Page 45 of The Pakhan’s Bride (Mafia Bosses #3)

Ekaterina starts with the old voice she used to talk the nuns out of detentions, or to sweeten the confession booth. "I always said you'd be the one to kill me," she says, hands folded in her lap. "It's almost biblical, don't you think?"

I stay quiet, let her fill the space. She's always needed an audience.

"Do you remember when we were little?" she says, voice softening.

"The night Papa made us memorize the Manifesto?

You fell asleep halfway through, head on my shoulder.

He was so angry, said you'd never amount to more than a pretty face. "

She smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "I knew then that I'd have to do the heavy lifting. You'd get the name, the legacy. I'd get the work, the risk."

The wind rattles the eaves. I can smell the sweat under her perfume. She traces a line in the dust on the trunk, a nervous tic from childhood. "You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to be the one pulling strings while you got to play the princess?"

I shift my weight, just enough to show I'm still listening.

Ekaterina leans forward. "After Mama died, Papa went insane.

You know that, right? He was always a little cracked, but after the funeral, he wasn't even there anymore.

Just a ghost with a gun and a mission. He was grooming you to be the next him. All I wanted was out."

She glances at the gun in my hand. "You could shoot me now, but I think you want answers first."

I stare, let her talk.

"You were always the innocent one," she says. "The men loved you for it. The girls envied you. Papa needed it. He made me promise—PROMISE—not to ruin you." Her voice goes brittle. "He said if I did, he'd cut me out. Like Mama."

She licks her lips. "So I did what I had to. I lied. I took the beatings. I made the alliances. I kept you clean, even when you didn't want to be. Even when you hated me for it."

I say, "Why Lev? He's just a kid."

Her jaw clenches. "Because you needed a reason to act. You were always waiting for someone to tell you what to do. Even now."

Suddenly, she stands. She's shorter than me, but she fills the attic like a bomb fills a room. She says, "I never wanted to hurt him. I just needed you to see the world as it is. Not as you want it to be."

She moves to the window, looks out at the dead orchard. "They're coming for us, Zoya. The Albanis. This isn't about family anymore. It's about extinction."

I watch the way her fingers dance over the frame, the way she keeps her back to me, like she's afraid to see my face.

She turns. "You can kill me, and maybe you'll feel better for a day.

But then what? You take Lev, go back to the house, play wife to the Pakhan , and wait for the next wolf to come eat your heart? "

I grit my teeth. "What was the plan, then? Take the boy, ransom him for leverage?"

She laughs, a bitter, beautiful sound. "Leverage? There is no leverage. The Albanis want us dead, not bargaining. The Riccis don't care about us at all. The only person who gives a damn about you is standing in this room."

She steps closer, and I let her. Her voice drops, raw. "I loved you. But you were the pretty one. The good one. So I did what I had to do to make sure I wasn't just another shadow behind your name."

I don't move. I let the words sink in.

She sits again, the old weight settling on her shoulders. "Papa lied to us both. The whole diplomacy act was a cover. He was making deals with both sides, and neither trusted him. Project Zoya wasn't about you. It was about making sure the Baranov name survived, one way or another."

She looks up, eyes shining. "I took the job with the Albanis because it was the only way to keep us alive. You think Konstantin would ever put you in charge? He can't even look at you without seeing what he's about to lose."

I blink. "He's not the enemy."

"No, but he's not your future either."

She looks at her hands, then at me. "I never wanted any of this. I just wanted you to live."

"You could have tried telling me the truth."

She grins, sharp as glass. "Would you have listened?"

She sighs. "We could do it, you know. The two of us. We could burn down the Albanis, the Riccis, the whole rotten world. You'd have to kill your darling Pakhan , but I don't think that would be as hard as you pretend."

I shake my head. "I'm not like you."

She shrugs. "No one ever is. Until they have to be."

She leans back, waiting for the verdict.

The attic is silent except for the whine of the lamp.

I lower the gun but don't put it away.

She says, "So, what's it going to be? Am I your sister or your next body?"

I think about Lev, about Konstantin, about the house and the guards and the endless cycle of blood.

I think about my name.

I say, "He's mine. You don't touch what's mine again."

Her mouth curves, triumphant and sad.

"That's my girl," she says.

The moment shatters when the bullets start. At first it's just a pop, far off, like someone dropped a metal tray in the barn. But then the next round slaps the house and the window explodes inward, showering both of us in glass and cold.

Ekaterina hits the floor first, and for a split second I'm twelve again, huddling behind the radiator while Papa and his men turn the front yard into a shooting gallery.

My ears ring, but I hear the shouts below—Sokolov barking orders, the guards returning fire, Lev's thin wail somewhere in the mix.

Ekaterina's mouth is to my ear before I even realize she's crawled to me. "You want him out, you get him now. The Syndicate is coming."

"Who?" I hiss.

She shakes her head. "Doesn't matter."

I see it—the orchard, the open field, nowhere to run. This is a cage match, and the only rule is survival. She drags herself upright, blood beading at her temple where a shard of glass clipped her. She doesn't feel it, or if she does, she's too proud to show it.

"Get the boy," she says. "I'll cover you."

I almost laugh. After all this, she expects me to believe she's on my side? A guard is at the foot of the attic ladder, yelling my name. The gunfire is so close now, it rattles the whole house.

"Little dove." Ekaterina pulls me into a fierce embrace. "When the time comes, watch me."

I want to say a thousand things, but all I manage is, "Why?"

She touches my face, so gentle it undoes me.

"Because you were always stronger than me," she says, and then she shoves me, hard.

"Go!" I stumble down the stairs, knees almost giving, and find Lev hiding in the crook of Konstantin's arm.

He is bleeding from the hand, but his grip on him is white-hot.

"Out the back," he says. "We have to move. "

I grab Lev, tuck him against my side, and head for the service stairs.

Konstantin stays on my flank, limping but unbreakable.

The rear door is blown off its hinges, snow piled against the threshold.

I see the convoy in the driveway, two of our cars already on fire, the men fanned out behind the third.

Sokolov is on the ground, shoulder hit, but he's still firing.

Orlov is beside him. The guards are dying, but they're buying time.

I push Lev toward the car. "Run," I whisper. "Don't stop for anything."

He goes, little feet digging trenches in the snow, tears streaking his face but not slowing him down.

A figure breaks from the trees—Ekaterina, firing a machine pistol in tight, efficient bursts.

She moves like a dancer, picking off men in the orchard, clearing a path. I want to hate her, but I can't.

Konstantin and I follow, crawling low. The bullets chase us, biting into the ground, the house, the car. We make it to the convoy. Lev is sobbing but alive. Konstantin drags us behind the armored door, wraps us in both arms, breath shuddering. Then comes a voice.

"You are surrounded," it booms over the orchard, echoing once. "We have no quarrel with the child. Or with the Vetrov Pakhan , provided he lays down arms. We are here for the Baranov sisters."

I taste the metal as I bite down on fear.

Konstantin's bulk braces behind me, every inch of him taut and leaking blood, the pressure of his forearm across my back like a brace.

Lev shivers beneath Konstantin's arm, clinging to his coat lining.

"Stall," Konstantin rasps in Russian, lips right at my ear, and the sound is iron. "They're not certain."

I flinch as the next bullet hits the hood, ricochets with a shriek.

Silence balloons out after, thick as syrup.

The orchard is lit in hospital-glare blue and orange, emergency blinkers painting corpses in shifting color.

Bodies litter the gravel, cooling in heaps.

Every face of Baranov or Vetrov muscle left in the open is set in death.

Then I see Ekaterina come out from behind the burning Jeep, hands empty, eyes hard.

Blood is dried in a streak down her left cheek, hair ripped from its usual perfect knot and falling wild to her jaw, cheekbones sharp as glass.

Her lips are rouged, even now. Her suit is ruined by smoke and a tear at the sleeve.

She is alone, no weapon. Her guards—what's left of them—wait behind the fire line, as if they know better than to follow.

The men in the orchard part for her. Syndicate, judging by the way they dress—half of them in tracksuits, half in tailored black, all holding rifles American-style.

Several have those tight beards fashionable in Tirana.

None wear insignia, but they don't need it.

The way they look at Ekaterina as she approaches makes it obvious.

She is currency. She stops ten paces clear of the nearest vehicle, where the ground is muddy with melted frost. She raises her hands, fingers splayed.

For a second, her gaze cuts to me, then away.

"She's alive," one of the bearded men mutters. His Albanian accent is thick. "The bitch made it."

A man separates from the others then, his coat draped over narrow shoulders.

I peg him as Syndicate boss—late fifties, jaw like carved bone, hair slicked back, eyes glossy.

He flicks his gaze from Ekaterina to the rest of us, measuring, recalibrating.

He doesn't smile. Instead, he lingers on her, chest puffing with the weight of his plans.

Then she moves. A tiny gesture, a twitch of her right hand, a brush at the lapel.

The smallest thing, so easy to miss. But I see it.

Twice she presses her thumb to her sternum, then traces her jaw with the backs of her fingers.

It's nothing to anyone else. To me, it's a code older than anything we've said aloud— Trust me. Take the shot.

I feel the cold in my stomach. My whole body wants to reject it, to look away, to believe I've misread. But she doesn't break focus. She looks through me, as if she can still reach the little sister hiding behind my knees, the one who hasn't yet learned to lie.

Behind me, Konstantin's breathing slows. He's seen it, too, and he's too intelligent to not understand. Now the voices start to spike. The men shout for us to come out, to drop our weapons, to surrender the women. The Syndicate boss lifts a hand. His men fan wider, rifles up.

Ekaterina nods once. Shoot, or they take both of us. We're not getting out of here alive, little dove, at least not together.

And I know.

If she dies here, the Syndicate loses their leverage. If she lives, she's a liability for both us and them. This is her last play, and whether it's for me or for herself, it's the only one left.

I raise the pistol. My hand is steady, no tremor.

The world flattens into lines and angles—the curve of her neck, the white triangle of her shirt, the black buttons, the scrap of magenta silk at her throat.

She keeps her head up. She doesn't close her eyes.

The Syndicate boss must see. "Wait!" he yells, English as clear as ice.

I fire.

One round. Clean. It takes her high in the chest, the kind of shot designed for certainty. She jerks back, then folds in place with a strange dancer's grace, knees giving way so she seems to bow at the last instant. Her hands never quite close. She hits the ground and does not move again.

The orchard goes silent, except for the ticking of cooling engines and the faint, wet rattle from Sokolov's lungs.

No one fires back. No one even speaks. For a heartbeat, the world ends with Ekaterina's fall.

Then the Syndicate men begin to retreat. At first it's confusion—three men drawing back, then five. The boss spits on the snow, curses wildly in several languages, and storms away, letting his plans sink with him into the trees. The rest follow, rifles lowering as if the burden has simply vanished.

Orlov inches up from his bloody patch, watching. Sokolov coughs once, and even that seems inappropriate.

Ekaterina lies in the mud, face turned up, hair fanned out like a flag.

I don't look away. Not even when Lev starts to cry, or Konstantin slumps hard into me, or the last of the headlights dims as the Syndicate convoy flees.

We wait until we're sure no one else is coming.

Only when the orchard is empty do I slide the gun down, my hands numb and aching.

Konstantin leans heavier, head dropping to my shoulder. "You did what you had to," he says, voice flat and dry.

I did. I did do what I had to.