Chapter 25 - Rodion
The world narrowed to a single point.
Keira's face. The gun at her temple. The man holding her, his arm locked around her throat, his finger on the trigger.
Everything else—the gunfire still echoing below, the bodies I'd left in my wake, the blood soaking through my shirt—faded to nothing. There was only this. Only her.
"Drop the gun," Branko said again. "I won't ask a third time."
I calculated the shot. The angle was wrong—too close to her head, too much risk. Even if I were perfect, even if the bullet went exactly where I aimed, the impact could make him pull the trigger. A reflex. A spasm. And then she'd be gone.
I couldn't take that chance.
"Okay." I kept my voice steady, controlled. "Okay. I'm putting it down."
I crouched slowly, setting the Glock on the floor. The metal clicked against the hardwood, impossibly loud in the silence.
"Kick it away."
I did. The gun skittered across the floor, disappearing into the shadows.
Branko smiled. That perfect, predatory smile I wanted to tear off his face with my bare hands.
"Good boy," he said. "Now, here's what's going to happen. You're going to walk ahead of us, down the stairs, out the front door. My men will be waiting. And then—"
"Your men are dead." I straightened slowly, my hands raised. "Every single one of them. There's no one waiting for you, Branko. No backup. No escape. Just me."
Something flickered in his eyes. Doubt, quickly suppressed. "You're lying."
"Am I? Listen."
Silence. The gunfire had stopped. The shouts had stopped. The only sound was our breathing—three people suspended in a moment that could shatter at any second.
"It's over," I said. "Let her go, and I'll make it quick. Keep holding her, and I'll make it last for days."
"You're in no position to make threats."
"I'm in every position." I took a step forward. "You think I came alone? You think my brothers aren't outside right now, waiting for my signal? Demyan's men, Kirill's men, everyone I could call in a two-hour radius. This house is surrounded. There's nowhere for you to go."
I was bluffing. Demyan was in Chicago, Kirill in Boston. But Branko didn't know that. And right now, uncertainty was the only weapon I had.
"Stay back." His arm tightened around Keira's throat. She gasped, her hands clawing at his forearm. "I'll kill her. I swear to God, I'll kill her."
"Then you'll die a second later. Is that what you want? To die in this rotting house for a woman who will never belong to you?"
"She was promised to me!"
"She was never yours to promise." I took another step. "She chose me. Married me. Carries my child inside her. Nothing you do will change that. Nothing you do will make her yours."
His eyes went wide. "Child?"
The word had slipped out—I hadn't meant to reveal it, but the shock on his face told me it had landed. He hadn't known. Hadn't realized what he was threatening.
"She's pregnant," I said. "Six weeks. So when you're deciding whether to pull that trigger, know that you'll be killing two people. An innocent child who never did anything to you."
For a moment—just a moment—his grip loosened. The gun wavered.
It was enough.
Keira moved.
I saw it happen in fragments, like photographs flashing one after another. Her body going limp, dead weight in his arms. His grip breaking as he tried to hold her up. The gun swinging wide as he lost his balance.
And then she was falling, twisting away from him, hitting the floor and rolling clear.
I was already moving.
The backup piece was in my ankle holster—a Glock 43, smaller than my primary weapon but just as deadly at close range. I had it in my hand before Branko could recover, the barrel coming up as his gun swung back toward me.
I fired.
The shot took him in the shoulder, spinning him backward. He screamed—a high, animal sound—and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went wide, punching into the wall behind me.
I fired again. Center mass this time. He staggered, his back hitting the banister, his gun hand dropping.
But he wasn't dead. Not yet.
He looked at me with those flat, dark eyes, blood bubbling from his lips, and tried to raise his weapon one more time.
I closed the distance in three steps and put the barrel against his forehead.
"This is for my wife," I said.
And I pulled the trigger.
The sound of the shot echoed through the house, then faded into silence.
Branko's body slumped against the banister, then slid to the floor, leaving a dark smear on the wood. His eyes were still open, still staring, but there was nothing behind them anymore. Just emptiness.
I stood over him, breathing hard, the gun still raised. My hands were steady—they always were, in moments like this—but something inside me was shaking. The adrenaline, maybe. Or something else.
"Rodion."
Keira's voice. Soft, trembling, but alive.
I turned. She was on the floor where she'd fallen, her back against the wall, her arms wrapped around herself. Her face was pale, her eyes wide, but she was looking at me. Really looking. Like I was the only thing in the world.
I crossed to her in two strides and dropped to my knees, pulling her into my arms. She came willingly, her body pressing against mine, her hands fisting in my shirt.
"I've got you," I said against her hair. "I've got you. It's over."
She was shaking. I could feel the tremors running through her body, the aftershocks of fear and adrenaline. I held her tighter, trying to absorb it, trying to take some of the weight.
"The baby," she whispered. "I didn't—he didn't—"
"The baby is fine. You're fine. You're both fine."
"He was going to kill me. He was going to—"
"He didn't. He's dead. He can't hurt you anymore."
She pulled back to look at me, her eyes searching my face. I didn't know what she saw there—blood, probably, and exhaustion, and the remnants of a violence that would take days to process. But whatever it was, it didn't make her flinch.
"You came for me," she said.
"I promised I would."
"You could have died."
"I didn't."
"But you could have." Her voice cracked. "You could have, and then I would have—"
I kissed her. Cut off the words with my mouth, poured everything I couldn't say into the contact. She kissed me back, desperate, her hands sliding into my hair, holding on like she'd never let go.
When we finally broke apart, we were both breathing hard.
"Let's get out of here," I said.
Yegor met us at the bottom of the stairs.
His face was grim but relieved when he saw us—saw Keira on her feet, saw me with my arm around her. "The building is secure. All hostiles neutralized."
"Casualties?"
"Two wounded on our side. Nothing critical."
"Good. Get everyone to the vehicles. We're leaving."
"And the bodies?"
I glanced back up the stairs, toward the place where Branko's corpse lay cooling on the floor. "Burn it. Burn the whole thing. I don't want anything left."
Yegor nodded and began issuing orders into his radio. I guided Keira toward the door, keeping her close, shielding her from the carnage we passed on the way.
The night air hit us like a wave—cold, clean, carrying the smell of pine and wet earth. After the stale decay of the manor, it felt like surfacing from underwater.
Keira stopped on the front steps, her face tilted up toward the sky. I watched her breathe, watched her absorb the reality that she was free.
"It's really over?" she asked.
"Branko is dead. Cormac is dead. The immediate threat is neutralized."
"And the Petrovics? Branko's father?"
"Milos is in Serbia. He'll be a problem eventually, but not tonight." I took her hand, lacing our fingers together. "Tonight, we go home."
She looked at me, and I saw something in her expression I hadn't seen before. Not fear, not relief, not exhaustion. Something else.
Trust.
"Home," she repeated, like she was testing the word.
"Home."
***
We didn't go back to the penthouse.
The security had been compromised—the Petrovics had known the codes, known the layout.
Until we could figure out how, it wasn't safe.
Instead, I took her to a safe house in the city.
A brownstone in the West Village that I'd owned for years but rarely used.
Off the books, unknown to anyone except Yegor and my brothers.
It was smaller than the penthouse—two bedrooms, a modest kitchen, a living room with windows that looked out on a quiet, tree-lined street. But it was clean and warm and secure, and right now, that was all that mattered.
Keira stood in the middle of the living room, looking around with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"It's not much," I said. "But it's safe."
"It's perfect." She turned to face me, and I saw the exhaustion written across her face. The bruises forming on her arms where Branko had grabbed her. The haunted look in her eyes that would take time to fade.
"You should rest," I said. "There's a bedroom upstairs. I can—"
"Don't." She crossed the room and took my hands. "Don't leave me alone tonight. I can't—" She stopped, swallowed. "I don't want to be alone."
"You won't be."
I led her upstairs to the larger of the two bedrooms. The bed was made with clean sheets, the curtains drawn against the night. I'd had Yegor call ahead, make sure everything was ready.
Keira sat on the edge of the bed, and I knelt in front of her to remove her shoes. The gesture felt strangely intimate—more intimate, in some ways, than anything we'd done before. She watched me with those whiskey-colored eyes, her breath slowing, her body finally beginning to relax.
"You're covered in blood," she said quietly.
I looked down at myself. She was right—my shirt was ruined, dark stains spreading across the fabric. Some of it was mine, from a cut on my arm I didn't remember getting. Most of it wasn't.
"I should shower."
"Wait." She reached out and caught my hand as I started to rise. "Stay. Just for a minute."
I stayed. Knelt there on the floor with her hand in mine, watching her face in the dim light.