Chapter 28 Zoya
Zoya
Somehow, it hits harder the second time around.
I fold, right there on his rug. My knees hit the floor, and my hands find the edge of the desk as if gripping wood can stop the room from tilting. The USB screen blares cold light and numbers, and my father’s ghost presses a palm over my mouth.
I don’t cry pretty. It rips out of me in tight, ugly breaths that scrape my throat raw.
The first time, shock numbed it. This time, the knowledge that he chose this—chose to turn me into a pawn on his board—makes it burn.
I pinch the bridge of my nose hard enough to sting and keep breathing until the sounds stop being embarrassing.
Roman doesn’t rush to me. He doesn’t offer platitudes. He crouches next to me, his hand on the small of my back. The space between us holds. I hate him for telling me. I love him for not letting me drown in a lie.
That means more than anything else.
He chose me.
He chose me when he should’ve kept his mouth shut and let me believe the lie.
When I finally drag air deep enough to steady, I get up. My legs tremble but hold. I wipe under my eyes with the edge of my thumb and meet his gaze head-on. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Open the envelope,” I say, nodding at the one marked N.A. My voice scrapes low, but it works.
He passes it to me. I slit the flap with my nail and tip the contents onto the desk. Paper slides like a dealer turning over cards in a rigged game. I have no idea what to expect. Roman unfolds a letter and raises an eyebrow.
“What does it say?”
“It says that your father wants you as the rightful pakhan of the Antonov family.”
I gulp and shelve that for a moment. “Why was it addressed to Nik?”
“Your father wanted this passed to him, so he knows, without a doubt, who you are.”
My fingers are clumsy as I take the letter. The paper is thick, expensive, stamped with the Antonov crest pressed into the corner. My father’s handwriting slants across the page with ruthless certainty.
Zoya Melina Antonova, you will lead when the time is right.
That’s the first line. No greeting. No, My darling girl. Just a decree cut into paper like stone.
There is one name underneath it. “Baron Voronov.”
I swallow and read the last paragraph twice.
When the time comes, you will show this to Nik. He will understand his place. If he doesn’t, he will be removed by those whose name you hold. My decisions are final. Moscow concurs.
My lungs forget how to act. I pass the page back to Roman before I crease it with my grip. “He wrote this like a contract. Like I’m… inevitable.”
“You are,” Roman says, quietly, like a fact.
“I’m twenty-eight, and a woman. I’m to be seen in social circles and going shopping, not heard making a fuss.”
“The tables are turning, malyshka. Your father is setting a precedent. It will make many of the Bratva princesses think. It is the biggest shake-up in the history of the Brotherhood.”
“I don’t want to be a shake-up. I don’t want to shake! Everyone is going to hate me. Nik isn’t going to take this lying down.”
“Nik will have to, or he gets taken out. To be fair, I’m leaning towards taking him out anyway just to be on the safe side.”
“Fuck!” I growl and shove my hands into my hair, pulling it out of my low knot. “I can’t believe he did this!”
“Stop spiralling,” Roman says quietly.
I stop. Not because he orders it, but because the word clips the fuse.
“What do we do with it?” I ask, nodding at the letter. “If I walk into St. Nicholas and brandish this, half of them will call it forgery, and the other half will cheer while someone takes a shot at me.”
“We time it,” he says, already moving pieces only he can see. “We let Nik climb onto the dais and put the crown on his own head. Then we cut the lights.”
“Theatre,” I murmur.
He nods. “Optics. You enter on my arm. You grieve. You let him speak. When he names himself, we answer. Letter first, then a taste of what was in the box. Names. Wire transfers. Enough to make the old men in the pews rethink their loyalties mid-kiss of the cross. But we have to get this right. There is something going down, and we aren’t supposed to make waves until a couple of days after. ”
“Fuck that,” I grit out. “We are going to make a tsunami!”
He blinks, his face taut.
“Right?” I ask in a small voice, because his reaction says no.
His silence tells me everything I need to know before he opens his mouth.
“No,” he says at last. “Not a wave. A scalpel.”
I bite the inside of my cheek until my tongue tastes iron. “A scalpel doesn’t scare wolves.”
“It bleeds them out,” he replies. “Quietly. While they preen for the crowd.”
“So, we let him name himself. Then I slit him open with this.”
“And not just that.” He taps the USB folder with a knuckle. “Wire trails. Photos. The Albanians—who are currently under investigation by my office. We don’t throw the whole box at the nave. We pick three cuts and make them clean.”
“Which three?” My voice has stopped shaking. The room has edges again. “What office?”
He smirks. “My day job. I’m a KC.”
“Noooo,” I say, eyes wide. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
I blink hard. “Okay, that’s a conversation for another time. Which three?”
“Payment authorisations showing Nik moved money two days before the shooting. The golf course routes. And one message from the broker confirming the second target was you.” His mouth hardens. “The old men will feel that in their bones.”
My brain races ahead. “And the letter is last,” I say. “When they’re already doubting the man at the lectern. I read my father’s words and let the pews decide which way to face.”
He nods once. “Exactly.”
“It’s still a spectacle,” I murmur.
“It’s theatre,” he agrees. “But it’s scripted by us.”
I press my palm flat on the desk to steady the tremor starting in my fingers. “Fine. We slice him, not drown him. But I speak, not you.”
“You speak,” he says easily. “You’re the point.”
Relief punches a hole through the rage. It’s not a victory. It’s space. “And the waves we aren’t supposed to make?”
He considers it for a moment and then sighs. “I’ll speak to Pakhan Voronov. This is important to him as well as us.”
“Pakhan Voronov,” I murmur. “Formal meeting.”
“Has to be. Otherwise, he will shoot me down.”
Inhaling deeply, I make a concession that nearly kills me. “We can wait.”
He looks up sharply. “No.”
“If it’s going to mean trouble, then we can wait.”
“No.”
The word slices clean through the small mercy I tried to offer. I brace for the lecture. It doesn’t come. He just picks up his phone and dials, eyes on me the entire time, like he’s daring me to break.
“Pakhan,” he says when the line connects. “We need to talk. Tonight.”
A beat. I can’t hear the reply, only the cadence of an older man who commands obedience by breathing. Roman’s gaze never wavers.
“Yes,” he says. “She will be present.”
Another pause. He tips his chin a fraction. “Understood.”
He ends the call and pockets the phone. “Ten minutes. Library.”
“Ten?” I echo. “Give a girl some warning next time.”
“He is always closer than people think.”
A sour laugh fizzes up my throat and dies in my mouth. Of course he is. Power doesn’t commute.
I gather up the letter and slide it back into the envelope marked with Nik’s initials. It feels like contraband. Like a blade hidden in a hymn book. Roman watches me do it. There’s a charged quiet between us that smells like scorched secrets.
He nods at the mess on the desk. “We package three cuts and print them.”
I nod because arguing now wastes oxygen. His entire existence is to win arguments. It’s no wonder, really. He is very good at it. He moves around the desk, quick, economical, lethal. I take the chair again, because if I don’t sit, I’ll wear ruts in his rug with my pacing.
He opens a secure printer on the sideboard and slots in fresh paper.
I select the three files on the screen with trembling fingers and send them through.
The machine spits out the first sheet. I snatch it and lay it flat.
Payment authorisations—dates circled, arrows linking accounts.
The second follows: a map of the club car park with the red Xs that make my skin go cold.
The third is a cropped message. The girl next if the job fails.
I slide each into a clear sleeve. Roman assembles them into a slim folder, neat as a barrister about to burn a witness.
He doesn’t comment on my shaking hands. He covers them, instead, with the folder and my palm under his.
My pulse steadies because damn him, he knows exactly when to apply pressure and when to release it.
“Library,” he says.
“Two minutes.” I scoop the ledger and my notes into the gym bag and shove it under his desk, far back. The key to twenty-four goes into my bra. I tuck the envelope with my father’s edict into the inner pocket of my coat.
He offers his arm. I take it. We move.
The library smells of old leather and newer money. Baron already stands at the hearth like he teleported in or something. Up close, the lines around his mouth look carved with a blade, not time.
His eyes flick to me, then to Roman, then back to me. “What is this about?”
I straighten my spine and meet his stare. “Evidence. And timing.”
Roman doesn’t bother with preamble. He sets the slim folder on the table between us and flips it open like a barrister about to eviscerate a witness. “We let Nik crown himself. Then she cuts him in three places. In the church, the day after tomorrow.”
Baron’s eyes narrow. “I said not at the church.”
“I know, but this has escalated. If she doesn’t do it then, she will lose the opportunity.”
“Meaning?”
“I have proof that my cousin, Nik, was the one who ordered the hit on my dad, and that I was next. I also have this…” I glance at Roman, and he nods stiffly.
I pull the letter out and hand it to Baron. “Look familiar?”
He gives me a wry stare and takes it. He doesn’t even read it. He already knows. He signed the damn thing. “Clever girl,” he murmurs. “You intend to step up?”
And that is the million-dollar question. Do I intend to step up? To step up to being the pakhan of the Antonov family. I don’t even know what that means, but weakness now, under the steely glare of Pakhan Voronov, I have no choice.
“Yes.”
He raises one eyebrow ever so slightly. “I see. You do know this will go down like a lead balloon?”
“I know,” I croak. “But it is what my father want… wanted.” Baron’s eyes bore into mine at my near-slip. I clutch my hands in front of me in a show of nervousness to excuse my supposed stammer. He appears to accept it.
“Quite,” he clips out. “You will need help. Protection.”
“I have Roman,” I say lightly. “Isn’t that what the vow was all about?”
Baron snorts, but ignores the question and fixes Roman with a look that screams something, but I can’t quite figure it out. “I said the higher-ups don’t want waves until after the shipment has landed.”
Higher ups. Shipment.
He is talking about the big guns in front of me, and I beam with a silly sense of pride. He accepts me and the role I am about to thrust myself into. If he didn’t, he would have me forcibly removed from his presence, if necessary, before he said anything.
“I’m aware. But this isn’t about them. It’s about us. Her family and ours. I need you to think like Pakhan Voronov for just one second and not as a Moscow asset.”
“They are one and the same.”
“No, they are not.”
The tension ratchets up, and now I wish I’d been removed from this conversation. I’m causing trouble already.
“What is your play, here, Devochka?” Baron fires at me, pinning my gaze.
“My play?”
“He means, how does this benefit his family,” Roman says dryly.
“Oh. I… uhm…” Fuck.
“You have no plan,” he states.
“I literally just found out this was my future. Excuse me for not having it all mapped out.”
He sneers at my icy tone.
I bite down on the urge to apologise and force my breath to even out.
“How about this? As I read the eulogy, I pull out the letter and say that Dad left instructions to have it read today. I pretend like I don’t know what is in it.
I read it out hesitantly. Almost afraid as I read words, trailing off, that sort of thing.
That way it doesn’t blow back on anyone but me. ”
“You are tied to me now, Devochka. Blowback rarely lands on one person in this world.”
“If I don’t do this, I lose everything. All of my father’s men and the heads of the other Bratva families will all be gathered in this one place for the first and last time for a while.”
“She’s right, Dad,” Roman says. “We have to do this. The shipment will still come in; if anything, it will divert attention away from it.”
I wait to be denied again, but there is nothing but a calculated silence.