Page 57 of Bound By the Bratva

I don't remember drawing my sidearm. Don't remember aiming or making the conscious decision to pull the trigger. One moment, the Zharov soldier is lunging toward us with his kniferaised, and the next moment, he's flying backward with a hole through his chest the size of my fist.

The forty-five-caliber hollow-point catches him center mass and lifts him off his feet, sending him crashing into the wall behind him with enough force to crack the plaster. He slides down slowly, leaving a red smear on the whitewashed surface, his knife clattering uselessly to the floor.

He's still alive when he hits the ground, his eyes wide with shock and his mouth opening and closing like a fish pulled from water. Blood bubbles between his lips as he tries to speak, to say something that might matter in these final seconds of his worthless life.

I walk over to where he lies bleeding and look down at him with all the emotion I might show a piece of discarded garbage.

"You hurt my son," I tell him quietly.

Then I put another round through his forehead and watch the light go out of his eyes forever.

Nikolai is crying again, pressing his face against my shoulder and trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. Blood seeps through his torn shirt where the knife caught him, but the wound looks shallow. He'll need stitches and antibiotics, but he'll live.

Which is more than I can say for anyone else in this building.

"All clear," I report into my radio, holstering my pistol and checking Nikolai's shoulder with fingers that probe gently around the edges of the cut. "Extraction now—over."

My men are already moving, their job finished with the kind of professional efficiency that comes from years of practice. Bodies lie scattered throughout the lodge like broken dolls, and the air is thick with cordite and copper and the particular smell that comes from violent death in enclosed spaces.

We're out the front door and moving toward the vehicles within minutes. Stepan takes point while Viktor and the othersprovide rear security, their weapons still ready in case any Zharov reinforcements are stupid enough to show themselves.

The ride back to Moscow passes in silence. I hold Nikolai in my lap while I examine his wound, my son's blood mixing with the blood of his captors on my clothes and hands. The boy doesn't speak during the medical attention, just keeps his arms wrapped around my neck and his face buried against my shoulder.

He smells like fear and unwashed hair and something else underneath it all—something that reminds me of Anya's perfume from that night six years ago when everything began. He's part of me and part of her, this small, perfect thing that somehow came from all the darkness we've waded through together.

I stare out the window at the passing countryside and think about the men we left cooling in that lodge. Seven human beings who woke up this morning with plans and hopes and fears, who will never see another sunrise because they made the mistake of touching what belongs to me.

I should feel something about that. Regret, maybe, or at least some acknowledgment of the weight that comes with taking lives. But when I look down at Nikolai's bandaged shoulder, at the way he clings to me like I'm the only solid thing in a world that has suddenly revealed its capacity for cruelty, all I feel is a cold satisfaction that justice has been served.

They hurt my son. They terrified him and bound him and made him cry for his mother in the darkness of a place that smelled like death and desperation.

So I killed them all.

And I would do it again without hesitation, without mercy, without a single second of doubt.

Because that's what fathers do for their children, even when those children came into their lives through blackmail andmanipulation and circumstances that no one would call ideal. That's what love looks like when it's filtered through violence and shaped by the kind of choices that most people never have to make.

I hold my son closer and watch Moscow's lights grow brighter on the horizon, and I know with absolute certainty that the world is exactly one safe place smaller for the men who thought they could take him from me.

29

ANYA

The sound of engines roaring up the estate's drive tears me from restless sleep like a gunshot. Voices follow—men shouting orders, doors slamming, the heavy footfall of tactical boots on gravel. I know that controlled chaos, the particular rhythm of soldiers returning from war.

I throw myself out of bed and bolt from the infirmary room, my bare feet slapping against the cold marble floors as I run toward the front of the estate. My ribs scream with each stride, but I don't care about pain right now. Nothing matters except the possibility that those voices mean what I think they mean.

The front hall stretches before me like a cathedral, all soaring ceilings and polished stone, but I barely register the grandeur. My entire world has narrowed to the massive oak doors at the far end and the sounds of arrival beyond them.

The doors swing open just as I reach the center of the hall.

Rolan strides through the entrance like an avenging angel dressed in tactical black, his clothes stained dark with what I pray is someone else's blood. But it's not him that makes my heart stop beating for three full seconds—it's the small figure cradled against his chest.

Nikolai. My son. My baby. Alive and awake and looking at me with eyes that are too wide and too knowing for a child who should still believe the world is fundamentally safe.

He's pale, his dark hair matted and unwashed, and there's dried blood streaked along his shoulder where his torn shirt hangs in tatters. But he's breathing and conscious and reaching toward me with one small hand that trembles like a leaf in winter wind.

"Mama," he whispers, and the sound breaks something in my chest that I didn't know was still whole.

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