Page 42 of The Pakhan’s Bride (Mafia Bosses #3)

ZOYA

T ime splits into fragments—the snap of bone, the vibration in the air, the aftershock of the rifle report.

Konstantin doesn't scream, just drops straight down, knees buckling, left arm flailing as if to catch the memory of balance.

Red pools before the sound even fades. I know the caliber by the way his shirt flowers.

For half a second, I don't move. The training says get low, find cover, but my body revolts, sprints forward, a marionette cut from strings.

My hand is at Konstantin's shoulder, fingers already hot and sticky, before I remember the sniper.

His blood is everywhere. So much for a through-and-through.

The impact must have hit an artery or a vein.

I press my palm to the wound, hating how soft the tissue is, how the skin gives and slides under pressure.

He chokes on air, teeth clenched, his other hand grabbing my wrist, locking it down hard.

Alarms. Not just the perimeter, but inside, shrill, overlapping, a chorus of failures.

Voices above, boots pounding the balcony, a wave of bodies converging on us like sharks on a dead whale.

My vision narrows, but I force myself to clock the details—the chandelier swinging in the air, the flecks of glass on the carpet, the white glow of muzzle flash reflected in the east window.

Sokolov is already dragging a Kevlar blanket over the rail while another man lays covering fire toward the trees.

The second shot never comes. The shooter is either gone or is still sighting me. I don't care. I drop to my knees and rip the sleeve from my T-shirt, packing it tightly against the wound. He grunts, face as white as the marble under him.

"It's nothing," he manages, blood in his teeth.

He tries to push me off, but he doesn't have that kind of strength anymore.

I can feel the heat draining from his skin, sweat slicking his brow even as the house freezes around us.

The guards close in. One takes position by the shattered door, gun drawn, barking into his radio.

Another kneels beside us, unspooling a belt of gauze, but he fumbles the end and it skitters across the floor.

Amateurs. I grab the strip, wad it into a ball, and press it down hard.

Konstantin hisses, then clamps his jaw, refusing the scream.

They try to pull me back, but I bare my teeth. "Get a real medic," I snap, voice so low I taste it in my spine. Someone runs for the infirmary. The rest form a wall, bracing for another attack.

The room is all blood and light and the stink of cordite.

My hands are crimson, the color too vivid to be real.

I don't remember breathing, but the world is edged with oxygen, everything too sharp, too loud, too bright.

Konstantin's eyes are glassy. He looks up at me, trying to focus.

The old defiance is there, but it flickers, replaced by something more human. I know the look. I've worn it myself.

He tries to say my name but chokes again.

Instead, he grips my wrist, hard enough to bruise, and doesn't let go.

The men drag furniture, flip the table, stack it as a barricade against the windows.

Sokolov is on the radio, his voice a staccato of orders.

Down the hall, the estate's alarm system screams for a reset, the failsafes tripping in sequence.

I hear boots on the roof, the distant whirr of a drone, the double-tap of suppressed pistols clearing the grounds.

I lean in, mouth to Konstantin's ear. "Stay with me," I whisper, even though the cliché makes me want to puke. "You do not get to check out now."

His breath rasps, slow and uneven, but he clamps his good hand around my arm and squeezes once. I take it as a yes.

Someone throws a blanket over us, shielding us from line of sight. I see the shadow of Sokolov at the edge, gun ready, eyes never leaving the trees. The guards drag us behind the overturned couch. Blood leaves a trail, an arterial smear across the wood.

"Trauma Specialist in three," a voice says behind me. "We're secure."

I pull the pressure off for one second, just to check.

The wound is angry, torn, but the bleeding has slowed.

I can't tell if it's because the artery is sealed or because he doesn't have enough blood left to pump it.

I push the gauze down again, counting beats.

The world fades to the rhythm of his heart.

Konstantin opens his eyes again, finds mine, and for a moment, the whole world shrinks to that pinhole—two people locked in a nightmare, refusing to die.

Above us, the chandelier spins on its chain, scattering light across the ceiling like a warning.

He's still bleeding, but so am I, somewhere inside. The alarms blend to a single note, a drone of pain and rage and terror.

I grit my teeth and hold on, refusing to let him go.

The trauma specialist arrives then, and mercifully, he is not a doctor so much as a machine.

He has a team of two in his wake, and the instant he sees the wound, he forgets that the man on the floor is the reason his family lives in gold-plated luxury.

He barks at the guards, then at me, a string of instructions so tight it would choke a lesser woman.

I don't move until they physically pull my hand from Konstantin's shoulder.

My palm leaves a print, a negative, a piece of my own heat clinging to him even as his drains away.

They take him from me. The nurse slides a splint under his arm.

The other one—barely old enough to shave—dumps a full bag of saline into a vein.

The senior is already in with the clamp, the light, the gloves.

They don't have a surgical table, just the bedroom rug and the urgency of knowing if the boss dies, they die with him.

I slide back until my shoulders touch the far wall, knees drawn to my chest. My hands don't know what to do.

I wipe them on the shirt, then on the floor, then on my own skin.

It doesn't come off. The blood seeps into the creases, thickens at the cuticles, and begins to crust. I stare at the webbing of my left hand and remember when that skin was new, before the burns and the blade scars, before I knew that real love was whatever survives the shrapnel.

Sokolov blocks my line of sight, voice gentled for the first time in memory. "He'll pull through. It's superficial." His hand rests on my shoulder, an awkward, fatherly gesture that doesn't fit either of us. I want to rip it off, but I don't. I nod.

"You need to see about the boy," he says.

The words snap me upright. I leave the blood, the medics, the ring of guards, and find myself in the back corridor of the suite.

It smells of ammonia and old food, the air filtered through a hundred meters of ductwork.

At the far end, Galina waits. She has a towel in her hands, knotted so tightly it could throttle a cat.

"Where is Lev?" I ask.

Her voice is a whisper. "In his room. He's still sleeping."

I nod, more to myself than her. "Stay with him," I say, and she flinches. "Don't let anyone in. If the alarms go again, get to the panic room, use the code from last year."

Galina's eyes water, but she blinks it away. "Is the Pakhan …?"

"He'll live," I vow. "It's a flesh wound. Drama for the underlings."

She makes a sound that wants to be a laugh and doesn't make it.

I don't go to Lev. I leave the suite and take the stairs two at a time, up to the third floor, where the staff rooms are dark and abandoned.

I pick the lock on the linen closet with the pin from my hair and collapse among the towels, the scent of bleach so thick it burns.

I pull the door closed and scream into the terry cloth. No one hears it.

The adrenaline is gone, but the shakes stay. I want alcohol, or a pill, or a bullet in the mouth, but I settle for the scratch of fabric against my skin, the way it hurts the raw places on my knuckles. I count breaths until the world slows to something less than a landslide.

This is the moment they never train you for, the aftermath, the knowledge that no matter how fast you run, the wolf in your ribs is still chasing you. I let it catch up.

It's stupid, but I think of one of the nights we had in Paris, the stupid pizza place with the oily tablecloths, the way Konstantin picked mushrooms off my slice and pretended it was a service to humanity.

The way he looked at me when I told him I didn't want kids, didn't want a family, didn't want to be a wife in a glass house.

He said, "I only want you to survive," and laughed when I called him sentimental.

He built this world for me, brick by bloody brick, and all I ever did was count the ways it would fail. In the end, I failed it. I failed him. I curl tighter in the dark. The towels suffocate, but it's a good kind of death.

After a time, I hear footsteps in the hall. Heavy, measured, not a threat. A voice—Sokolov, again. "Zoya. It's over. You can come out."

I stay another ten seconds, then emerge, brushing lint from my hair, face stiff and cold but dry. Sokolov looks me over, says nothing. He hands me a damp cloth, and I scrub the blood from my arms, though it's already dried into the skin. "He wants to see you," Sokolov says.

I wipe harder. "Is he awake?"

"Yeah. First thing he did was ask for you. Second thing was threaten the shooter."

I almost smile. "They caught him?"

"Not yet," he says, eyes flicking to the window. "But they will."

I hand back the rag, now pink with the effort.

I run my hands over my shirt, flatten the creases, and walk back down the stairs.

Each step brings the sound of the house alive again—the static of radios, the click of guns being checked and rechecked, the low murmur of staff cleaning up the blood as if it were just another wine spill on a Monday.