Page 30

The air still reeks of smoke and blood.

The walls of the ruined room seem to breathe with it—each crack in the plaster exhaling soot, every shattered beam bearing silent witness to the violence just unleashed.

The floor is slick in places, dark where it shouldn’t be.

The bodies that lie cooling on the concrete aren’t moving.

Won’t move again. And yet none of us are looking at them.

All eyes are on the living ghost standing across from me.

Maxim. My brother.

He stands calm, his weapon lowered now, but not out of reach. The fire that burned through him moments ago when he put a bullet through Matías is gone, banked. What remains is something quieter. Tired. Worn down by time, but resolute.

His voice cuts through the silence like a knife dragged slow across stone.

“I should be dead,” he says. “I was shot. I was thrown into the water.”

The room holds its breath.

Even Dima—who’s never rattled, who’s seen more than most men should—goes completely still beside me. Alina’s eyes are wide, her mouth slightly open, chest rising and falling in shallow, stunned breaths.

I say nothing.

Maxim keeps speaking, his gaze fixed just past me—on something far away or just too deep to meet directly.

“The bullet didn’t kill me. It fractured my skull. Knocked me out cold, but I was still breathing when I hit the water.”

His voice is steady, but not indifferent. There’s weight behind every word. No dramatics. Just truth.

“I don’t remember hitting the water. Don’t remember being dragged out of it either. Only pain. Then darkness.”

He pauses. When he speaks again, it’s quieter. More human. “A fisherman pulled me from the water. A local. Old. Alone. He kept me alive. Kept me breathing when I didn’t have a name.”

The room is silent except for the slow creak of rain trickling through a hole in the ceiling.

“I woke up in his home. No past. No language. My face—” He touches the jagged scar that bisects the corner of his left eyebrow. “—wasn’t mine anymore. Everything I knew was gone. I didn’t even know I was Russian. Didn’t know I was Bratva.”

His eyes flick to mine then—sharp, sudden.

“I drifted for years,” he says. “Construction sites. Docks. Kitchens. Places that didn’t ask questions. I carried scars I couldn’t explain and nightmares that made no sense.”

I feel the weight of it then—not the story, but the time. The years. The birthdays missed. The vengeance left to rot. The silence that buried him while I bled for answers that never came.

“Then, a few months ago….” He exhales slowly, gaze hardening. “Pieces came back. Faces. Words. Guns. You.” He nods at me. “You most of all.”

Something twists deep in my chest. I ignore it.

“When I remembered,” he finishes, “I came home to finish what should’ve been done ten years ago.”

The room goes still again. No one dares speak.

Dima’s face is pale. Stiff. His fingers twitch near his belt like he doesn’t know whether to salute Maxim or draw his weapon.

Alina hasn’t moved at all. She’s watching him like she still isn’t sure he’s real. Like he might vanish if she blinks too hard.

I’m trained to keep my face still, to hold the world at bay behind an iron wall.

Inside… inside I feel every one of those years crash down at once.

I buried him, although not literally. I avenged him.

Now he’s back. Not the boy I remember. Not the clever bastard who used to laugh too loud and fight too fast.

This man is colder. Harder. A blade reforged in silence and exile.

Now, God help whoever stands in his way.

The silence doesn’t last. Not when I cross the room in two steps and grab Maxim like he might vanish all over again.

My arms lock around him in a brutal, crushing hold—bone-deep, blood-warm, the kind of embrace meant to remind the world that something lost has been found.

My grip tightens like a man choking on the weight of ten years.

My hands fist in the back of his jacket, clenching hard enough to leave wrinkles, maybe bruises. I don’t care.

I bury my face in his shoulder. “I thought you were dead,” I whisper.

My voice breaks halfway through. It’s hoarse and raw, stripped bare of control.

Maxim stiffens.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. His arms hover, uncertain, like he’s forgotten how to return something so simple. I feel the hesitation—the old instincts clashing with the new man time made him. Slowly, slowly, his arms lift. One closes around my ribs. Then the other.

He holds me back.

For a long moment, neither of us speaks. We don’t need to.

The grief, the guilt, the years of fury and silence—they bleed out into the space between us. Quiet. Heavier than words. He was dead. I buried him. I built a life of vengeance over the grave of a lie.

When I finally pull back, I look him full in the face—older, harder, scarred. But him.

Still him.

“No one will ever touch you again,” I say, voice scraped raw. “Not while I breathe.”

Maxim doesn’t nod. He doesn’t need to. His eyes say enough. He understands the promise for what it is—absolute. Unbreakable.

Behind us, the room shifts. The tension finally begins to exhale. Dima steps forward, his usual smirk nowhere in sight. He looks between us like he’s seeing ghosts layered over flesh.

He clears his throat once. Still hoarse. Still shaken. “What happens now?”

I don’t hesitate. “Now?” I repeat, letting the word settle like a weight. “We take back everything that was stolen.”

My gaze sweeps over the blood, the broken men, the carnage we’ve waded through to get here.

“We bury the rest.”

Dima nods once.

Outside, the storm has eased into a slow drizzle. Dawn bleeds weak gold through the clouds, casting everything in gray.

Bratva soldiers move like shadows—dragging bodies, reloading magazines, checking the perimeter. They don’t question. They don’t speak unless ordered. The machine resets itself, even in the aftermath.

Alina stands just beyond the ruined doorway, arms wrapped around herself, rain softening the soot in her hair. Her eyes track everything—quiet, alert, still processing.

It’s not the blood she’s looking at.

It’s us.

Her gaze moves between me and Maxim like she’s watching a myth unfold in real time.

***

When we arrive home, the room is quiet—soft with the sound of rain trailing down the windows in streaks that catch the warm amber light from the bedside lamps.

The walls are dark wood, old and clean, the space orderly despite the chaos of the last few days.

Everything smells of cedar, smoke, and blood.

My blood.

I sit on the edge of the bed, shirt discarded somewhere on the floor, body stiff and aching.

My back throbs, hot and sharp where the bullet tore too close to the ribs.

The side wound I managed—taped it, sealed it.

But this one—this one is a bastard. Deep, high, just beneath the left shoulder blade. Out of reach.

I grit my teeth and try again, fingers slick, clumsy.

The antiseptic stings. The gauze won’t hold.

I hiss, a curse escaping under my breath.

Fuck.

It’s not the pain—it’s the helplessness.

The humiliation of fumbling with something I’d usually handle without blinking.

My patience is thin. My hands tremble with fatigue, adrenaline finally crashing into the exhaustion beneath it.

The bullet didn’t kill me, but it’s cutting a victory lap through my muscles now.

The door creaks.

I turn sharply, halfway to reaching for the pistol still holstered on the nightstand, but it’s Alina.

She steps inside without a word, closing the door behind her with a quiet click.

She doesn’t ask permission. Doesn’t speak. Just walks toward me, slow and deliberate, her gaze sweeping over the blood on my back. Her bare feet make no sound across the polished floor. Her expression is unreadable—something careful and calm hiding all the things she’s too smart to say out loud.

I should tell her to leave. To give me space. To let it be.

I don’t.

She kneels behind me, legs folded to the side, and gently guides my hand away from the wound. I let her. My palm falls uselessly to my thigh, blood drying on the pads of my fingers.

She picks up the gauze, the antiseptic, the needle and thread I’d dropped.

Her hands are steady. Her first touch makes me flinch—just barely. A soft intake of breath. A tightening of my shoulders.

I don’t move.

She cleans the wound, her fingertips brushing over raw flesh. The sting forces a sharp breath from between my teeth, and I feel her pause—only briefly—before she continues.

No apology. No words at all.

Just the quiet press of cloth, the careful attention to each jagged edge. Her touch is gentle but sure, not hesitant, not afraid. She works like she wants this to hurt less, like she’s determined not to leave me worse than she found me.

My body stays tense beneath her, every muscle locked under the weight of her proximity. The soft glide of her fingers over my spine, the shift of her knees against the bed—it’s nothing and everything at once. The pain, the warmth, the ache in my bones. It all blurs.

She threads the needle. Starts to stitch.

My fists curl into the sheets, and I don’t look at her.

Soon, the wound is clean, the final stitch tied.

Still, Alina doesn’t move.

Her hands rest lightly on my back, the pads of her fingers barely grazing the skin beneath the bandage. Her breath brushes the space between us—uneven now, catching on the silence.

I feel it before she says anything. The shift. The heaviness curling under her ribs. The words trying to find a shape inside her throat.

Then, quietly—almost too soft to hear, “Thank you… for coming for me.”

Her voice trembles. With fear, maybe. Or guilt. Or whatever it is that’s settled between us like smoke refusing to clear.

I turn toward her slowly.

The movement aches, the stitches tug at my skin—but I need to see her. Need to look into her face and know this isn’t just relief speaking. That it’s her. Fully aware. Fully choosing.

Her eyes meet mine. Open. Raw.