Page 58

YULIAN

I wake up to icy water splashing my face.

“The hell?—”

“Oh, there’s Sleeping Beauty.” Nikita scoffs. “Had a nice nap?”

I sit up on the couch. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Nik?”

“Saving your ass.” She drops the empty bucket unceremoniously on the ground. “We’ve got a problem, chief. When’s the last time you saw Mia?”

Memories flood me.

Mia. The balcony. The syringe.

Her request.

“I need you to trust me.”

My answer.

“I don’t think I can.”

I shoot to my feet, but gravity takes issue with the sudden movement.

“Easy there, cowboy,” Nikita says. “You were drugged. My guess is, your girl helped with that.”

Yes, she fucking did. The realization makes me burn with betrayal.

“Tell me where she is,” I demand, holding myself up on the back of the couch. My body feels leaden—like everything’s too fucking heavy to move.

“Saw her in Maksim’s car outside the Collinses’. Thought it was weird that she didn’t come inside—just sat there, looking in. She was crying, too.”

Of course she was crying. She was saying goodbye.

“Where’s Eli?”

“Home. With his grandparents. He saw her, tried to sneak out after me to go to her, but I put him back to bed.” Nikita frowns. “Why?”

“Brad.” I force myself to walk, one painful step after the other. My wound is acting up, the effect of the painkillers long worn off. With the sedative still weighing down every move I make, everything is a struggle. “He took Kallie. Demanded Mia and Eli in exchange.”

Nikita’s eyebrows raise. “That’s why Maksim?—”

“He was in on it.” I clench my fists. “He helped her trade herself for Kallie.”

Just saying those words makes me feel sick. Maksim has been my second for twenty years, and a soldier of the Lozhkin Bratva since my father’s time. All this time, his loyalty has never wavered.

Until tonight.

The woman he loves was taken, the rational part of me needles. He’s wounded. He’s not thinking straight.

But right now, reason isn’t holding the wheel.

“You’re saying he took Mia?” Nikita presses. “That he kidnapped her?”

“No.” I wish it could be that fucking simple. Then I’d only have one person to be angry at instead of two. “I’m saying Mia acted on her own volition, but she didn’t act alone.”

But something still feels off. Brad—he specifically asked for Mia and Eli.

So why is Mia going alone? Why does she think he’ll let Kallie go for only half the spoils?

Because it isn’t Eli he wants. Not really.

Mia would never give up her son, but she would give herself up in a heartbeat.

I punch my fist through the counter. “ BLYAT’! ”

Pain shoots up my knuckles. Hot, searing pain. I might have broken something, but right now, I don’t fucking care. I need this. I deserve this.

I never should have trusted her.

At that moment, someone throws the door open. The second I see who it is, my face twists into a mask of rage. “You.”

Maks is panting in the doorway. “I know you’re pissed?—”

“Pissed?!” I stalk towards him, lift him by the collar. “You think I’m pissed right now? That’s what you fucking think?!”

“Yulian—”

THWACK.

My punch hits him before I can think.

Maksim’s head snaps sideways. Red blooms on his cheekbone, where my pakhan ring cut into his skin.

“I should have you killed.” It comes out like a clap of thunder. “Scratch that. I should kill you right fucking now.”

Maks’s face fills with fury. “You refused to act,” he says. “You were sulking like a goddamn teenager. I had to do something. If Mia hadn’t done what she did?—”

“Don’t you fucking say her name,” I roar. “Don’t you dare, you filthy traitor!”

“STOP!”

A female voice cuts into the fray.

It’s not Nikita. It’s not Mia, either—that would be too good to be true.

It’s Kallie.

She rushes out of the elevator and steps between us. “Please.” Her voice trembles as she speaks. “Please, don’t hurt him.”

Her big, brown eyes fix on me. They’re red and puffy, still wet around the edges, like she’s been crying nonstop for hours.

A sinking feeling spreads into my chest. “Where’s Mia?”

“She gave herself over,” Kallie says. “To Brad.”

So I was right. That’s what she was planning all along.

She’s gone. Again. Disappeared with that mudak, with my baby in tow, to save her friend from death.

All because of Maksim.

“Nik.” My tone is ice. “Give me your gun.”

I can see her hesitating. “Yulian…”

“Take mine,” Maksim says, defiant. “Left holster.”

I push his jacket to the side and grab it with my free hand. Maksim doesn’t break eye contact, not once.

Not even when I push him to his knees.

“NO!” Kallie screams.

She starts charging at me, but Nikita holds her still. “Don’t,” my lieutenant warns, even though her face betrays horror, too. “This is between them.”

“But he’s gonna?—!”

I filter it out. All of it. The screams, the pain, the heartbreak.

I press my gun to Maksim’s forehead. “You betrayed me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

He doesn’t lower his head. Doesn’t stop holding my gaze, not for a second. “You betrayed me first.”

“No.” I shake my head, reject his accusation with every fiber of my body. “I?—”

“You abandoned me when I needed you,” he accuses.

“When my woman needed you. I risked my life for Mia every day, and you couldn’t put your ego aside for five minutes when it was my girl on the line.

Instead, you stomped out like a fucking toddler.

” He spits a glob of blood on the floor.

“Thank fuck your old man can’t see you now. ”

Those words cut through me like a knife. Is that what I did? Abandoned my second? Let him down, let Mia down, when they needed me most?

No. I was just cooling off, that’s all. The deadline was still far off. There was plenty of time to come up with a plan.

Except…

“I need you to trust me.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

Maksim must see my inner turmoil, because he twists that knife right up. “That’s right,” he presses. “She asked you for help. She needed to save her friend, and you weren’t fucking there.”

“Careful…”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” He coughs out an ugly, bitter laugh. “Go ahead. I’m at peace. But don’t you dare come lay a single flower on my grave, brother. ‘Cause it won’t have been Desya who put me there, or Prizrak, or even fate. It’ll have been you .”

I’m forcing myself to breathe, but it’s a fucking battle. Rage is burning me up from the inside, clouding the last scrap of judgment I’ve got.

Maksim is a traitor. He conspired with Mia to drug me, traded her in for his own girlfriend. He betrayed me. He deserves to die.

But didn’t I betray him first?

And finally, I’m at war with my own self. The human being on one side, the pakhan on the other, each fighting over the last square on the board. Deciding, once and for all, which one will rule from now on.

I grip the gun tighter. Hover with my finger on the trigger.

Then I shoot.

For a long second, Maksim stays perfectly still. His eyes squeeze against the noise, despite all the determination he’s shown so far. No matter what, he’s just a man.

And so am I.

Slowly, he opens his eyes again. We both stare at the hole in the floor, black and gaping, smoke rising from the mouth of my lowered gun.

“I missed.” I hand him back the gun. “You’re free.”

After a pause, he takes it. “You never miss.”

“Everyone misses sometimes.” I avert my gaze. “It’s just part of being human.”

A slight smile curves Maksim’s lips. There’s fondness there—and pride, too. “I hear they make the best pakhani. Humans.”

Maksim stands. Kallie instantly throws herself back at him. “Thank God,” she cries. “I thought?—”

“What, that this guy was gonna shoot me?” He scoffs. “Please. Who else is gonna drive him around?”

“You’re both assholes, you know that?” Nik exhales, massaging Kallie’s shoulders as she shakes. “Putting a girl through all of that just to prove a point.”

“You’re a girl,” Maks points out.

“I don’t count.”

“Enough.” I fix my cuffs and call the attention of the room back to me. “We need to find Mia.”

“She’s at the hospital,” Kallie says. “The parking lot. Something weird’s going on there.”

“How so?”

“There isn’t a single car. And Brad, he…

he seemed to know there wouldn’t be. I think someone from the inside is helping him.

And then…” Her face turns grayish with fear.

“The guys who kidnapped me? They weren’t amateurs.

They had camo on. Felt like I was being ambushed by the military or something. ”

Camo. “That’s Prizrak,” I infer. “Brad is using them.”

“Must be their last favor to him,” Maksim grits. “Before they ship it all overseas.”

Right. Last year, they’d been in the process of moving their organization abroad. Desya must have been the one to slow things down—one last game of revenge. Now, Brad’s taking advantage of that little hiccup to call in his favor.

But I won’t let him.

Like hell is he going to take the woman I love from me.

“Nik, you drive,” I order. “Maks, with me.”

“I’m coming, too,” Kallie says. Her tone brooks no argument.

But I’m not planning to argue. Time is already working against us here. If we’re going to save Mia, we need to move now.

And when I get my hands on Brad Baldwin…

He’ll learn just what it means to touch what’s mine.