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YULIAN

I don’t get home until deep into the night.

It’s to be expected: a vor has been killed. No, not just “killed”—murdered in his own home. A cowardly gesture, but bullets don’t become less lethal just because whoever shot them has no honor.

If that were true, my family would still be breathing.

It takes me all day to get Slavik’s affairs in order.

Maksim agrees to take temporary charge of his slice of the operation—the money laundering.

Thanks to Slavik’s meticulous bookkeeping, the transition goes as smoothly as possible.

It’s never easy when a vor dies, but if there’s one thing Slavik was good at, it was making things easier for me. The only one who did, really.

I wonder if Desya knew. If that’s why he shot him first—so I’d be left without my most efficient soldier right off the bat.

By the time I get back to the penthouse, everyone’s asleep.

I kept an eye on updates from Nikita throughout the day: Going to get Eli from school, Taking a detour for ice cream, Camping out in your guest bedroom for the night.

It was the only reason I could stay sane throughout it all, knowing they were safe.

For now.

There’s a cold slice of pizza in the fridge. Pepperoni, extra spicy, my preference. Stuck to the plate, a note in Mia’s handwriting: Eat!

My gaze travels over to her bedroom door. I dig my nails into my palm, reminding myself of all the reasons I shouldn’t cross it. All the reasons I can’t. Our argument from this morning bubbles up into my mind again, her words fresh as a wound.

“You don’t get to demand my forgiveness. Not when you haven’t even apologized.”

Exhaustion catches up to me. I leave the pizza in the fridge, shrug off my jacket, and go sit on the couch for a minute. To gather myself—figure out my next move.

I don’t realize I’m falling asleep until it’s already too late to fight it.

The night is black as sin.

I step on the invisible pier. Everything is invisible tonight. No moon to shine the way, no stars. Even the water churns without a single reflection, like a maw to hell itself.

Perfect. I wouldn’t have settled for anything less. For this mudak, this filthy traitor, hell is too good.

“You can’t do this!” Desya kicks and screams, held down by three of my men. Maksim is one of them. His voice is young. Twenty-ish—like mine. “Please, Yul! I’m your best friend!”

“You were,” I spit. “Then you killed my family. You’re nothing to me now.”

“It wasn’t me!” he gasps, tear-eyed and snotty-nosed. “I swear, I didn’t do it!”

Liar. All my life, he’s been lying to me. And now, with his last breath, he’s lying again.

I never should have trusted him. Never should have let him in, treated him like family.

I made a mistake, yes.

But it’s the last one I’ll ever make.

I wave my hand. Maksim and the others drag Desya to the edge of the pier. He’s screaming like a lamb, but it doesn’t matter. No one will dare save him from the knife. Not in my territory.

Despite Desya’s betrayal, the Lozhkin Bratva survived. It survived through me .

But the Bogdanov name will die with him.

“Yul, please!” He keeps writhing, trying to kick his feet free of the new “shoes” I bought him. Cement shoes—for one last swim. “It was Prizrak who pulled the trigger! Not me!”

“You sold us out to them,” I snarl. “It might as well have been you.”

Remorse clutches my chest. For trusting him, telling him about that dinner. If I hadn’t, my family would still be alive. Kira would still be alive.

But I’ll fix it. I can’t give Kira’s family their daughter back—can’t stop Nikita from crying herself to sleep—but I can give them something else.

Justice.

Finally, Desya drops the pretense. “I did it for us,” he whispers, a deranged note to his confession. “So that your family wouldn’t get in the way. So that that bitch Kira wouldn’t trap you. So we could rule together!”

“Get Kira’s name out of your filthy mouth,” I say, grabbing his collar. “A traitor like you doesn’t deserve to speak it.”

“She was going to ruin you!”

“She was our friend!” I roar. “She was Nikita’s sister!”

“Nikita will be heir now,” he insists. “She’ll be happier growing up outside of Kira’s shadow. Easier to mold, easier to control. A better bride for ? —”

My punch collides with his face. His shattered nose cracks once more under my knuckles, making Desya howl in pain. It’s nothing compared to what he did to me or the Morozovs—nothing like what he deserves.

Death is too good for him, too.

“That’s enough,” I seethe. “You’ve taken something from me. So now, I’m going to take something from you.”

He blinks. “You’re… going to kill my family?”

“No, I’m not like you,” I reply. “Your parents’ only sin was having a mudak for a son. They’ll leave the Bratva world quietly. I already made arrangements.”

“S-so, what…?”

“The only thing you care about is yourself. So I’ll take a piece of that. An eye for an eye.”

Horror dawns on his face. “Yul, don’t.”

I ignore him. “Maks, keep him still.”

“Yes, pakhan. ”

Pakhan. It feels odd to be called that. Until twenty-four hours ago, that moniker belonged to my father. I wasn’t supposed to take over for ten more years—until I’d learned everything he could teach me.

But now, he’s dead. He’ll never teach me anything again. And I’ll never teach my sister Alina.

Desya took that from me, too. He took everything from me.

And if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make him feel at least an ounce of the agony he’s wrought on me.

I pull out my knife. Desya’s eyes widen as he sees it, realizing what’s about to happen a split second before it does.

Then he’s screaming.

It goes on forever. I don’t do a clean job—don’t even try to make it clinical. This is personal. It’s supposed to be messy, bloody. It’s supposed to hurt.

He has himself to blame for teaching me that.

Once I’m done, I toss his eye into the water. Food for the fish—like he’ll be soon.

It doesn’t make me feel better. Taking his eye, taking his life—who fucking cares? Nothing can fill the gaping void inside me. Nothing ever will.

I lost my family. I lost one of my two best friends in the world. Now, I’m about to lose the other.

But the friend I thought I knew never existed. He wasn’t alive to begin with.

So he can’t die, either.

“Yul,” Desya wheezes. The wound I carved into the right side of his face is bleeding like a river. Like the black waters of the Hudson beneath our feet. “P-please. We’re even now. Have mercy. Give me one more chance.”

“We’ll never be even.” I step forward, close enough that his blood drips on my shirt. “But I’ll give you a chance, alright. A 99% chance of drowning, and a 1% chance of saving yourself.”

“No—”

“It’s more than you deserve.”

“It’s a death sentence!”

“Is it?” I feign ignorance. “I thought it was mercy.”

I take one more moment to look at him. One endless second, to memorize the boy whom I thought was once my friend.

But we’re not boys anymore. We’re men.

And men face consequences.

“Yulian, don’t.”

“Goodbye, Desya.”

“Yul—”

His body hits the water.

I watch the river swallow it. A maw to hell—pitch-black and inescapable.

From here, his 1% chance looks like nothing.

If there’s a part of me that mourns that, I let it drown, too.

“—lian, wake up!”

I jolt upright. There’s sweat on my back, on my forehead. I’m drenched in it.

I blink in the darkness. “Who’s there?”

“Shh, it’s okay! It’s just me.”

Her voice is a balm. It calms my racing heart in a second. “Mia.”

“Yes,” she whispers in the dark. Her hand finds mine, cool, grounding. “You were having a nightmare.”

Of course. The pier wasn’t real. Or rather, it was real—twenty years ago. “Did I wake Eli?”

“No, don’t worry. You weren’t screaming. I got up to get water and saw you tossing on the couch. Are you okay?”

A fresh wave of shame washes through me. I let Mia see me like this. Weak. Vulnerable. That’s not what she needs from me. It’s not what anyone needs of me.

They need me to be the pakhan.

“I’m fine,” I bite out, sharper than I’d meant, yanking my hand free of Mia’s grasp. “You don’t need to concern yourself.”

“I don’t need to ‘concern’ myself?” Mia’s voice carries a dangerous edge. “Well, excuse me for caring about what happens to you.”

“You’re excused.”

I get up. But Mia doesn’t go back to her room. She follows me, right at my heels. “You don’t get to do this, Yulian. You don’t get to demand me back into your life and then cut me out of it.”

“Drop it, Mia.”

“No. You’re keeping secrets from me—again.”

Damn right I am. You’re pregnant. The thought of her losing the baby— our baby—because of my incompetence cuts through me, a blade of pure guilt.

“It’s none of your business.”

“ You’re my business!” She’s keeping her voice low not to wake Eli, but her angry hisses feel like shouts. “You promised me this time it would be different. And here I am, witnessing you having night terrors?—”

“I don’t have night terrors.”

“I’m a nurse. I know what I saw.”

“You don’t know shit,” I answer. “You’re my guest, not my keeper. So go back to your goddamn room and mind your own fucking business.”

Mia reels back from me. As if I’d slapped her. Her flinch brings me back to the night we met, when I first saw Brad reaching for her. She’d flinched back then, too. And her eyes looked just like this.

Scared.

She’s scared of me.

“Have it your way,” she croaks. I can tell her voice’s cracking—that she’s holding back from crying. “I won’t concern myself with you anymore.” She turns to leave.

Certainty grips me then. The certainty that, if I let her go now, I’ll never be able to go back. I’ll lose her—for good.

And I can’t bear that.

“Mia.”

I can’t bear losing one more family.

“Mia.”

I can’t bear losing her.

“Mia!”

“What?!”

My hand closes around hers. I didn’t even realize I was going after her, not until I felt her soft skin under mine.

Then I kiss her.