Page 131 of Blood & Snow

The ache in my chest as I watched her disappear into that building isn't about losing a useful asset.

It's about losing the only person who made me feel human in a world that demands I be a monster.

She called meKhishchnikin the car, her pet name for me slipping out in a moment of vulnerability.

And that's what I am—a predator, a monster, the man who is supposed to devour her alive.

But to her I'm the only thing standing between her and her death by the hands of angry men.

Akhishchnikofkhishchniki.

And my little bird is vulnerable to being devoured by other men like me.

I take a long drag from the cigarette, letting the smoke burn my lungs.

The pain is nothing compared to the realization that I've fallen in love with a woman who can't survive in my world.

Nadya has seen me kill, has cleaned up the aftermath, but she still believes in things I abandoned years ago—family, safety, the possibility of redemption.

She still has hope.

And hope is the most dangerous thing she could carry into a war with the Sokolovs.

I don't know where to go from here.

Every choice leads to violence, and violence leads back to the same conclusion.

I am exactly what Nadya believes me to be.

A killer.

A monster.

A man too stained with blood to deserve the light she carries.

But I'm also the only one who can keep her alive when the Sokolovs come looking for revenge.

And they will come, whether she stays with me or runs back to her sister's apartment.

Her name is already written in their ledger of debts to be collected.

She has no idea that walking away from me might be the most dangerous decision she's ever made.

I have only a few days left to eliminate the Sokolov Brotherhood.

But first, I have to figure out how to save the woman I love without destroying her in the process.

The clock is ticking toward midnight, and with it, the storm that will decide all our fates.

22

NADYA

The apartment feels different when I return, as if the confrontation with Irina has shifted something fundamental in the atmosphere.

She sits at her usual place at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a fresh cup of tea, steam rising between us in the space where words once came easily.

And she eyes me as I walk in and shut the door, begin removing my coat.