Page 29

Chapter 29

Chains We Choose

Galina

T he cemetery is cloaked in early morning mist, the air damp with secrets and silence. Rows of headstones stretch into the fog like quiet sentinels, watching, remembering. My boots crunch softly over frostbitten grass as I follow the winding path I know by heart.

Vasiliy would’ve insisted on guards if I’d told him I was coming. Another show of protection. Another leash disguised as safety. I didn’t tell him. Couldn’t. Some things I need to do alone.

Besides, I had to get out. The club’s become a pressure cooker—guards at every door, whispered warnings, curfews, check-ins, layers of security that feel more like prison bars. I’ve been pacing like a caged animal since Matvei’s attack. Everyone keeps telling me I’m safe.

I don’t feel safe. I feel watched.

Beneath a weathered oak, three graves sit in a crooked row. Maksim. Grigoriy. Fedot. My brothers. My cousin. My ghosts. All buried because of choices I made, ambitions I chased that turned to ash. The polished granite gleams in the gray light, names etched deep like open wounds.

I kneel first by Maksim’s grave, setting down a bundle of white lilies. He would’ve rolled his eyes at the dramatics—then secretly appreciated the gesture.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, fingers brushing the cold stone. “I never meant for any of it to happen.”

The memories bite hard. His temper. His loyalty. The way he stood in front of me, not behind. He died protecting me from the fallout of a plan I thought I had under control.

If I’d just listened to him. Trusted him instead of trying to prove something.

At Grigoriy’s grave, I place a hand on my stomach without thinking. His kindness was the quiet kind, the rare kind. The kind that didn’t ask for anything in return. He had dreams—college, a clean life, an escape from the family legacy. But he stayed. For me.

“You should’ve run when you had the chance,” I murmur. “You were always the smart one.”

The ache is sharper with him. Maybe because he wanted something different. Maybe because he never got the chance.

Fedot’s grave is the last. Our wild cousin. Loyal to the end, reckless as hell. He didn’t start the war that killed him, just got caught in the crossfire of egos and old grudges. The kind of shit that festers between men who’d rather die than back down. The dirt’s fresh. Flowers too. Could be one of his girls—he never lacked company. Or someone trying to bury guilt with petals.

Or it might mean my uncle’s returned.

“I’m pregnant,” I tell the stones. The words sound too soft for a place like this. “And yeah, I know what you’d say. That I’ve lost my fucking mind. That Vasiliy’s a Volkov. Former FSB. Raised in blood, trained to kill, built for secrets. That I’ve seen how those stories end, and I’m still choosing him.”

My hand presses flat to my belly.

“But this baby…it’s something else. It feels like a chance to break the cycle. To build something different. Something that doesn’t bleed.”

A breeze stirs the oak’s brittle leaves. The wind smells like rain. I need to go before the storm hits—before Vasiliy realizes I’m gone.

“I wish you were still here,” I whisper. “You’d know what to do.”

A voice breaks the quiet.

“They can’t help you now,” it says, low and gravelly. “None of us can.”

I spin around.

A man stands behind me, leaning heavily on an ornate cane. His hair is silver at the temples, his suit impeccable, but it’s his eyes that catch me—green, sharp, intelligent. Haunted. He carries a bouquet of red roses.

“Who are you?” I demand, shifting my weight onto the balls of my feet, my instincts already braced for a fight.

“Sergey Gargarin,” he replies, the name falling like a stone in the cold morning stillness.

He gestures to a grave I hadn’t noticed before—Anastasiya’s. Her headstone is surrounded by fresh flowers, small tokens left behind by someone who still remembers. My chest tightens.

“I come every week,” he says. “A father never stops mourning his children. As your parents know all too well.”

The jab lands, quiet but sharp. “I’m sorry about Ana. What happened?—”

“—was a tragedy,” he cuts me off. “One of many. But not the last.” His eyes rake over me with unsettling calm. “You’re carrying a Volkov child.”

It’s not a question. My fingers twitch, aching to shield my stomach.

“How did you?—?”

“News travels fast in our world.” His smile is as cold as the wind rolling in through the headstones. “Yakov was particularly interested in that piece of information.”

The chill that runs through me has nothing to do with the weather. “So it’s true. Yakov’s back.”

Sergey nods slowly. “He lived through what should’ve ended him. But the man who came out of that hospital wasn’t the same. Yakov left the man he used to be behind in that wreckage. Since then, he’s lived for two things—healing his body and settling old debts.”

My pulse stutters. “Debts against whom?”

He steps in, the cane tapping against hard earth, voice low and clipped. “Everyone. The Volkovs. The Sokolovs. Anyone who played a hand in what happened to Ana. Anyone who stood by while his sister bled out and was buried like she never mattered. He’s not coming back to make peace, girl. He’s coming to clean house. Burn every last root of your families from this city.”

“You have to stop him,” I say. “Please.”

“I could,” he muses, tapping the ground with his cane, “but I won’t. Igor kept Ana’s son from us. My grandson. That alone sealed his fate.”

“Vasiliy isn’t Igor,” I argue. “He hates him. He’s nothing like him.”

Sergey’s expression doesn’t change. “The wolf may change his coat, but never his nature. I’ve stepped back from this war. They forced my hand once; I won’t let them do it again.”

“Then Yakov will die,” I snap. “And the last of your family will die with him. Is that what you want? No future for your grandson?”

A flicker of something passes behind his eyes. Regret? Pain? But it vanishes as quickly as it came. His gaze returns to Ana’s grave.

“It’s too late,” he says quietly. “You’re as blind as she was. Just ask her where trust got her. Or what’s left of her.”

My throat tightens. “Why are you telling me this?”

He kneels, laying the roses on Ana’s grave with solemn precision. “Consider it a kindness. For old times’ sake.”

Then he stands, straightening with quiet power. “Leave New York, Galina. Take your child and disappear. Because once Yakov makes his move, there will be no mercy. Not for you. Not for the baby. And not for anyone bearing the Volkov or Sokolov name.”

“You’re threatening me?” I ask, trying to sound unshaken.

“No.” His voice softens, but it’s no less terrifying. “I’m offering you a warning. Yakov is not the man Ana knew. That man died the day they shattered his spine. What came back…is something far more dangerous.”

Thunder cracks somewhere in the distance, echoing through the trees. The sky darkens, storm clouds crawling over the horizon.

“Leave tonight,” he says, already turning away.

Sergey disappears into the fog like a ghost, just another specter from the past. But the weight of his warning doesn’t vanish with him. It settles into my chest like lead, every word louder than the thunder rolling overhead.

My heart pounds. My instincts scream. I should run straight to Vasiliy and tell him everything. But there’s another voice—the one that’s kept me alive this long. The one that always speaks the truth, no matter how brutal.

And right now, it’s telling me to go.

To run.

To save what matters before it’s too late.

I turn back to the graves and lay a hand on each headstone. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “But I have to break another promise.”

The first raindrops hit as I cross the cemetery gates, cold and sharp against my skin. I don’t look back. Every step puts distance between me and the ghosts of my past, but Sergey’s words echo with every footfall.

Instead of heading back to the club, I redirect the cab to Penn Station. The driver doesn’t ask questions. Why would he? Still, I catch the flicker of his eyes in the rearview mirror—just curious enough to clock the tension in my shoulders, the way I keep glancing behind us like I’m being followed. Maybe he thinks I’ve had a fight with a lover or just left a funeral. He wouldn’t be wrong. Not entirely.

The moment I step inside the station, the air changes. It’s heavy with transit and tension, thick with the smell of wet concrete, cheap coffee, and too many people crammed into a place no one really wants to be. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, casting a harsh, unnatural glow that makes every shadow seem deeper, every figure more suspicious.

People shuffle past in rain coats and damp shoes, eyes cast downward, too wrapped in their own escapes to notice me. But I see everything. The shriek of a distant train. The garbled intercom announcing departures. The low hum of anxiety that pulses just beneath the surface of this overcrowded space.

I move like I’ve done this before—because I have. Old habits don’t just die hard; they go dormant, waiting for moments like this. There’s cash in my jacket pocket. A go-bag tucked into locker C117. I stashed it here months ago, back when I still believed escape was a real possibility instead of a last resort.

I buy a ticket to Boston, not because I’m going there, but because it’s far enough to be convincing and common enough not to raise flags. It’s just the first breadcrumb. A lie I tell the world while I figure out the truth of where I’m really going. If anywhere.

As I wait at the terminal, everything around me blurs. My nerves are fraying, heart thudding in time with the rhythmic clatter of announcements and the clank of suitcase wheels. But I keep my head down and my body still, because in this moment, invisibility means survival.

My phone buzzes.

Vasiliy.

I silence it and press the phone to my chest, forcing back the tears. He’ll be furious. He’ll come looking. But better his anger than a bullet in our baby’s spine. Better heartbreak than history repeating itself.

I move toward the boarding line—just one more step, one more breath—when a hand clamps down on my shoulder.

I freeze.

“Going somewhere, lisichka ?”

His voice is low and deadly calm, but I can feel the fury radiating off him. I turn slowly, meeting those steel-gray eyes I know better than my own.

“How did you?—”

“Find you?” His grip tightens. “Did you really think I wouldn’t have someone watching the cemetery? After everything, you thought I’d leave you unguarded?”

“I can’t stay.” The words come out hoarse. “They’re coming, Vasiliy. All of them. My uncle. Yakov. They won’t stop.”

“Let them come,” he growls, pulling me flush against his chest. “No one touches you. Not your uncle. Not Matvei. Not Yakov fucking Gagarin.”

His arms are iron around me, his voice thunder. And something inside me—the fight, maybe—shudders and falters. Maybe I’m weak. Or maybe I’m just tired of pretending I’m not.

“You can’t lock me up forever,” I whisper.

“No,” he agrees, brushing wet hair from my cheek. “But for now, you’re mine. And I intend to make full use of that.”

His threat curls heat in my belly. I feel his arousal pressing against me, and I hate how easily I respond.

“You’re a bastard,” I mutter.

“Guilty.” His mouth crushes mine, and I kiss him back like I’m drowning.

The world disappears, drenched in rain, in fury, in the kind of twisted devotion that lives somewhere between cruelty and salvation.

His hand stays on my lower back as he leads me to the waiting car. I slide in beside him, drenched and shivering and burning all at once. The city blurs outside the window, a smear of headlights and shadows.

I should feel relief.

But I wonder if I’ve just made another mistake.

Then his fingers find mine.

And I squeeze back.

Some chains are made of steel. Others are forged in fire—need, loyalty, love.

Whatever binds me to Vasiliy, I know one thing for certain.

I don’t want to be free of it.

The rain comes down harder as we pull up to the club.

Whatever storm’s coming, we’ll face it together.

We don’t have any other choice.