Chapter 19
Konstantin
Three months later.
Not a blade or a bullet or any of the hundred ways I'd cataloged to die over thirty years of bratva life.
No. This was much more dangerous than any of those things.
This was twelve pounds of black-and-white chaos named Zmeya, who'd somehow convinced herself that feet moving under blankets were enemy combatants requiring immediate tactical response.
She wasn't kitten-sized anymore. Three months had turned her into a proper cat—still convinced she was terrifying, still launching ambush attacks on anything that dared to twitch.
I felt claws through the comforter, the weight of her pouncing, the concentrated fury of a predator who'd cornered her prey.
"Fucking hell," I muttered, yanking my foot away.
Zmeya chirped. Triumphant. Like she'd just taken down a full-grown man, which—technically—she had.
Malysh watched from Maya's pillow with the serene judgment only cats could manage. He'd claimed the warm spot she'd vacated for the bathroom, sprawled across the Egyptian cotton like he owned it. His purr rumbled through the quiet morning. Content. Unbothered by his sister's violence.
The shower was running. Steam crept under the bathroom door, carrying the lavender scent of Maya's shampoo. And her voice—off-key, slightly muffled by water, singing something that took me three bars to recognize.
The Bluey theme song.
She'd been on a binge. Four episodes last night while I read intelligence reports, her head in my lap, occasionally providing commentary about cartoon dogs that I pretended not to find endearing. The music had lodged in her brain like a splinter, apparently. Now it was lodging in mine.
I lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, and tried to remember the last time I'd woken up calculating threats.
It had been months ago. Back when every morning started with a tactical assessment—entry points, weapon locations, the mental checklist that had kept me alive through decades of violence. Back when sleeping meant vulnerability, and waking meant immediate alert.
Now I woke to cat attacks and off-key singing. To Malysh's purr vibrating through the mattress and Maya's voice carrying through the door like something fragile and perfect I didn't deserve.
The monster in my chest didn't stir.
That was the strangest part. For years, I'd kept it caged.
Fed it violence when it demanded blood, restrained it when the fury threatened to spill over into destruction.
The beast that lived in my bones, the thing that made me good at hurting people—I'd spent my whole life either using it or containing it.
But it wasn't caged anymore.
It was just . . . content. Fed on something better than violence. Satisfied in ways brutality had never managed.
The bathroom door opened. Steam billowed out, and Maya appeared in my shirt—one of my black t-shirts that hung to her mid-thigh, the fabric soft from years of washing. Her hair was wet, dripping onto the cotton, leaving dark spots across her shoulders.
She'd colonized my entire wardrobe. The shirts, the hoodies, even the tactical pants she claimed were "comfortable for reading.
" I'd stopped complaining about it approximately two weeks in, when I'd realized seeing her in my clothes did something to me that had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with possession.
"Your demon spawn ate my hair tie," she announced, pointing at Zmeya with the intensity of a prosecutor delivering closing arguments. "The purple one. My favorite one. She hunted it down and destroyed it while I was showering."
Zmeya sat on the bed looking innocent. Butter wouldn't melt.
"She's a cat," I said. "Cats eat things."
"She's a menace. A fluffy, adorable menace that you enable." Maya crossed to the dresser, rummaging through the drawer I'd designated for her things. Which had started as one drawer and was now three. "You give her treats when she does evil."
"I give her treats when she catches bugs."
"She brought me a dead moth yesterday. On my pillow. While I was sleeping."
"Gift," I said. "Sign of affection."
"It was still twitching."
I couldn't help it. I laughed—the low rumble that still surprised me sometimes, that I hadn't heard from my own throat for years before Maya. She shot me a look over her shoulder, but her mouth was twitching too. Fighting a smile.
"You're a cat enabler," she said. "I'm telling Nikolai."
"Nikolai has no authority over my cat parenting."
"Sophie then. She'll judge you."
I laughed. “Sophie loves the cats more than I do.”
Maya finally found a hair tie—yellow, not purple, but apparently acceptable—and started twisting her wet hair into a messy bun. Her hands moved with the efficiency I'd noticed in everything she did. Quick, precise, no wasted motion. Surgeon's hands, even when she wasn't operating anymore.
"You cried at the Sleepytime episode," she said casually.
I sat up. "I did not cry."
"Your eyes were wet."
"Allergies."
"In a climate-controlled room?" She turned, grinning now, all her accusations about the cats forgotten in favor of this far more devastating ammunition. "You cried because the moon was nice to the little blue dog."
"Bingo," I corrected, because apparently I'd retained the character's name. "Her name is Bingo."
"Oh my God." Maya pressed her hand to her chest in mock surprise. "You know her name. You've been paying attention."
"Hard not to when you watch it every night."
"We could watch something else." She crossed to the bed, climbing onto the mattress, crawling toward me with the particular grace of someone who knew exactly what she was doing. "Something more sophisticated. Documentary about serial killers. True crime podcast."
"You'd fall asleep in ten minutes."
"I would not."
"You fell asleep during the documentary about the mafia. The one about my actual profession."
She settled against my chest, her wet hair immediately soaking through my shirt. Cold. I didn't move her.
"That's because I live with someone more interesting than any documentary could be," she said. "You've ruined true crime for me. Too authentic."
The morning sun was creeping through the windows now, painting stripes across the bed. Malysh had migrated to the foot of the mattress, making room for us. Zmeya was grooming herself with aggressive efficiency, proud of her dawn attack.
Maya's weight against me was familiar. Right. The smell of her shampoo, the damp cold of her hair, the way she fitted into the space beside me like she'd been designed for it.
A year ago, I would have called this weakness. Would have said softness was dangerous, that caring about someone gave your enemies a weapon to use against you.
Maybe I still believed that. But I'd learned something else too.
Some things were worth the risk.
"Breakfast?" Maya asked, her voice already softer. Sleepy despite the shower.
"I'll make eggs."
"You always make eggs."
"You like eggs."
She hummed against my chest. Agreement or contentment or both. The cats had settled. The morning stretched ahead, full of small moments that would have been unimaginable a year ago.
I pressed a kiss to her wet hair and let the monster sleep.
The drive to Sunset Park took eighteen minutes on a good day. Twenty-three if we hit the morning school traffic on Fourth Avenue. I knew the route by muscle memory now—every light, every turn, every stretch where I could push the speed and every one where I couldn't.
Maya sat in the passenger seat with her second coffee of the morning, reviewing patient files on her tablet.
Her wet hair had dried into the wavy chaos she never bothered to control.
She was wearing scrubs now—soft blue ones, not the oversized sweaters she hid in when she'd been treating people in that basement.
These were proper medical scrubs. The kind people wore when they worked in actual clinics.
"Mrs. Gonzalez is coming back for her follow-up today," she said, scrolling through notes. "The wound care looks good but I'm worried about her blood sugar levels."
"You're always worried about blood sugar levels."
"Because half the patients I see have untreated diabetes, Kostya. It's an epidemic."
I let her talk. Medicine made her animated in a way nothing else did—the clinical precision, the problem-solving, the way she could look at symptoms and see patterns other people missed.
Three months ago, she'd been stitching up criminals in a damp basement, operating in shadows because the world had taken everything legitimate from her.
Now she worked in daylight. Used her real name. Helped people without looking over her shoulder for cops or Syndicate hitmen.
Different. Better.
I still drove her every day. Had insisted on it from the start, back when she'd argued about independence and not needing a babysitter and being perfectly capable of taking the subway like a normal person.
She'd stopped fighting it about a month in.
Not because I'd won the argument—Maya never admitted defeat in any argument—but because she'd figured out what I couldn't say.
That the twenty-three minutes in the car were mine.
Time when I could keep her close, watch her read her files, listen to her complain about insurance companies and pharmaceutical pricing and all the systemic failures that kept poor people sick.
The clinic came into view around the corner of Forty-Third Street.
Small building, red brick, used to be a dentist's office before Dr. Okonkwo had converted it.
The windows were bright with morning light.
A hand-painted sign over the door read "Sunset Park Community Health Clinic" in English and Spanish.