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"Don't turn into him, Vitya. Don't let vengeance destroy you."

I'd held him as the light faded from his eyes, my tears freezing on my cheeks in the bitter Moscow winter. His blood had soaked through my clothes, warm at first, then cooling to a clammy reminder of mortality. I'd whispered promises I intended to keep—justice, vengeance, restoration of our family's honor. But Misha, even dying, had seen deeper.

"Promise me,"he'd rasped, fingers clutching weakly at my coat."Promise you won’t lose yourself in this war."

I'd promised. A lie, perhaps. The boy Misha knew died that day in the snow alongside him. What rose from those bloodstained grounds was something harder, colder, focused with a singular purpose.

I push the memory away, focusing on the immediate tactical situation. The Petrov men are closing in on Anastasia, who has finally sensed danger and quickened her pace. Too late. They'll reach her before she can escape to a public area.

I have seconds to decide my approach. Lethal or non-lethal. Visible or covert. Intervene directly or manipulate the situation from the shadows.

I close the distance slowly,silently. I watch her duck into an alley. Mistake. I’ve mapped out every inch of this city. She’s walking into a death trap. The men spread out, ready to make their move.

Something shifts in me at the reality facing her—kidnapping, torture, abuse, then death. She’s not just Markov's princess, not just an asset for me to use for my vengeance. Something more complex, more interesting.

The men make their move, one grabbing for her arm as they emerge from the shadows.

I make mine.

Five years of planning. Five years of patience. Five years of becoming the perfect weapon against Mikhail Markov.

All potentially compromised because his daughter decided to walk alone through Paris at night.

As I step from the shadows, moving toward the unfolding confrontation, a dangerous new possibility forms in my mind. Perhaps there's more than one way to destroy Mikhail Markov. Perhaps the daughter is not just a complication.

Perhaps she's an opportunity.

3

ANASTASIA

Paris holds its magic in the small side streets.

At least that's what the concierge told me, his accent thick as he traced a route on my map away from the tourist monuments and toward the beating heart of the real city. I follow his directions now, savoring the narrow cobblestone pathways and buildings with their wrought-iron balconies dripping with flowers.

For three hours, I've wandered the Marais district, blending with locals at a small café, browsing boutiques where nobody treated me like Bratva royalty, visiting a tiny art gallery where the elderly owner spoke passionately about an emerging artist's work. Such ordinary pleasures, yet entirely foreign to my Moscow existence.

The jazz club still awaits, but I'm reluctant to end this solitary exploration—this unprecedented freedom to move unobserved, unchaperoned, unjudged.

Or so I thought.

The prickling awareness returns, stronger now—that unmistakable sensation of being watched. I've felt it since the hotel, initially dismissing it as paranoia born from a lifetime of surveillance. But I know better. My mother taught me to trust those instincts before she died.

Without changing pace, I scan my surroundings through the reflection of a darkened shop window. There—two men, keeping pace thirty meters behind. Their movements hold the distinctive cadence of men who understand violence intimately. Not French. The set of their shoulders, the force of their steps—Eastern European, almost certainly Russian.

Father's men? No. He would have told them to maintain complete invisibility. These men are making no effort to conceal their pursuit.

My fingers twitch toward my purse where a slender tactical knife lies hidden—another legacy from my mother, who insisted I never travel unarmed."Beauty attracts predators, Nastya,"she'd whispered during our secret training sessions."Never be helpless prey."

Under a false bottom in my bag is a small gun—a legacy from my father who never shies away from violence.

A memory surfaces, vivid as yesterday. Mother in our private gymnasium beneath the Moscow mansion, dressed in workout clothes so different from her usual elegant attire. I was fifteen, gangly and uncertain, my body still transitioning from child to woman.

"Come at me," she'd instructed, standing relaxed in the center of the padded floor.

I'd hesitated, unwilling to charge at my own mother, the woman who embodied grace and refinement in our brutal world.

"Nastya." Her voice had hardened with unexpected steel. "One day, someone will come for you because of who your father is. Because of who you are. And I might not be there to protect you. Now, come at me."