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ZOYA

T he second I landed the helicopter, shut it down, and secured it, I stormed into the warehouse to assess the damage this ill-advised outing had caused.

Yells echoed through the space.

I knew whoever that madman we’d left behind was, he had seriously or mortally injured more than a few of my men.

He had moved like vengeance incarnate.

Precise. Merciless. Calculated.

Something had to be done about it. Someone had to pay.

Rage, adrenaline, and fear pulsed through my body, and I wanted to scream.

But I couldn’t.

As a woman, anytime I showed any reaction other than cold calculation it was viewed as a weakness.

If I was angry, shouting or screaming proved I was overly emotional and couldn’t be trusted.

If I showed concern for my men, then I was weak-willed and not suitable for this life. And if, God forbid, a single tear trailed down my face, then it was over.

It didn’t matter if it came from anger, frustration, or sadness.

A tear was a sign of weakness.

These feral animals would no longer consider me their leader—and might kill me themselves.

The protection my money provided only went so far.

Which was why spotting my second-in-command casually leaning against a wall, cleaning his gun while the surrounding men bled and my unconscious prisoner lay unrestrained on the cold concrete floor spiked my blood pressure.

Time to be the ruthless bitch they accused me of being.

“Mateo!” I yelled, careful to not let too much anger show. Just enough so everyone knew I wasn’t fucking around. Controlled fury.

God, walking that line was exhausting.

“Oh shit, reina de hielo is getting hysterical,” someone muttered. I shot them a withering look, and they moved behind someone else.

Ice queen.

At first, I hated the nickname, but now I used it as armor. Another layer between me and the men who worked for me.

“Mateo,” I yelled again.

“Yeah, boss?” he said, not looking up from his pistol. The further into the warehouse I moved, the stronger the stench of acrid gunpowder and carnage became. I breathed in deeply, using the smell of violence to focus myself.

“You said he’d be alone. Why wasn’t he alone?” I demanded.

“I don’t know.” Mateo shrugged. “It was a mistake that should have never happened.” He looked up, his dark eyes assessing me, like he was annoyed by my presence but was forced to tolerate me. “But we’ll take care of it. We’ll go back and kill the bitch.”

Every time one of them opened their mouth, I remembered why I hated needing them.

I hired them because I needed ruthless; I needed vicious.

It didn’t mean I had to like them…or respect them.

There had to be a certain element of crazy in any man willing to go up against the Ivanov family. However, their complete nonchalance over killing women and children was unsettling.

I wanted the men responsible for what happened to my family dead, not their wives. Not their children. The sins of the father did not pass down to the son. Not in my world.

“No,” I said, a little too quickly. Mateo raised an eyebrow, ready to question me.

Wrong response.

Too emotional.

What would my father do? He would kill her. But if he didn’t, what excuse would he use?

“Leave her,” I said, not letting him speak. “Let her be a warning. It’s good to have witnesses, so the Ivanovs know what happened.”

Mateo nodded, approving of what he considered a strategic move. It still made me sick to my stomach, and I hoped that girl, whoever she was, survived the crash.

Then there was the matter of the man who chased after us. Another miscalculation. Another strategic failure I couldn’t afford. Another fuckup.

I thought again of how he moved like a weapon. Cold. Programmed. Unstoppable. He’d focused his fury and rage more intensely than anyone I’d ever seen.

I didn’t recognize him as one of the Ivanovs.

They never hired guards that weren’t family in one way or another.

Every person working for or with the Ivanovs was Russian. This man wasn’t.

He was something else, someone else.

I pushed the thoughts away and looked back over at my prisoner. Pavel Ivanov. The only one who didn’t live at the compound, thus making him the easiest target. He lay unconscious on the cement floor.

Abducting him was just the first part of my revenge. His family had taken so much from me, so much, and I intended to pay it back with interest.

I didn’t need their money. That wasn’t what this was about. In truth, I really wasn’t sure whether my determination to destroy the Ivanovs came from a place of wanting revenge as much as a need to protect my reputation.

“Tie him up. He will wake soon, and I don’t need to lose more men to an attack by him,” I said to one of the other men.

“He is outnumbered. What could he do? I will tie him when he wakes,” he responded in a heavy Colombian accent, not even bothering to look up from cleaning his nails with the tip of his knife.

Idiots. Never underestimate an Ivanov. Even an injured one.

“Did I ask for your opinion?” I took a step toward him, my hand on the hilt of the dagger at my thigh.

Lip curled, he kicked off the wall, the knife in his hand clattering to the metal table as he reluctantly went to obey me.

I stared at the knife. Black carbon handle and stainless steel blade. It looked like the one I used the first time I took a life.

Like all Russian women, I was underestimated. No one thought I would kill my husband, but I did.

Now I was reclaiming my inheritance. Once the world found out what I did—how I got my retribution—my family name would be restored to its former glory. A name of strength, fear, and vengeance.

No one would talk about how the Ivanovs eliminated my brothers or how it drove my father to madness. They would talk about me. The daughter who was so ruthless she took back her family’s honor, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake.

Flying that mission myself was a calculated risk. One that had to be taken. It was one thing to order my men to abduct an Ivanov, but to go myself? To put myself in harm’s way? That took it to an entirely different level.

It was a gamble, but it also showed my strength and my willingness to get my hands dirty just like any other man under my command. I was not above taking deadly chances.

Calculating risks, showing my strength firsthand and channeling my rage into every action taken against my enemy were the only things my piece-of-shit father, Egor Novikoff, taught me.

No, that wasn’t true. He also taught me how to be truly cruel. How to ensure my enemies feared me.

That was why he was now rotting in a Siberian asylum. With just enough medications to keep him lucid, but suffering.

My father may have inadvertently taught me how to make my enemies cower, and how to never underestimate them. But he underestimated me.

The blood staining my hands was his fault. He had thought me weak because I was a daughter and not a son. A girl, meant to be traded or sold to strengthen his empire.

He had always held me below my idiot brothers. It didn’t matter that I was more cunning than they were. That they didn’t have the same strategic mind as me, let alone the same common sense to rule our bratva empire.

No, they were all about instant gratification, and throwing their dicks around like it made them important.

I wasn’t surprised when they were gunned down by an Ivanov sniper.

Once those two idiots got themselves killed, it changed things. My once cruel father became even more brutal. There was no more pretense of civility.

He sold me. His only living child. Sold me to the highest bidder, like I was livestock. Determined to get the money to wage his war.

One day I was at school, earning a degree. The next I was shoved into an ugly wedding dress that was made for another woman and delivered to the priest.

The man who paid for me was an eighty-year-old psychopath who had already been widowed twice. Both of his wives dying under mysterious circumstances.

In our world, a woman dying under mysterious circumstances was simply code for she got old, or nagged too much, or she just didn’t make her husband’s cock hard anymore. Whenever a man was tired of his wife, he got rid of her and bought a younger woman to warm his bed.

Thankfully, that monster underestimated me, too.

I did my homework. He thought he was buying a sweet, innocent little virgin who would open her young, pretty thighs for him.

He was expecting a mafia princess whose father raised her to do what she was told. Bred and sold to cook, clean, and raise babies.

I’d never held a baby. I didn’t know how to cook much, and I would sooner die than scrub that old bastard’s toilet.

But I knew how to survive. I was prepared on my wedding night.

He made it so damn easy. Why would he ever suspect that his innocent, barely legal bride would bring a knife to her marriage bed?

His was the first life I ever took. It wasn’t the last.

I stared down at my pale hand, remembering how it was stained red after I slit my husband’s throat. I could still feel the sticky warmth even though I had scrubbed my hands over and over until the blood running down the drain was mine.

How much more was going to stain my hands before I was satisfied?

I forced the memory away. Now wasn’t the time for ghosts.

Pavel Ivanov was now in my custody. Tied to a chair, still unconscious.

His passenger had seen us take him. Mateo had fucked the plan so thoroughly that not only was there a witness, but physical evidence in the form of his car which went skidding off the road would be found. There was no way to hide that accident scene.

The Ivanovs would be looking for him sooner than I planned, and they would spare no expense.

Because of Mateo’s recklessness, I was also down four men—three dead, one gravely wounded—and my brand-new helicopter was filled with bullet holes.

And that led to my biggest problem. The man with the dark eyes who almost ruined everything.

Who was he?

How did I find him?

He didn’t recognize me… but he didn’t have to.

I’d just taken his cousin.

And as I watched him through that windshield, dread slid beneath my carefully constructed calm.

Not fear.

Not regret.

Just the chilling sensation that I’d miscalculated.

A rare occurrence.

He wasn’t collateral damage—he was a variable I hadn’t accounted for.

An unknown threat I hadn’t seen coming.

And that made him dangerous.