Page 71 of The Russian's Innocent Prey
“Baby,” he said, his voice softer now, meant for Sasha’s ears specifically. “I’m the hot twin.”
Despite everything—the violence, the fear, the blood spreading across distant concrete—Sasha laughed. It was a broken sound, part sob and part genuine amusement, but it was real and alive and human in a way that made my heart clench.
Maxim rolled his eyes, already coordinating medical response and cleanup crews. “Save the charm for the hospital, Romeo.”
But there was affection in his voice, the kind of grudging respect that soldiers gave to comrades who did impossible things for the right reasons.
As paramedics swarmed the rooftop and the immediate danger passed, I sank into the nearest chair and let my hands shake. The adrenaline that had been keeping me functional began to drain away, leaving behind exhaustion and the kind of emotional vertigo that came from surviving something that should have killed you.
“It’s over,” Eleanor said, settling beside me with a cup of tea that smelled like home and safety and all the simple pleasures I’d been taking for granted.
“This part is over,” I corrected her, thinking about Lev facing Petro in whatever godforsaken corner of the city they’d chosen for their final confrontation. “But not all of it.”
She nodded, understanding passing between us without words. We weren’t safe yet, wouldn’t be safe until the man I loved came home and told me that our future was secure.
But for now, watching Sasha hover anxiously while medical teams worked on the man who had saved us all, I allowed myself to hope that love might actually be enough to survive this war.
That families forged in fire might be strong enough to rebuild themselves from ashes, stronger every time.
Chapter 25 – Lev
The explosion threw me forward, heat washing over my back like the breath of hell itself. Concrete and steel rained down around me as I rolled behind a rusted shipping container, ears ringing from the blast that was meant to be my funeral pyre. Petro emerged from the smoke and flames like something biblical—a prophet of violence wrapped in shadow and righteous fury.
But I wasn’t dead yet, and that was his first mistake.
His second mistake was thinking God gave a damn about our war.
We circled each other in the ruins of what used to be a warehouse, broken glass crunching under our boots like the bones of the dead. The fight that followed wasn’t elegant or choreographed—it was two apex predators trying to tear each other apart with whatever weapons they could find.
Petro swung a chunk of rebar like a club, and I barely got my forearm up in time to block it. The impact sent shockwaves up to my shoulder, but I used his momentum against him, stepping inside his guard and driving my knee up toward his ribs. He twisted away, caught me with a backhand that filled my mouth with copper and stars.
We separated, breathing hard, both of us bleeding from a dozen small cuts where debris had found flesh.
“You fight like your father,” Petro said, spitting blood onto concrete. “All technique, no soul.”
“My father had plenty of soul,” I replied, palming the knife I’d been saving for this moment. “He just didn’t waste it on fairy tales.”
The blade in my hand wasn’t ceremonial or blessed or touched by anything more divine than human craftsmanship. But it belonged to Mike Antonov, carried through three decadesof wars and emerged from each one sharper than before. If there was any prayer in steel, any benediction in blood, it was written in the metal that was about to end this.
We came together like colliding planets, all gravity and violence and the kind of physics that reshape landscapes. His blade sought my throat while mine hunted for his heart, steel singing against steel in harmonics that spoke of death deferred but never denied.
Petro was good—better than good. Forty-eight years of killing had taught him things about violence that most men never lived long enough to learn. But I had twenty-seven years of rage driving every strike, two decades of mourning sharpening every cut.
He caught me with a punch to the ribs that cracked something vital, followed it with another to my temple that filled the world with lightning. Blood filled my mouth, warm and metallic, tasting like copper pennies and defeat.
But defeat was just another enemy to overcome.
I dropped to my knees, letting him think the fight was finished, letting him savor the moment when victory seemed assured. Petro walked forward with the slow, deliberate pace of a man who had spent his life learning to appreciate the theater of death.
“Mike begged before my daughter stabbed him,” he said, his voice carrying a kind of casual cruelty. “Cried like a child when he realized Saint Michael had abandoned him.”
The words were meant to break me, to steal the last of my strength and leave me hollow for whatever came next. Instead, they filled me with something cleaner than rage, purer than hatred.
Purpose.
I lunged upward with my dad’s blade, putting every ounce of strength and fury and love into the strike that would end this war. “My dad died a warrior.”
Steel pierced flesh with the soft resistance of meat parting around sharpened metal. Petro’s eyes widened as the knife found the space just below his sternum, angled upward toward his heart with deadly precision.
