Chapter 24 – Anya
The safe house smelled of lavender and old wood, a deliberate choice meant to calm frayed nerves and provide the illusion of normalcy in a world that had forgotten what normal looked like.
I helped Sasha settle onto the couch, her movements still careful and pained despite the medical attention she’d received.
Every wince, every sharp intake of breath when she shifted position, was a reminder of what my world had cost her.
Eleanor moved through the nearby kitchen with practiced efficiency, stirring a pot of chamomile tea that filled the air with honey-sweet steam.
Her movements were precise and controlled, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way she checked the windows every few minutes, as if expecting unwelcome visitors.
Maxim sat on the edge of the windowsill, his large frame balanced with the casual grace of someone who had spent years learning to be comfortable in dangerous places.
His gun rested across his lap, safety off, finger placed beside the trigger guard in that relaxed-but-alert position that indicated professional training.
His eyes swept the tree line beyond the glass, cataloging shadows and movement with the methodical precision of a man who knew that safety was an illusion maintained through constant vigilance.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Sasha, arranging the throw pillows behind her back.
“Like I’ve been hit by a truck,” she admitted, managing a weak smile. “But alive. That’s more than I expected yesterday.
The casual way she said it made my chest tighten. This was what my world did to innocent people—it turned survival into a pleasant surprise instead of a basic expectation.
“I’m sorry,” I said for the hundredth time since we’d pulled her from that basement hell. “You should never have—”
“Stop.” Her hand found mine, squeezing with surprising strength. “We’ve been through this. It’s not your fault that psychopaths exist.”
But it felt like my fault. Everything about this situation, from Sasha’s kidnapping to the war currently tearing Chicago apart, stemmed from choices I’d made. I chose to love Lev Antonov. I chose to marry into his world. I chose to bring a child into this chaos.
Those choices had consequences that rippled outward, touching everyone around me.
The communications equipment in the corner of the room crackled to life, voices cutting through the domestic tranquility like knives through silk.
Trev’s voice, tight with urgency, followed by Drew’s clipped responses.
Then Maxim’s radio joined the symphony, multiple channels overlapping in a cacophony of tactical updates and casualty reports.
“Status report,” Maxim said into his headset, his voice dropping to that deadly calm register that meant something had gone very wrong.
The response hit the room like a bomb.
“Mila is gone. She escaped.”
Eleanor’s hand froze halfway to the teapot. Sasha went rigid beside me, her face draining of what little color the medical team had managed to restore. And I felt something cold and predatory unfurl in my chest—not fear, not anymore, but rage.
“How?” Maxim’s voice could cut glass.
“Picked the locks on her restraints. Killed two guards on her way out.” Drew’s voice crackled through the comm, distorted by distance and encryption but clear enough to convey the magnitude of our problem. “She left a message painted in their blood. Says she’s coming for Anya and Trev.”
Of course, she was. Mila Kozak, the ghost assassin who had turned murder into a religious experience, wasn’t done playing games with our family. The failed poisoning had just been the opening move in whatever twisted symphony of violence her father had composed for our destruction.
Trev’s voice cut through the chatter, his tone carrying the kind of controlled fury that meant someone was about to die. “I’m pulling all traffic drone footage from sectors 9 through 12. She can’t have gotten far.”
I watched Maxim’s face as he processed information flowing through his earpiece—updates, coordinates, the kind of real-time intelligence that turned manhunts into precision operations. His expression shifted from concern to grim determination.
“She’s heading for the safe house,” he announced, already moving toward his weapons cache.
My blood turned to ice. This place, this sanctuary that was supposed to keep us safe from the war raging in the city, had become another battlefield. Mila knew where we were, knew our defenses, knew exactly how to turn our refuge into our tomb.
“We need to move,” I said, already calculating escape routes and transportation options.
“No time,” Maxim replied, checking his rifle with practiced efficiency. “She’s less than ten minutes out.”
Trev’s voice crackled through the comm again, deadly and certain. “Not today.”
The finality in those two words made my heart clench.
‘He wasn’t calling for backup, not coordinating with other teams, not following any of the protocols Lev had drilled into all of us for exactly this situation.
He was going lone wolf, and in our world, that usually meant someone didn’t come home.
“Trev, wait for support,” Maxim barked into his radio, but there was no response. Just static and the kind of silence that meant someone had turned off their communications and decided to handle things personally.
I grabbed the binoculars from the window ledge, scanning the rooftops and approaches with the desperate intensity of someone whose family was about to bleed out in front of her.
The safe house sat on elevated ground, surrounded by dense woods that provided excellent cover for both defenders and attackers.
Perfect for keeping us hidden from casual observers, terrible for spotting professional killers who knew how to use terrain to their advantage.
Then I saw him.
Trev moved across the rooftop of the adjacent building with fluid precision, his silhouette dark against the star-scattered sky.
He carried his weapon with the casual competence of someone who had spent years learning to kill efficiently, but there was something different about his posture tonight.
Something personal and desperate that went beyond professional duty.
This wasn’t just about protecting the family assets. This was about Sasha.
“There,” I whispered, handing the binoculars to Maxim. “Northwest rooftop.”
He took them, adjusted the focus, and cursed softly in Russian. “Stubborn bastard. He’s positioning himself right in her path.”
“Can you support him from here?” Eleanor asked, her voice steady despite the chaos surrounding us.
“Not without risking crossfire.” Maxim’s jaw tightened. “If she gets past him….”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to. We all understood the math. Trev was our early warning system and our first line of defense. If Mila killed him, we were down to whatever surprise Maxim could generate from a defensive position.
Through the binoculars, I watched shadows move across distant rooftops like lethal chess pieces positioning themselves for the endgame. Then Mila emerged from the darkness with the fluid grace of something that had never been entirely human.
Even at this distance, even through magnified glass, she radiated predatory intent.
Her movements were too smooth, too precise, like someone who had spent years learning to kill without wasting motion or energy.
The knife in her hand caught starlight and threw it back in glittering arcs that spoke of edges maintained to surgical sharpness.
“She’s beautiful,” Sasha whispered beside me, and her voice carried the kind of detached wonder that trauma sometimes produced. “Like an angel. A broken, terrible angel.”
She was right. Mila Kozak moved through the darkness with ethereal grace, her pale features almost luminescent in the moonlight.
If angels could fall this far, if divine messengers could be twisted into instruments of vengeance, they might look exactly like the creature stalking across Chicago’s rooftops toward my family.
The first exchange happened faster than my eyes could follow. Steel met steel in a shower of sparks that illuminated both fighters for a split second before they separated and circled each other like predators evaluating prey.
Trev was bigger, stronger, with the kind of tactical training that came from years in law enforcement. But Mila was faster, more agile, and she fought with the desperate intensity of someone who believed God was guiding her blade.
They came together again in a flurry of movement that made my breath catch in my throat.
Trev blocked a strike aimed at his throat, twisting to avoid a follow-up that would have opened his femoral artery, but he couldn’t avoid everything.
Pain exploded across his features as Mila’s knife found the space between his ribs, sinking deep into flesh that had never learned to stop bleeding.
“Trev!” His name tore from my throat like a prayer, like a curse, like the kind of desperate sound mothers make when they watch their children fall.
Beside me, Sasha’s cup fell from nerveless fingers, tea spreading across the hardwood in patterns that looked disturbingly like blood. Her voice shook as she asked, “What happened to him? Is he…?”
I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know.
Through the binoculars, I watched Trev stagger backward, one hand pressed to his side where crimson spread across his shirt like spilled paint.
But he didn’t fall, didn’t surrender, didn’t do anything except raise his gun with the mechanical precision of someone who had been training for this moment his entire life.
The shot echoed across the distance between us, sharp and final as judgment.
Mila jerked backward, her ethereal grace replaced by very human surprise as the bullet found her chest. She looked down at the spreading red with something that might’ve been confusion, like she couldn’t quite believe that Saint Michael’s protection had limits.
Then she crumpled, folding into herself with the boneless finality of something that used to be alive but isn’t anymore.
Through the comm system, Maxim’s voice cut through the sudden silence: “Trev, report.”
A long pause, filled with the kind of static that could be equipment failure or the sound of someone trying to breathe around punctured lungs.
Then Trev’s voice, weaker than before but still carrying that irreverent humor that made him impossible to kill: “Target down. I’m hit but functional.”
Maxim allowed himself a small smile. “You did good, brother. Held the line.”
“Had to,” Trev replied, and I could hear the strain in his voice now, the way words cost him more effort than they should. “Couldn’t let anything happen to my girls.”
His girls. Plural. Sasha and me, claimed by someone who barely knew us but who had been’ willing to bleed out on a rooftop to keep us safe.
Through the binoculars, I watched him lean against a ventilation unit, his free hand still pressed to his wounded side. But he was smiling, the bastard. Actually smiling as blood seeped between his fingers.
“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.