Chapter 41
“Light ’em up, Moya Samotsvet.”
VALENTINA
My hands are still shaking when the cliché Wedding March drones from the crackling sound system.
The chapel is packed to the brim, suffocating with perfume, incense, and too many eyes.
I refuse to look up at Anton waiting at the altar. I refuse to acknowledge him as my husband. This wedding is a twisted charade, a sickening sham, and I am the sacrificial lamb.
Mikhail stands at the front, holding a Bible.
He still has black and blue bruises on his jaw and temple from the arena.
But his posture is unbroken—proof that Roman did not destroy him.
Unlike Roksana. My heart sinks at the thought of the strongest woman I’ve ever met and how heart-crushing it must have been for Roman when he felt his mother’s life slipping away… by his hand.
The music grinds on, and with each step, my stomach knots tighter. I’m going as slow as possible, feeling the weight of countless eyes upon me. I wouldn’t be surprised if Anton plans to fuck me right here in the church following the ceremony.
Even my father sits in the front row, Sasha beside him. But while Sasha’s eyes are commiserating, my father’s are triumphant, arrogant, satisfied.
I arrive at the apex of the dais before the altar, and my heart struggles to beat. Anton takes my hand, but I still don’t look at him. Mikhail’s voice rises, carrying through the chapel. “Let us raise a toast to the happy couple.”
A servant passes crystal flutes down the pews. Vodka. The audience obeys, lifting their glasses. My throat is dry, my body trembling, but I accept the glass. For the first time, I meet Anton’s eyes as we coil our arms around one another, uniting in the drink. Nothing but brutal, black hunger there.
Glasses chime, and the crowd swallows. I barely sip.
And then Mikhail speaks those fateful words: “If anyone objects to this marriage, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Silence swells…leaving me breathless.
Then—
The chapel doors explode inward with a boom that shakes the walls and rattles the rafters. Every head snaps toward the shuddering entrance.
My soul erupts with a blazing inferno. New life pumps into my heart.
Roman stands there, the chandelier light catching him like a vengeful god rising from the underworld.
His long blond hair hangs loose, damp with sweat, streaked with dirt and crusted blood from the dungeon.
His chest is like armor beneath his black shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, the fabric stretched over scars and muscle.
A dark trench coat hangs from his shoulders, swarming with steel, guns strapped to both sides of his belt, knives gleaming at his thighs.
Levka and Fleur flank him, each armed to the teeth, Fleur clutching that little tote bag like it carries damnation itself.
Somehow, I know they are responsible for this.
And my husband roars, his voice ripping through the vaulted ceiling:
“I OBJECT!”
The chapel thunders with it. Candles gutter.
The guests recoil—half-standing, stumbling, slumping in the pews.
Their faces blanch. I lower my brows, confused, until Levka winks at me.
Oh, King of Spirits! The vodka. Something must have been in the vodka.
All I know is their movements are sluggish, limbs heavy, eyes wide with terror as they realize they cannot rise.
Not my vodka. Not Mikhail’s. And not Anton’s.
Mikhail grins, wide and sharp, bruised face alight as if he’s been waiting his whole life for this moment. Roman’s staff, in the very back pews, breaks into cheers. They are the only ones not swaying, not drugged, their faith burning brighter than the candles.
The moment I try to lunge, Anton jerks, seizing my arm. Cold steel presses against my throat—a knife. His lips snarl against my ear. “I’ll do it! If I can’t have you, I’ll make sure my brother never will!”
Roman locks his eyes on us. But he is calm. So beautifully and violently calm. And I can’t describe my emotions. I can’t breathe. Hope does not surge through me—no, this is more than hope.
“Get out,” Roman tells the staff, and all do. All except Zina, Mikhail, Levka, and Fleur. He doesn’t look at them. His eyes are all for me. “Shut the doors,” Roman orders, his voice carrying like a devil’s command.
Levka and Fleur slam them shut. The boom echoes like a coffin sealing.
Roman stands, not advancing. Why?
Anton growls in my ear and presses the blade harder, nicking my throat, prepared to slice.
Before terror can even root in me, a click slices the silence. The cock of a gun.
I shift my gaze, trembling. And there—Mikhail. The bruised, battered servant of God holds a pistol pressed to the back of Anton’s head.
My lips twitch. Laughter nearly spills out. The only priest bold enough to bring a gun to church. No one searched him. They underestimated him.
“I may be a priest,” Mikhail says, voice calm, iron. With his free hand, he rips the white collar from his throat and lets it fall. “And the Good Lord said vengeance is His. But today, Anton Makarova, I am not a priest. So let’s simply call this…poetic justice. Let my lady go. Now.”
Anton stiffens. His grip loosens.
I don’t hesitate. I sink my teeth into his hand, wrench free, and spin. My knee drives up, hard, into his groin. He gasps, crumpling.
And then I’m running, tears blurring my vision, straight down the aisle.
More than hope, more than love, this is life, flooding back into my body, rushing my veins until I am dizzy with it.
It is joy and fury and love and utter power, filling me, overflowing until I swear my heart will burst. I want to collapse to my knees.
I want to grow wings and leap into Roman’s arms. I want everything, all at once, because my husband is here, my glorious avenger.
We are both avengers tonight.
His arms open, wide as the world, and I throw myself into him. We both wince from the pain, but he catches me, twirls me, crushing me to his chest. I sob against him, heart exploding, every nerve singing.
And then, Roman presses something cold and heavy into my hand—the Makarov pistol.
I look down, beam through my tears. “That is so thoughtful!”
The crowd stirs, moaning, sluggish, still fighting the drugged vodka’s grip. Roman only grins. He glances to the back, where Zina has slipped into place behind the podium, hands on the sound system. Shalun ruffles his feathers with an occasional caw.
Now, he’s heralding their doom.
“Any requests for our moment of triumph?” Roman asks me.
I grin, heart racing. “Promise not to laugh?”
He throws back his head with a guffaw, wild and unchained. “I cannot promise there will not be laughter, Moya Koroleva. But there will be screaming.”
I lean up, whisper the song in his ear. His lips curve into a grin of savage approval.
Roman strides up the raised dais, murmurs the title to Zina, then returns to me. His hand clasps mine. His eyes burn with fire.
The audience knows now. They know exactly what is coming.
Anton is still clutching his privates, glaring at us.
Roman looks up at Mikhail, voice reverent but resolute. “I will not ask permission, Father. Nor will I beg for forgiveness.”
Gun still trained on Anton, Mikhail smiles fiercely. “Then take my blessing, Roman and Valentina Makarova. For as the Good Book of Revelation says: all the corrupt, the cowards, the murderers, the immoral, and the liars—they will be thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone.”
Roman nods to Zina, then locks his eyes on me. His gaze is brimstone and promise. Mine is fire and covenant.
“Light ’em up, Moya Samotsvet.”
The first pounding chords of Fall Out Boy’s “Light ‘Em Up aka My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark,” slam through the chapel. The very air vibrates. The pews shudder. I feel the beat of the blaring music in every part of my body—my adrenaline surging, coursing to the rhythm.
Some of the crowd stumble, groaning, their limbs like lead. Nothing but slow-moving chaos.
I raise the Makarov in my hands, heart hammering.
Roman watches me. Nothing but pride and retribution.
I fire!
The first shots ring out. Three bullets meet their targets. Blood sprays. Screams echo through the chapel. Fire and smoke drift through the air, lighting up my senses. The acrid scent of gunpowder mixes with coppery blood.
Roman moves with precision, tossing me an extra clip mid-spin. I catch it, grin through my own rising fury, and let my shots fly.
He is a lethal beast who moves like a calculated king across the board, picking off our enemies with purpose and intent.
I am the flame, the blaze, the queen storming across the board, unleashing the legions of hell. No thought. No purpose. Just unbroken and untamed insanity—spinning and spiraling all down the aisle.
Crimson splashes across the marble floors, streaks across pews, and soaks the body of my barely-gown, leaving nothing to the imagination. I don’t care. Every burst of gunfire, every ricochet, every shriek—it’s justice incarnate. My hands are steady, my heart stark raving mad, fury in my veins.
I pick off anyone reaching for weapons, my eyes sharp as a hawk’s. Some make the mistake of approaching the stained-glass windows—crack! shatter! Shards rain like jeweled daggers dripping with blood and brain matter.
Roman’s shadow moves behind me, back-to-back, a dark god of retribution. He cuts down anyone who dares to flank me. Pride flares in my chest, watching him move with lethal elegance, my storm.
The music shifts mid-chaos. Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” floods the chapel. Roman’s choice. I flick my eyes to him, and he shrugs with a zealous smile.
“I thought it was fitting.” He winks.
I spin on my heel, letting the rhythm take me, thrilling in the song before I take one hand to grip the back of my husband’s blood-smeared neck. “Oh, God, I fucking love you!”
I press my lips to his, and we collide like a storm of fire and brimstone, all teeth and tongue tasting iron and adrenaline. We don’t kiss gently—we maul each other, hard, fast, feral, tasting the chaos on one another.
“Not a dream, Valya,” he says above my lips, our breaths hot and heavy. “It’s a beautiful fucking nightmare.”
All he has to do is nudge the gun barrel along my clit, so wet through the bloody fabric. I’m on such a high, it’s all it takes. I come, nails digging into his scalp, fingers yanking at his hair. The orgasm rips through my system like lightning striking again and again. My nerve endings eat it up.
Roman gazes at me the whole time with a twisted smirk. “So goddamn beautiful, Moya Koroleva.”
“Heaven help me!” I gush, laughing at my play on the song’s words.
“Nothing but hell tonight, Valentina.”
I bob my brows and bite my lower lip. “Let’s bring them more.”
Many are still stumbling around, trying to get to the doors, but they keep slipping on the blood and bodies. It’s quite a picturesque scene. Like the opposite of a Norman Rockwell, married with a Jackson Pollock in all the shades of red. Grimdark and splatterpunk.
Mikhail still has the gun trained on Anton, just daring him to try something. Anton won’t. He’s too much of a coward.
Love and pride fill me at seeing how even Sasha has joined the fold. Two guns primed on our fathers. They all share the same petrified horror in their eyes, glazed from the vodka.
Hair and gown plastered with blood, I revel in the violence and triumph, our vengeance.
Roman’s arm locks around my waist. Together, we are unstoppable, a vortex of wrath and justice. The gunfire is our hymn, our anthem.
One by one, we bring the reckoning to all those who profited from the arena, who cheered while we suffered. We bring the whole goddamn apocalypse down on their motherfucking heads!
I don’t flinch when blood sprays my face. I don’t stop to breathe. My hands are steady, my aim deadly. Roman’s presence at my back. I laugh with fury, love, and liberation.
And even in this splintered, bloody, chaotic cathedral, we find each other. My fingers braid into his hair, my lips against his again, tasting the sweet, iron tang of victory. And in this moment, we are infinite.
King and Queen. Head and Soul.
“Your next song, Valya?” he asks as “Like a Prayer” fades.
Only a few dwindlers remain. And two of them…oh, those two have been hiding like the cowardly bitchass dogs they are.
So, I look up at Zina, blow her a kiss, and sing out, “Play NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye”!”