Page 193 of Wicked Savage

Konstantin doesn’t even hesitate. He grabs Ludmilla by the throat, shoving her to her knees.

“You betrayed me.” His mouth curls ruthlessly, his voice deceptively soft. “You worked against me. You had to know what I’d do to you, yes?”

Ludmilla’s lips part, but before she can speak, Sonya blurts out, “Please, sir, I didn’t know anything. She made me think Lenny was the traitor! I didn’t know she was working against you, I swear!"

Konstantin’s gaze flicks to Ludmilla, who can’t say a word to deny it. I heard it all from my father, and Konstantin knows the truth too.

“You were always easy to fool,” she taunts Sonya. “So naïve.”

Sonya’s sobs turn desperate. “I thought she was my friend! I didn’t know!” Her face crumples. “I-I didn’t know. I swear.”

Konstantin sighs, bored, and in one clean motion, slices Ludmilla’s throat. The blood sprays. She gurgles. Then he severs her head with the chainsaw. It rolls to the dirt, eyes still open, lips still curled in defiance.

I barely flinch, while Sonya screams, recoiling in horror. Her knees buckle, but before she can collapse, Konstantin presses the gun to her forehead.

“You didn’t tell me about Lenny,” he says. “You should’ve told me.”

She doesn’t beg. Doesn’t plead. She just cries.

A single gunshot echoes through the night, and Sonya falls.

Silence settles.

For a long moment, I just breathe, staring at the death before me. So much of it.

But there is no sense of victory. Just the pain of my brother’s absence.

Cillian squeezes my hand, and I turn to him, searching for something—comfort, reassurance, anything to fill the void inside me.

“It’s over now,” he promises.

I shake my head. “No. It’ll never be over.”

Because Gregory is still gone. And that pain will never fade.

CHAPTER54

DINARA

ONE MONTH LATER

I can’t believeit’s been a month since my brother’s death. Since the pain and the betrayal hit me like a torpedo. It’s been hard to move on, to escape this stabbing pain in my chest.

Everyone failed him.

No one knew what Ludmilla was doing behind our backs. How she’d been using her phone to make contact between my brother and my father since he was a little boy. It continued up until his death.

But it wasn’t his fault. None of it was. He was just a child who wanted a father, and I can’t blame him for that.

Konstantin was angry too, more at himself than anyone else, because like me, he knew he failed him too. And there’s nothing any of us can do about it.

I kneel in front of his grave, the cool earth solid beneath my fingertips as I lay a bouquet of lilies down. The air is still, the heaviness of the moment pressing in on me. The headstone bears his name, forever etched into stone, a permanent reminder of a life cut too short.

He should’ve had a future. But my father stole that from him.

Tears burn in my eyes as I run my fingers over his name.

“I miss you,” I whisper. “So much.”

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