Chapter Twenty-Six - Rostya
The warehouse reeks of iron and cordite, smoke curling in ghostly ribbons that cling to the rafters. Blood slicks the concrete in wide arcs, black under the jaundiced light. Bodies lie twisted, grotesque shapes left in the wake of steel and gunfire.
My pulse still thunders from the fight, lungs dragging air heavy with the copper stench of spilled life.
I drag my blade across the front of my shirt, streaking red into black fabric.
The motion is steady, practiced. My chest heaves, but my hands don’t tremble.
The echoes of violence still hum in my bones.
It’s muscle memory, instinct replaying each strike, each shot, each breath stolen from the men who thought they could take me.
Ahead, Denis Volkov staggers. His suit hangs in shreds, one arm limp at his side, blood dripping in a steady patter that blends with the spreading pool underfoot.
His eyes are wild, red-veined, frothing with hatred.
He spits blood, a spray of red against the floor, and bares his teeth like an animal cornered.
“You think this ends with me?” His voice cracks, hoarse and broken. “You’ll choke on your own empire, Sharov. One day, it’ll eat you alive.”
For years, the Volkovs have been shadows at my heels, snapping and circling, their name whispered in dark corners as if it carried weight. And now the last of them sways before me, broken, desperate, still clinging to the idea that he matters.
I study him with no more feeling than I’d give a column in a ledger. This isn’t triumph. It’s arithmetic. One line item, years overdue, finally brought to zero.
Denis takes a stumbling step forward, his smirk faltering as he realizes I don’t need his curses, his warnings, his dying breath. I need only the end.
I move before he can raise another insult, the blade a natural extension of my arm.
The strike is sharp, merciless, steel sinking into flesh with a wet crack that reverberates in the silence.
Denis’s body jerks, mouth open on a soundless snarl.
The smirk dies first, then the light in his eyes.
I rip the blade free, and he collapses, crumpled like all the others, another shadow burned out beneath my boots.
For a second, satisfaction flares bright and hot. Years of rivalry, of knives in the dark and whispered threats, reduced to this one final silence.
The flare fades almost instantly, hollow at the core. The war is won. The Volkovs are erased. My empire is secure again, stitched tight with fear and consequence.
Yet my mind is already circling elsewhere.
Not the spoils of victory, not the weight of command.
It drifts to her. To Karmia, pacing halls that echo like tombs, her eyes wide with the memory of my fury.
To the way her voice cracked when she told me to stop, the plea that still clings in the back of my skull.
I step over Denis’s corpse, blade still dripping, boots slick with blood. The empire holds. The night is mine. In the quiet that follows, all I can think of is the woman waiting in my house, and the truth I haven’t yet named.
Miron emerges from the smoke like a shadow given shape, his boots dragging across the blood-slick floor.
In one fist he grips the collar of a broken man, a survivor barely conscious, his head lolling with every step.
In the other hand, glinting faintly under the harsh warehouse lights, is something far more dangerous.
Karmia’s phone.
Miron tosses the prisoner aside like garbage, then holds the device out between two fingers. His face is calm, unreadable beneath the grime and blood.
“We cracked it open,” he says, voice steady. “Nothing. No messages. No coordinates. No signal bouncing back to Volkov. It was a corpse. Dead tech.”
The words should hit like relief, but they don’t. They cut sideways, sharp in a place I don’t want touched. My jaw locks. I glance at the phone, then back to him, unwilling to take it.
Miron tilts his head, studying me like he’s dissecting the fracture lines in stone.
“Any woman in her position would have used it. To beg for rescue. To cut a deal. To save her own skin.” His voice doesn’t rise.
Doesn’t accuse. He simply lays it out with the calm certainty of a man holding a mirror too close.
“The fact that she didn’t speaks louder than anything you think you saw. ”
I hate the logic. Hate the way it threads into me like a splinter. My suspicion has always been my shield, the armor that kept me alive when trust meant a knife in the spine. I built an empire on doubt. Betrayal has been the only constant, the only lesson I could never unlearn.
Yet I think of her face, pale and stricken in the headlights, the terror that wasn’t calculation but raw fear. The way her hands shook as she threw the phone away, as if cutting herself free from something she couldn’t name.
I grind my teeth, shaking my head. “You’re too quick to believe.” The words are harsh, sharper than I intend. “Volkov could have stripped it clean before giving it to her. He wanted us exposed, not her exonerated.”
Miron doesn’t flinch. “Maybe. You saw her, and I know you, Brother—you’re not arguing with me. You’re arguing with yourself.”
His calm is a knife I can’t block. I turn away, shoving the weight of his words aside, clinging to suspicion like a drowning man to driftwood.
To believe otherwise would mean admitting weakness.
Admitting that, for one breath, I lowered the gun not out of calculation, but out of something I don’t want to name.
The phone lies cold and silent in Miron’s hand, its emptiness louder than all the gunfire that tore this place apart.
We leave the wreckage behind, boots echoing over concrete still slick with blood. Denis Volkov’s corpse is cooling in the dark, the war won. My chest feels hollow, unbalanced, as though a piece of me was carved out and left behind.
***
Victory tastes like ash when certainty slips through my fingers.
The car rolls up the long drive, gravel grinding under the tires.
The mansion looms above, windows glowing like watchful eyes.
My body hums with exhaustion and victory, shirt torn and clinging with sweat, knuckles raw, blood staining my sleeves.
The battle is still in me, buzzing in bone and muscle, violence with nowhere left to go.
Then I see her.
Karmia stands barefoot in the doorway, framed by marble and shadow. She looks so fragile against the vast estate, yet unyielding in the way she doesn’t move. Her hair is loose, her dress wrinkled, her eyes wide with something I can’t name. For the first time tonight, my steps falter.
We stare across the space that’s devoured everything between us. Her gaze rakes over me—my bruises, the dried blood crusting at my collar, the fatigue etched into every line of my face. I wait for her to look away, to shrink, to retreat. She doesn’t.
Her lips part. The word comes soft, trembling, but steady enough to cut deep. “Sorry.”
It guts me sharper than any blade. Not weakness. Confession. A truth spoken into the silence of this house that’s held us both prisoner.
Before I can respond, she blurts the words that strike harder than gunfire, words no enemy ever dared throw at me. “I wouldn’t have left… because I’m in love with you.”
The air fractures. For a moment I can’t breathe. The empire, the blood, the war—all of it vanishes under the weight of her admission. My chest tightens, raw, exposed. There is no mask here, no armor. Nothing left but the knife-edge of her voice and the truth I can’t deny.
The tension snaps.
I move before I think, two strides swallowing the distance, and then my mouth is on hers.
The kiss collides, fierce and brutal, tasting of smoke and iron, desperation spilling over into heat.
She gasps against me but doesn’t pull away; her hands clutch at my torn shirt, dragging me closer.
My blood still stains me, but she doesn’t care. She drinks me in anyway.
I can’t stop. Won’t stop. I lift her, her body light in my arms, and carry her inside, away from the open eyes of the night.
The nearest couch catches us as we fall together, mouths still locked, teeth and tongues clashing.
The violence of battle twists into hunger, into need, into something neither of us can cage.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, my back. My hands slide down her thighs, dragging her against me, the thin barrier of fabric doing nothing to dull the burn between us. Every kiss is desperate, bruising, as if we could consume each other and erase the distance that’s haunted us.
***
The quiet wakes me before the light does.
Sheets twisted around my legs, the faint impression of her body cooling beside me.
For one hollow beat my gut clenches—gone.
The absence gnaws like abandonment, sharp and sudden.
My hand drags across the empty space, searching for her warmth as if it might linger. Nothing.
I rise, dressing quickly, unease prickling down my spine. The house is too still, its marble halls echoing only my footsteps. I follow the faintest sound—a clatter, the scrape of metal on metal—until I reach the kitchen.
She’s there.
Karmia stands barefoot on the tiled floor, hair mussed into wild tangles, one strap of her dress sliding loose on her shoulder.
She is bent over a pan, frowning in concentration, wooden spoon gripped awkwardly in her hand.
Nothing like the queen I’ve dressed her as: no jewels, no silks, no mask of steel.
She startles when she notices me in the doorway, cheeks flushing.
“I was bored,” she mutters, as if explanation is necessary, as if it excuses her intrusion into this forgotten room. “Figured I’d do… something.” Her eyes flick down, embarrassed, reluctant to admit the truth beneath the words, that she wanted to do something for me.
I step inside, the scent surprising me first. Garlic, butter, something savory and warm that feels foreign in this house of cold stone and colder men. I expect nothing but a mess, a gesture sweet but useless. Still, I take the fork she offers, lift a bite to my mouth.
It stops me.
The food is good. Better than good. Seasoned, balanced, unexpectedly perfect.
My brows rise despite myself, and the corner of her mouth quirks upward with cautious pride.
The moment disarms me in its simplicity.
For once there’s no thoughts of blood or revenge.
Only food cooked by her hands, warm and delicious.
“You’ve been hiding this?” My tone is flat, but the smirk threatens, tugging at the corner of my lips. “I should put you in the kitchens permanently.”
She huffs, rolling her eyes, though her blush deepens. “Don’t get used to it. It won’t become a habit.” She turns back to the pan, feigning irritation, but I catch the ghost of a smile before she hides it.
I lean in the doorway, watching her fuss over the sizzling pan, and something shifts inside me.
The war is over. Denis Volkov is a corpse cooling in a warehouse across the city.
My empire is intact, my enemies silenced.
Yet this—her in my kitchen, barefoot and blushing, feeding me food she cooked herself—unnerves me more than any battle ever has.
Here lies the true danger. Not bullets, not blades, but the softness of a moment that feels too much like love.