Chapter 56 Olivia
OLIVIA
I’m trying to breathe, but the air won’t come.
My lungs are locked, my mind fractured into a thousand jagged pieces.
All I can do is watch through the splintered gaps in these cattle shed walls as Stefan stands exposed, marooned in the grass outside the farmhouse, encircled by men with guns who will kill him the moment his mother gives the command.
He’s going to die. He’s going to bleed out in the dirt, and I’m going to have to sit here and watch it all happen.
My fists crash against the door. “Let me out!”
Silence is all that answers. The guards who hauled me in here like livestock have vanished, consumed by the violence erupting in the yard.
Angry voices tear through the air. I catch snatches of it, but it’s not enough.
If I have to sit here and watch Stefan die because of my idiotic mistake, then Natalia might as well kill me, too.
I drive my shoulder into the door. The wood doesn’t even shudder.
Again.
Again.
It groans, but refuses to surrender.
Through the slats, I watch Natalia raise her chin and sneer. How did I ever look at her and see anything maternal? She looks like unhooded death, like something carved out of ice. Inhuman.
My hands fumble at the locked door latch, shaking it with everything I have. The metal is ancient, corroded, but it just rattles in its casing, mocking me.
Come on. Come the fuck on!
Mikayla materializes on the porch. I stop breathing as I watch her take her place beside Natalia. But everything about her is wrong. Her face bleached of color. Her eyes hollowed out with terror.
Stefan speaks words I can’t catch. Mikayla’s entire body turns to stone.
Then Natalia draws a gun.
“No!” The scream rips from somewhere primal inside me as I throw myself against the door.
The gunshot detonates.
Mikayla collapses.
And something inside me shatters completely.
I seize the latch with both hands and wrench it sideways with impossible strength. The screws anchoring it to the frame are dying, eaten by rust and they groan as I pull harder. The groans become shrieks. One screw surrenders. Then another.
Then, finally, the latch tears free.
I explode through the door and run.
My legs feel like I’m dragging them through concrete. The grass is glass beneath my bare feet. Reality collapses to a single burning point: Natalia leveling her gun at Mikayla’s skull as she lies prone and bleeding in the yard.
I don’t think. Thinking is for people who won’t survive.
And I have a daughter to live for.
I collide with Natalia like a wrecking ball, a streaking comet of momentum and fury and desperation. We crash down together. Her gun launches from her grip and spins across the grass.
She writhes beneath me, fingers transformed into claws aimed at my face. Her nails carve trenches across my cheek. I scream but my grip doesn’t falter.
Then she’s gone—torn away from me.
Stefan has her by the throat. He hoists her off the ground like she’s made of paper, his fingers buried in her neck. Her feet thrash uselessly at nothing.
“Stefan!” I claw my way upright. “Stefan, stop!”
He doesn’t hear me. Or he hears me and it changes nothing. His face has become something else entirely—rage distilled to its purest form. Hatred without filter or mercy.
Natalia’s face bleeds red. Then purple.
“Stefan, please!” My hands find his arm. “Don’t do this. Don’t kill her.”
His eyes cut to me. For one terrible moment, I think he’s already gone. That there’s nothing left of the man I know.
But his grip eases. Barely.
Natalia sucks in air like a drowning woman. Stefan lowers her but his hand remains welded to her throat, the other reaching for his gun.
He aims it at her skull.
“Don’t move,” he warns.
Natalia doesn’t. She stands there, breathing ragged, eyes burning with defiance even now.
I turn to Mikayla. She’s still down, blood flowering across her shirt in an obscene bloom. But her chest moves. Barely.
“Mikayla,” I whisper, dropping beside her. “Hold on. We’ll get you help.”
“No,” she rasps. “Let me... finish.”
“Finish what?”
She looks past me, at Iakov, and clears her throat. “I was there. The day Mikhail died.”
Iakov becomes a statue.
“I was with Natalia,” Mikayla continues, every word costing her dearly. “We went to your house. Natalia’s men... they hung the rope. They forced the noose around his neck.”
“No,” Iakov breathes.
“It wasn’t suicide. It was fucking cold-blooded murder.” Mikayla coughs, blood bubbling at her lips. “She wanted you to hate Stefan. She wanted you to believe he destroyed your father.”
Iakov’s face crumbles like ancient paper. “Why?”
“Because Mikhail wouldn’t let you join the Bratva,” Mikayla says. “He wanted you to have a normal life. And you loved him enough to listen. She couldn’t allow that. She needed you to be loyal to her, not him.”
The tip of Iakov’s gun trembles. He stares at Natalia like she’s something he’s never seen before.
“You killed him,” he whispers. “You murdered my father.”
Natalia lifts her chin. “He was in the way.”
“He loved you!”
“He loved an illusion. Just like everyone else.”
Iakov raises his gun, aiming between her eyes.
Stefan watches. Waiting.
I can see the war destroying Iakov from the inside. The rage. The grief. The savage need for vengeance tearing him apart.
But his hand shakes. Until—
“I can’t,” he says finally, lowering the gun. “I’m not that man. I want to be. God, I want to be. But I can’t.”
My hand falls from Stefan’s arm. I look at Natalia—at this woman who obliterated so many lives, who killed like breathing, who weaponized her own children against each other.
“I understand now,” I say quietly, looking at Stefan. “Why you had to destroy her. She’s too dangerous to exist.”
Stefan looks at me, then at Iakov. “We both lost our fathers because of her. But I’ve had years to live with how my father died. You just learned about yours.” He pauses. “But if you can’t be that man… then I will.”
The gunshot tears through the air.
Natalia’s body jerks once. Her eyes go wide with shock. Then she crumples, a hole punched clean through her forehead.
Stefan lowers his gun.
“I will be that man for all of us,” he says simply. “And now, our fathers can rest.”
Silence descends like a burial shroud. Even the armed men have frozen, staring at Natalia’s corpse in disbelief.
I turn back to Mikayla. “We need to get you to a hospital.”
“No.” Her voice is almost nothing now. “I want to die.”
“Mikayla—”
“I want to see my sister again.” She closes her eyes. “Finally... I can rest.”
Her chest rises one last time. Then stops.
I press my fingers to her neck, searching desperately for a pulse. But it’s gone.
I sit back on my heels, tears carving rivers down my face. It’s over. It’s finally over.
Stefan drops his gun and pulls me to my feet. He crushes me against him, holding me so tightly my ribs protest. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into my hair. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I sob. “I should have trusted you. I—”
“No.” He leans just enough to capture my gaze. “You had every reason not to trust me. I lied to you. I manipulated you. I—”
“I lied, too,” I interrupt. “I met with Natalia. I helped Mikayla escape. I—”
“We’re both idiots.”
I laugh through my tears. “Yeah. We are.”
He cups my face in his hands, thumbs erasing my tears. “From now on, it’s honesty. No more secrets. No more lies.”
His mouth touches mine—tender and devastating all at once, flavored with salt and copper and the raw, brutal taste of what we’ve just survived.
When he pulls back, Iakov is standing beside us. “Thank you,” he murmurs to Stefan.
Stefan nods. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“I’m sorry about yours.”
The two men stare at each other for a moment. Then Stefan extends his hand. Iakov takes it. They shake once, firm and final.
“We’re done here,” Stefan says.
“Yeah.” Iakov looks down at Natalia’s body. “We are.”
Stefan turns to Taras, who’s been standing guard over the armed men. “Call the cleaners. Make sure this place is sanitized.”
“Yes, pakhan.”
Stefan takes my hand and leads me toward the car. I don’t look back. I don’t want to see the bodies. Don’t want to remember the blood.
I just want to go home.
We climb into the car. Stefan starts the engine but doesn’t move. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“No,” I admit. “Not yet, and maybe not for a long time. But eventually, I will be.”
He reaches over and places his hand on my stomach. Our daughter kicks against his palm. “We’re going to be okay,” he promises. “All three of us.”
I cover his hand with mine. “Yeah. We are.”
He pulls out of the clearing and drives. The farmhouse disappears behind us, swallowed by trees.
I lean my head against the window and close my eyes.