats in the darkness like a cancer against the tree line, its windows glowing amber in the pre-dawn hours outside Tver. I study it through military-grade night vision binoculars from our position on the ridge, counting the shadows that move behind drawn curtains. Seven men, maybe eight. Armed but overconfident, drinking and smoking as if they believe the world beyond these woods doesn't exist.

They're about to learn otherwise.

"Thermal confirms movement on the ground floor," Stepan whispers into his radio from his position fifty meters to my left. "Two guards patrolling the perimeter. Kitchen and main room occupied. No movement upstairs, over."

"Teams Alpha and Bravo, confirm positions, over," I breathe into my comm unit.

"Alpha in position, south entrance, over."

"Bravo ready, north side, over."

The calls come through as I chamber a round in my rifle and feel the familiar sense of approaching death settling into my bones. This isn't the first time I've painted the Russiancountryside red, and it won't be the last. But tonight feels different because this is about my blood—a child who calls meBatyabecause he doesn't know any better words for the man who would burn the world to keep him safe.

"Remember," I say into the radio, my voice barely above a whisper but carrying the authority of a man who has never learned to doubt his own capacity for violence. "The boy comes out alive and unharmed. Everyone else dies. No prisoners, no negotiations, no mercy—over."

Static crackles back through the earpiece. "Understood, sir, over."

I slide down the embankment toward the lodge, my boots finding purchase on frost-covered earth that crunches softly beneath my weight. The night air bites at my exposed skin, carrying the scents of pine needles and wood smoke from the chimney that rises from the lodge's slate roof. Somewhere inside that building, my son waits in whatever hell these animals have constructed for him.

The first guard dies without even knowing what's happening to him. I come up behind his position near the woodshed and slide my combat knife between his ribs with the precision of long practice. The blade finds his heart on the first try, and he drops to the frozen ground with nothing more than a soft exhale that could be mistaken for wind through the trees.

I stare down at him as blood rushes from the wound first, then makes his breathing come as quiet gurgling noises. When the first few droplets of blood come out his nose and mouth, I move on.

The second guard turns toward the sound just as Stepan's silenced pistol speaks from the darkness. The man's forehead sprouts a ghastly hole and he crumples forward into a pile of split logs that scatter with a sound like breaking bones. It's toomuch noise, and someone inside will have heard it, but I'm not making apologies tonight.

"Perimeter secure," I whisper into my radio. "Breach in thirty seconds—over."

I reach the lodge's rear door and press my back against the weathered wood siding. Through the window beside me, I can see into a kitchen where two men sit at a scarred wooden table, playing cards and drinking from bottles of vodka that gleam like liquid silver in the lamplight. They're laughing about something, their voices carrying the casual cruelty of men who have forgotten that actions carry consequences.

But I'm going to remind them who I am and why no one ever crosses me or my family and lives to tell about it. It won't even register to them until it's too late.