Page 62

YULIAN

When Mia runs, I don’t look back.

I want to. God knows, I want to be the one to get her out.

But the biggest threat to her survival is Desya, and he’s right fucking here.

So I keep my focus on him.

“Feels good, doesn’t he?” he shouts, taking a shot at me from his hiding spot. The bullet whistles past my ear and embeds itself in the concrete pillar I’m using for cover. “Almost like old times.”

“Back then, we didn’t spar with guns,” I point out.

“You’re right.” He raises his weapon and pops out the cartridge. Bullets go tumbling from it and clatter on the ground at his feet. “I’m game if you are.”

It’s a stupid gamble to make. He’s goading me into dropping my weapon. If I do it and he’s bluffing, I won’t have time to react. I’ll be pumped full of lead in seconds.

But something tells me he isn’t bluffing. All along, Desya has wanted one thing, and one thing only: to go back. To resurrect those “old times.”

I follow my hunch and pocket my gun. Roll up my sleeves, get into stance. “Come at me, then.”

His face splits into a grin. For a second, he almost looks like that boy I knew, filled with joy at the prospect of trading punches with his best friend.

Then he’s charging at me.

He goes for a sucker punch right off the bat. Somehow, my body seems to remember this, because I twist out of the way before I even know what I’m doing.

“See?” He smirks. “Two peas in a pod, you and I.”

“No.” I charge at him head-on with a jab, aiming for his jaw. I miss by a hair—looks like his body remembers me, too. “There were always three of us.”

His smirk twists into a snarl. “She was in the way,” he says, lunging for me with a left hook. “She tore us apart. It’s her fault, all of it!”

I dodge and return a hook of my own. This time, it lands. Desya’s lip splits clean in half. “She was innocent!” I roar.

“No, brother.” He wipes the blood from his face with the back of his hand. When he grins again, his teeth are red and dripping. “None of us were innocent.”

I was. I don’t say it, but the little boy inside me is screaming it. I may have been born into this world, but I wasn’t tainted by it yet. Not until you decided to take everything from me.

That’s when I lost my innocence.

We start circling each other again. Both Prizrak and my men are giving us a wide berth. Right now, Maksim could easily snipe Desya off the board if I hadn’t told him to stay put from the start. To focus on Mia, leave this mudak to me.

But Mia is only half the reason.

He comes at me again. I protect my face, but his fist immediately changes trajectory. A feint. It lands straight on my injured shoulder.

I recoil and grit my teeth against the explosion of pain. Mia’s painkillers have fully worn off now—but her sedative, not so much. I can feel everything, but my movements aren’t as fast as they should be.

Desya seems to notice. “You’re slow,” he remarks, displeased. “What’s up? You getting old on me?”

He howls with laughter, then lands another punch.

When I stagger back, his face lights up with realization. “Oh, I see. That bitch slipped you something, didn’t she?”

“Don’t. You. Dare.” I punctuate each word with a punch. Soon, I’m full-on pummeling him. “Don’t you dare ever call her that.”

“You always were soft on girls.” He’s struggling to keep up his defense, I can tell, but he’s still wasting energy on talk. “A pity. It was your only mistake.”

I land another punch, this time from his blind side. As my knuckles connect with his septum, a sickening crunch echoes between us. “My first mistake was trusting you. I’ve made many more since, but none as bad as that.”

Desya’s back hits the wall. He’s cornered now. “You’ve changed,” he says, making it sound like an accusation. “You’re weaker now. Because of her.”

“I’m stronger because of her.” I prove it right away by landing another punch—and another, and another. Thanks to the bullets Mia put in him earlier, he’s not as fast as he should be, either. “But you? You’re alone. A miserable, lonely excuse for a ghost.”

“I used to have someone,” he pants. “I used to have you.”

“Yeah,” I grit. “You did.”

Then I land my last punch.

Desya’s body tilts sideways. He crashes into the concrete, blood spurting from his nose and mouth. His eyepatch slides off, revealing the black hole where his right eye once was.

“Why?” He’s panting on the ground, kneeling with a fist planted on the concrete, exhausted. “Why didn’t you kill me, Yul?”

I’ve asked myself that a lot. Tried to figure it out ever since Desya crawled out of his watery grave. Why didn’t I just shoot him? Why didn’t I choose a safer method? Why didn’t I skip the poetic justice and do it myself?

Why didn’t I watch the light go out from his eyes?

“Because I didn’t want to.” The truth slips out of its own accord. “You were my friend, and you were guilty, but I still didn’t want to lose you.”

Something flickers across his face. Something almost human. “I didn’t want to lose you, either.”

“I know.”

“That’s why I killed them. Because they were gonna take you away from me.”

I clench my fists. It doesn’t matter what the truth was—Desya has made this one his truth for twenty years. If I want to understand his reasons, then nothing else counts.

“I know.”

“But then you found out.” He chokes those words out like it burns. Like they’re hot coals, stuck in his throat for two decades. “Why didn’t you just kill me? Why didn’t you just forgive me?”

Because I couldn’t do either thing. Because I wasn’t strong enough.

Because I was young, and I was hurt, and you were my last friend in the world.

I don’t say any of that. There’s no point. I’m not that boy anymore. That boy drowned with Desya. That night, we were both swallowed by the water.

But then we came back. Both of us, ghosts of who we were. If left unchecked, I would have ended up just like him: a specter with nothing to live for, haunted by a past of his own making.

Because the truth is, I should have seen it coming. Should have known there was something wrong with Desya. Should have paid more attention to him, talked to him, been his friend.

Most of all, I should have listened.

But I didn’t.

And now, it’s too late to save him.

I think of the family I lost. The family I can’t bring back, no matter how much blood I shed.

Then I think of the family I have now. A family who needs my protection—who needs me.

Slowly, I pull out my gun.

Desya lets out a quiet exhale. “Are you finally gonna do it? Avenge your family?”

“No.” I press the gun to Desya’s forehead. “This isn’t revenge.”

He doesn’t resist. Doesn’t make a single move to fight me off. Just looks up at me with his single brown eye and rasps, “Then what?”

It shouldn’t be a simple question, but it is.

Because Desya has been waiting for one thing only. He crawled out of that river and spent twenty years haunted by what he did just to get one thing from me. The one thing I never thought I could give him.

The one thing I’m giving him now.

“Mercy.”

It’s a split second. A fraction of an emotion, one instant before nothingness.

Relief.

“Thank y?—”

I pull the trigger.

His last words stay with me long after the gunshot has echoed. Long after his body slumps to the ground, a fresh hole at the center of his forehead.

Long after the light has gone out.

A scream cuts through my fog. My gaze flicks towards the sound, finding Nikita clutching her knives against Gwen.

Her back comes to rest against mine. “I can’t,” she pants. “I’m too weak, Yulian.”

“No, you’re not.” I yank down her sleeve, baring the scars she gave herself after her sister’s death. “Now, go get her. For Kira.”

And Mom, Dad, Alina.

I never thought I’d entrust my revenge to someone else. Never thought I’d turn it down for mercy.

But mercy is what I needed. It’s what Desya needed, deep down, to let his sins go. It’s the lesson Mia taught me, day after day, every time she chose hope over violence.

I don’t need revenge anymore.

But Nikita does.

I can see the change in her almost instantly. Her back straightens, her shoulders square up. Her grip on her knives tightens.

Then she’s jumping.

Her feet strike the concrete pillar once, twice. She parkours off it, gaining the high ground, letting out a scream as she plunges down on her target.

Gwen doesn’t stand a chance.

She seems to realize it, too, one moment before it happens. That she’s done for. She’s been in the army—she knows what death looks like up close.

Though perhaps not this up close.

Nikita’s knives slice into her face. Her eyes, specifically—talk about poetic justice. It’s pure, gory carnage, the stuff of B-movies and nightmares.

Then Gwen is gone.

Nikita heaves with the effort. “I… I did it.” Her eyes widen with realization. “I avenged you, Kira.”

I’m at her side in an instant. “You did good, Nik.”

“I did it.” She’s crying now, a mix of happy and sad tears. Mostly, though, it’s exhaustion. “I did it, Yulian. I did it.”

“You did,” I confirm. “Prizrak’s dead. It’s over.”

Her eyes fix on something far away. Then her expression shifts to horror. “No, it’s not,” she whispers.

I follow her gaze to the other end of the parking lot.

Then my heart drops. “No.”

It can’t be. It can’t ? —

But it is.

Brad, standing in the middle of the exit, a gun to his own son’s head.

Right in front of Mia.