Page 97 of Brutal Unionn
I don't stop. My fists are a blur—ribs, face, jaw, temple.
His chains creak with the force of each blow, blood raining down like ink.
“This is forGwen!” I snarl, grabbing the chain above his head and driving my knee into his sternum. “For threatening the one person who saw my brother as more than your puppet! For putting achildin your crosshairs!”
I yank his head back by his hair and slam my elbow into his nose. The cartilage crunches beneath the force, and a fresh spray of blood soaks my chest.
His head lolls. His breathing turns to wet, shallow gasps. But I don’t stop. Not yet. Not until he feelseverything.
“This is forAleksandr,” I growl, my voice cracking now, hoarse and wild. “For turning my beautiful brother into a man afraid of his own fucking demons—yourdemons!”
Boris tries to speak, to wheeze some final word—but I don’t let him.
I grab the iron cuff around his wrist and pull his arm taut. With a shout, I drive my boot into his exposed elbow, the joint snapping backward with a grotesque pop. He screams—high and animalistic—but I don’t flinch.
Ineverflinch now.
“This,” I whisper, the words thick with rage and tears as I crouch in front of him one last time, my blood-slicked hand curling into a fist, “is forme.For the daughter you tortured. For the little girl who slept with a knife under her pillow because you taught her to fearlove.”
I hit him again.
And again.
My arms ache. My bones scream. My hands are raw and broken.
But his face is no longer recognizable. His body sags like a torn sack of meat, twitching faintly with what little nerve function he has left. He gurgles something, but the only words that matter now are mine.
“For the woman I becamein spiteof you.”
I wrap my fingers tighter around the chain above his head, my breath ragged and loud in my ears as I stare down at the ruin I’ve made.
“And last but not least,” I say, voice hoarse, almost broken from the force of my screams, “for my mother—for the bad luck she had stumbling upon you, you terrible man.”
With a final roar, one that scrapes out of my chest like it had waited years to be born, I pull. Hard. The beam groans under the strain, wood cracking, metal shrieking. His body jerks once, violently, then drops like dead weight. The chains go slack. The room falls quiet.
I let go, my arms trembling. My chest heaves as I take in the stillness around me.
The silence is sharp, total.
And in it—against every expectation, against everything I’ve built my life to resist—I feel complete. Not triumphant, not victorious, not even proud. Just… whole. Still. The storm inside me is gone, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not waiting for the next blow to fall. I wipe the blood and spit from my mouth with my forearm and look down at what’s left of the man who thought he’d never be defeated.
Boris fucking Petrov, the demon of New York just died at the bare hands of his daughter. A fate he would deem worse than death itself.
I stare at the body for a long moment. There’s nothing left to say. No more words to be exchanged. I turn away, not because I want to escape—but because there’s something more important I need to do.
Something I should have done long before now.
I move quickly, the blood on my hands drying tight against my skin as I leave the room and climb the narrow stairs. My legs ache. My chest still burns from the fight, from the screaming, but none of it matters. None of it slows me down.
By the time I reach the top, I’m out of breath. My heart pounds harder than it did when I was hitting him. My feetcarry me across the narrow hallway, faster and faster, until I find Sho.
He’s sitting in the center of the small living area, legs crossed under the low table, a cup of tea in one hand and a book in the other. His shirt hangs loose on his shoulders, hair still damp from the shower. He doesn’t look up immediately, too caught in whatever he’s reading.
He’s calm. Entirely untouched by what just happened downstairs.
I stop just inside the doorway, trying to catch my breath. Blood clings to my knuckles and forearms, smudges of it probably on my face. I know how I look—like a storm. Like I crawled through hell.
But when he finally lifts his eyes to mine, he doesn’t flinch. His gaze meets me the same way it always has—sharp, amused, steady.
