Page 166 of Vendetta Vows

Second target. The leader, barking orders. His eyes widen when he sees me. Too late. Bullet through his throat.

Third target. Trying to retreat back to cover. My bullet catches him center mass. He pitches forward, weapon clattering down the marble steps.

Three shots. Three bodies. Just like Vitaly taught me as a boy.

But it's not enough.

Something slams into my right shoulder with enough force to spin me around. White-hot pain explodes across my vision.

I stumble backward, legs suddenly unsteady. My hand comes away slick with blood.

Missed one. The bastard got a shot off from the shadows. My gun feels impossibly heavy now, arm struggling to obey basic commands.

The wound is bad. Blood pulses between my fingers with each heartbeat. Too much blood.

Another shot catches me in the side, fire spreading through my ribs like burning gasoline. The impact knocks me sidelong, my remaining defenses crumbling.

"Fuck," I gasp, tasting copper.

The third bullet punches through my thigh, collapsing my leg beneath me. I stagger, grabbing the balustrade before I crash to the marble floor.

The solid marble beneath my palm is now slick with my own blood as another bullet tears through my abdomen.

Each ragged breath sends fresh agony through my chest.

So this is how it ends. Not in old age surrounded by safety and warmth, but bleeding out on cold marble in my father's house.

A house that I hated.

For a bratva that I hated.

Sounds begin to fade, gunfire muting to dull pops as blood rushes in my ears. Something detached inside me thinks just how absurd this all is, dying without ever telling Aurora what she truly means to me.

Would it have mattered? Does anything matter now?

I think of Artyom, praying he reached the girls in time. The panic room can withstand anything short of a bomb.

If they made it there, they'll survive even if I don't.

Somewhere deep in the house, beyond the shooting and shouting, Daria is protecting my staff. The woman helped raise me. She knows this house's secrets better than anyone.

She'll survive. She always does.

But Aurora...

My sweet, fierce Aurora, walking into Kristofer's trap, believing Hannah needs her. She'll face him alone because I couldn't protect her. Because I failed her.

Just like I failed Leslie.

The pain dims as cold spreads through my limbs. My vision narrows to a tunnel of light, darkness creeping in at the edges.

Aurora's face fills my fading consciousness—not afraid or angry, but as she was that morning in bed, sunlight catching in her hair. Soft. Radiant. Her body pressed against mine, heartbeat steady under my palm.

I wanted a lifetime of mornings like that. I wanted to wake beside her until we were old and gray, until our bodies were roadmaps of the life we'd shared.

Perhaps not in this life.

Perhaps in the next.

---