Chapter Iskra
Iskra
They were all out hunting down the men who did this while I was left with the byki—until Ruslan showed up at the hospital.
The tube was out of my throat. I was still badly bruised, still trying to grasp what had been taken from me.
My son.
No.
His son.
But somehow seeing my younger brother brought everything rushing to the surface.
Perhaps it was the childhood memories—him as a baby, the weight of him, the particular smallness of someone who needed protecting.
He didn’t say anything when I started to cry.
His arms closed around me and he held on.
The only real touch I had felt in months.
When I didn’t stop he began to talk—telling me about the things the men had made him do since joining.
The shestyorka were treated with contempt as a matter of course.
Being my brother had earned him nothing.
No protection, no consideration, no softening of what they put the probationary members through.
“I told you not to join,” I sniffed into the crook of his arm.
“No—it’s taught me a lot.” His voice was steadier than it had any right to be. “I was so naive thinking education would change my life. But I work through the ranks knowing that one day I’ll be able to protect my sister.”
I lifted my head, surprised again at how much he had changed. We were both bound to the Bratva now—me through wedding vows and a despot’s prenuptial agreement, him through the Brotherhood’s code. Two Kozlov children on opposite sides of the same world, neither of us having chosen it.
I could see it in his eyes. The commitment. He wasn’t leaving.
I reached up and touched his cheek. Soft stubble under my fingers where there used to be nothing.
“You’re so grown up now, Ruslan,” I whispered, my eyes blurring again. “You never got to meet your nephew. I never got to meet him either.”
The sobs came from somewhere deeper than I expected—the kind that pull at the chest, that take the breath with them. I pressed my forehead against him and let them come.
The door opened somewhere behind me. Men’s voices. Movement.
I didn’t look up.
Vadim had decided I wouldn’t see him. I had been unconscious for days and he had made those decisions without me—what happened to the body, what arrangements were made, what was done with the small cold weight of him. He had made it very clear, in every way except words, that I had no rights.
Not to the child I had carried.
Not even in death.
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It was a strange feeling, coming home.
The silent drive. Tau and Radovan exchanging looks in the front, glancing back at me every so often in the rearview mirror as though checking that I was still there. My brother’s hand gripped mine until it ached. My anchor. My reminder of who I was — a Kozlova, before any of the rest of it.
I had thought I might fear being in another SUV. The truck. The rolling. The sky and road and sky. But I felt nothing. I was empty in every sense of the word and the body that had survived the impact seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion.
The familiar gates pulled open. The men outside nodded even though they couldn’t see past the tinted glass — the gesture automatic, trained, the house running exactly as it always had. The tyres crunched on the drive and the vehicle brought me back to my gilded cage as though nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
The door opened and Olya stood in the doorway, one hand raised against the glare of the afternoon sun, squinting to find me in the brightness.
I climbed out and brushed Radovan’s hand from my arm before he could steady me.
My brother carried my bag.
I straightened my spine. Raised my head. The muscle memory of composure — practised since the cathedral, since the ring on my finger, since the first morning I walked down these stairs in someone else’s house and decided to survive it.
Olya came down the steps and pulled me into her arms. I patted her back until she released me. Her words of sympathy arrived somewhere at the edges of my awareness and logged themselves there, to be felt later or not at all.
The familiar path. The foyer. The hallway. The staircase I had gripped every morning of this pregnancy. The banister under my palm exactly as it always was.
At the top, I stopped.
I looked east—the corridor that was his. The room that he had never invited me into. His door was closed. Another stark reminder.
Then I turned west.
The room with the red and gold walls and the chandelier and the balcony where I had watched Chernograd and called it a cage.
I stood between the two wings and waited to feel something.
Nothing came.
Nothing at all.
Tau cleared his throat. The sound was too deep to be my brother’s.
With a sigh, I moved towards my prison.
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My father sat still and silent on one of the chairs Tau had brought into the room.
My mother perched on the edge of the bed, attempting to fluff my pillows into a more comfortable arrangement.
My brother stood in the background like a guardian angel—close enough to intervene, far enough to give me space.
Galina sat on the other side of my father, studying her nails, already bored.
My face and shoulder were still badly bruised. The shock on their faces when they saw me confirmed what the hospital mirror had already shown—it was an improvement on before, but not by much.
Galina was her usual self. Blood or not, there was a distinct quality to her attention that told me she was pleased to see me in this condition.
My mother tried to pacify me. I would heal. There would be more children. God’s plan. Silver linings.
I didn’t utter a single word.
I did decide, quietly and with some conviction, that I needed to find a gun for my room. Not for a fatal shot. Just enough to wing someone. Enough to shut them up.
“Aren’t there any refreshments being served?” Galina sighed, addressing no one in particular.
My father raised his head.
The warning in his eyes was clear.
“What?” she said. “She’s alive, isn’t she?”
Before my father could respond the door opened and Tau came in.
He crossed the room directly to Galina—all six feet of him, black and beautiful and entirely certain—and took her by the scruff of the neck.
She screamed. Not the theatrical kind she deployed for attention.
Genuine terror. The specific sound of someone who has just understood that the person holding them is not performing.
Tau’s eyes met mine as he dragged her toward the door.
Something flickered in my chest.
Gratitude, possibly.
Ruslan watched her go past him and shamelessly took the vacated chair, settling into it with the satisfaction of a man who had been waiting for exactly this outcome.
That was the only eventful moment of their visit.
I was glad to see them leave.
Ruslan remained with me, no doubt a limited courtesy granted by the Pakhan.
I found myself thinking about Tau. The contract killer from Tswana. He answered to no hierarchy, bound by no Bratva code—which meant his loyalty, when he gave it, was a choice rather than an obligation.
That distinction might matter.
My brother pulled the covers up around me, fussing with the edges the way a mother hen would. Tucking. Adjusting. Checking.
Unlike my mother’s duplicity, I had no doubt about his intentions.