Emilia
I watch recognition slam into him like a physical blow.
Good.
Let him understand exactly what kind of mistake Viktor Troskoy made six years ago when he thought he could erase my entire family and leave no witnesses.
"Markov." Konstantin says the name like he's tasting it, testing its weight. "Alexander Markov's daughter."
"You knew my father." It's not a question. Everyone in the Bratva knew my father.
"I knew of him." He moves to the bar cart in the corner, pours two glasses of something amber. "He was old-school. Honorable, by our standards. He didn't deserve what happened."
"No." The word comes out flat. "He didn't."
Konstantin crosses the room and holds out one of the glasses. I stare at it.
"It's not poisoned," he says, and there's dark humor in his voice. "You'd know if I was trying to poison you."
Fair point.
I take the glass and down half of it in one swallow. The burn centers me, reminds me that I'm still alive when I shouldn't be.
He settles into the chair across from me, his long legs stretched out, his red mask still in place. I left my mask somewhere in the forest, I realize. Lost it when he caught me.
Captured prey doesn't get to hide behind masks.
"Tell me," he says.
Where do I start? With the sound of gunfire? With waking up in the hospital and learning my entire family was dead? With the years I spent rebuilding myself from the shattered remains of a nineteen-year-old girl who believed in loyalty and honor and the Bratva's codes?
"Troskoy made a deal with my father," I say instead. "Promised him a partnership in a new territory. Clean money, he said. Legitimate business."
Konstantin's jaw tightens. He knows where this is going.
"It was a lie. Troskoy was running guns through the territory, using my father's name as cover.
When the authorities started investigating, Troskoy decided loose ends needed to be tied up.
" I finish the drink, set the glass down with a careful click.
"He came to our home just as we were starting our dinner.
Shot my father first. Then my brothers."
"And you?"
"I was in the kitchen. I heard the gunfire. Ran through." The memory is crystalline, perfect in its horror. "Troskoy shot me in the chest. Left me bleeding on top of my youngest brother's body."
Silence stretches between us.
"The scar," Konstantin says quietly.
I press my hand against the spot, feeling the ridge of tissue beneath silk. "Collapsed lung. Damaged my heart. The surgeon said I was lucky to survive."
"Lucky." He says it like the word is broken glass in his mouth.
"That's what everyone said." I lean back against the couch, suddenly exhausted. "Lucky Emilia. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to have survived when her entire family didn't."
"You don't feel lucky."
"I feel angry." The truth spills out before I can stop it. "I feel like I should have died with them. And I feel like the only reason I'm still breathing is to make sure Troskoy pays for what he did."
Konstantin is quiet for a long moment, studying me with those wolf eyes.
"So you spent six years planning how to kill him," he says finally.
"I spent six years becoming someone he wouldn't recognize.
" I gesture at myself. The elegant dress, the careful makeup, the woman who looks nothing like the girl who bled out in her father's house.
"I learned to code. To hack. To ghost through systems that are supposed to be impenetrable.
I found every piece of Troskoy's empire and mapped it, documented it, understood it. "
"And tonight you decided poison was the answer."
"Tonight was supposed to be the end." I hear the bitterness in my own voice. "Quick. Clean. No one would even know it was murder until he was already dead."
"Except I saw you."
"Except you saw me."
Konstantin stands, paces to the window. The city lights beyond cast his silhouette in sharp relief, all predatory grace and coiled violence.
"Poison is the coward's weapon," he says, his back to me.
Fury ignites in my chest. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me." He turns, and there's something fierce in his expression. "You spent six years preparing for this moment. Six years becoming dangerous. And you were going to kill him with poison? Let him die confused and alone, never knowing who finally caught up to him?"
"That was the point—"
"The point is you're better than that." He closes the distance between us in three strides, and suddenly he's towering over me, intense and overwhelming.
"Troskoy took everything from you. He took your family, your home, your life.
And you were going to take his life with a substance he couldn't even taste? "
I surge to my feet, bringing us chest to chest. "What would you have me do? March up to him and shoot him in the face? Get myself killed for revenge?"
"I'd have you destroy him." The words are fierce, certain. "Not just his life. Everything. His reputation. His empire. His legacy. I'd have you make him understand exactly what he did and exactly what it cost him."
"And how am I supposed to do that?" I'm shaking now, from anger or adrenaline or the way he's looking at me like I'm something rare and deadly. "I'm one woman. He has an army. That’s why I entered The Hunt. If I’d have won, I would have ordered him dead."
"You're not just one woman." Konstantin's hand comes up, cups my jaw. "You're a Markov. You have your father's blood. And from what you've just told me, you have skills Troskoy can't even comprehend."
His thumb brushes across my cheekbone, and the touch sends electricity down my spine.
"You don't know me," I whisper.
"I know you tried to kill a man at the Bratva masquerade." His voice drops, rough as gravel. "I know you ran into a forest wearing an evening gown. I know you grabbed a mask without understanding what it meant, because any risk was better than the alternative."
He leans closer, until I can feel his breath against my lips.
"I know you're brave and reckless and so focused on revenge that you can't see there are other ways to win."
"What other ways?" The question comes out breathless.
"Let me help you."
I pull back, breaking the contact. "Why would you help me? You work for the Reznikov’s. Troskoy is connected to them. Helping me means—"
"Means choosing your justice over their politics." He says it like it's simple. Like it's already decided. "I’m okay with that."
"You'll lose everything."
"I've already lost everything that matters." Something dark crosses his face. "At least this way I'll lose it for something worth losing it for."
The words hang between us, heavy with meaning I don't fully understand.
"You don't even know me," I say again, but it sounds weaker this time.
"I know enough." His hand drops to his side. "I know you're not a killer. Not really. You want to be, because you think that's what justice requires. But poison? Distance? That's not you."
"How do you know what I am?"
"Because a real killer would have tried a hundred different ways to get to Troskoy over the last six years." His smile is sharp, knowing. "But you waited. Prepared. And when you finally made your move, you chose the method that would keep you furthest from the actual act of killing."
Damn him for being right.
"So what do you suggest?" I cross my arms, hating how vulnerable I feel. "If not poison, then what?"
Konstantin's smile widens into something that makes my stomach flip.
"You said you mapped his empire. Documented everything."
"Yes."
"Then we don't kill him." He pulls out his phone, taps something, then turns the screen toward me. "We make him wish he was dead."
The screen shows a bank account. I blink, trying to process the number of zeros.
"That's—"
"One of Troskoy's offshore accounts. I've known about it for years. And I'm guessing you found it too, somewhere in your research."
I did. I found seven accounts, actually. This is the smallest one.
"He has more," I say slowly.
"I know. And you're going to drain every single one.
" Konstantin's eyes glitter behind his mask.
"You're going to ghost through his systems, take every dollar, every connection, every piece of leverage he's built over decades.
And then you're going to destroy the evidence that those assets ever existed. "
Understanding blooms in my chest, dark and thrilling.
"I'm going to bankrupt him."
"You're going to erase him." Konstantin corrects. "No money. No power. No legacy. Just a broken old man who realizes too late that he missed one very important loose end." He crosses to the bathroom, returning after a few moments with a small first aid kit and a washcloth and towel.
"He'll know it was me."
He takes my foot in his hand, cleaning it gently.
"Eventually. But by then, there will be nothing he can do about it." Konstantin dresses the small wound on my foot with care and precision. "By then, you'll have destroyed him so completely that even mentioning your name will be the last power you ever let him have."
The plan is vicious. Thorough. Everything poison wasn't.
Everything I should have thought of myself, if I hadn't been so blinded by the need for his death. He sets the first aid kit aside and stands.
"Why are you doing this?" I ask quietly.
Konstantin's hand comes up again, traces the line of my jaw, my throat, the edge of my dress where it dips low.
His fingers pause over my scar.
"Because you make me feel something I thought was dead," he says, and there's rawness in his voice I wasn't expecting. "And because Troskoy doesn't deserve a quick death. He deserves to know what it feels like to have everything ripped away."
His eyes meet mine.
"Just like you did."
The words break something open in my chest.
Before I can second-guess myself, I rise onto my toes and press my mouth to his.
For one heartbeat, he's perfectly still.
Then he kisses me back like I'm air and he's drowning.