Chapter 37 Sasha
Sasha
It feels as though there’s a vise around my throat as Adrian shoves the gun barrel into my temple hard enough to leave a bruise.
I meet Tony’s eyes across the warehouse.
He’s frozen with his weapon raised, and I can read every emotion on his face.
Fear. Desperation. Love. Not for himself.
For me. In all the weeks I’ve known him, through firefights and betrayals and moments where death seemed certain, I’ve never seen him look like this.
Like he’s watching everything he cares about slip through his fingers.
“This should have been different.” Adrian’s voice is ragged in my ear as he drags me backward toward the exit. His fever-hot breath washes over my neck with every word. “You were supposed to understand. You were supposed to see what you threw away and regret it.”
I stumble over debris, and his hand tightens on my neck until spots dance at the edges of my vision. The door is getting closer with every step. Ten feet. Eight. Six.
“I’ve spent two years building alliances and gathering resources and imagining the moment you’d finally admit you were wrong.
I pictured your face when you realized how badly you’d underestimated me.
How you’d beg me to forgive you. How you’d finally see that everything I did was because I loved you. ”
“Adrian—”
“Shut up.” He jerks me backward, and I gasp as my airway constricts even more. “You don’t get to talk. You’ve said enough. All those pretty words. All that righteous anger about manipulation and control. You made me sound like a monster when all I ever wanted was to give you the world.”
Tony takes a small step forward, and Adrian swings the gun toward him for just a second before jamming it back against my head.
“Don’t!” Adrian screams. “I will kill her. I swear to God I will paint these walls with her brains if you take another step.”
Tony freezes again. His knuckles have gone white around his weapon, and a muscle twitches in his cheek from how hard he’s clenching his jaw.
“And you,” Adrian snarls at Tony. “You were supposed to be my instrument. My perfect weapon against her family. I paid you a fortune to make her fall in love with you and then break her heart. Instead, you went soft. You let her get under your skin just like she got under mine.”
“Let her go, Adrian,” Tony urges him. “This doesn’t end well for you no matter what happens next.”
Adrian barks out a laugh, sending spittle every direction, before he asks, “You think I care about how it ends? I stopped caring about my own survival the moment she destroyed everything I built. All I wanted was for her to feel the same devastation I felt. To watch her lose everything the way I lost everything.”
He drags me another step backward. Four feet from the door now. Maybe three.
“You want to know something funny?” Adrian’s tone turns conversational, almost casual, despite the gun pressed to my skull.
“Ivan was feeding me information for months. Your family’s own accountant, selling you out for pennies on the dollar.
That’s how I knew about every move you made.
Every security protocol. Every weakness in your organization. ”
Ivan. The confirmation shouldn’t surprise me after everything we’ve learned, but hearing Adrian say it out loud still makes my stomach turn. A man my brothers trusted with their finances, welcomed into their inner circle, and he betrayed them for money.
“He was too easy to buy,” Adrian muses. “One conversation about his gambling debts, and he was ready to hand over anything I wanted. Bank records. Security schedules. The names of everyone your brothers considered an ally. He even told me about Boris’s tactical preferences and which safe houses your family uses in emergencies. ”
I brush my fingers against the shard of glass tucked into my sleeve.
I picked it up from the floor after the flashbangs shattered the windows, just before Adrian grabbed me.
It’s not much of a weapon. Maybe three inches long, jagged on one edge, already slick with blood from where it cut my palm when I grabbed it. But it’s all I have.
“I was going to be a king,” Adrian whispers.
“I was going to unite every family your brothers ever wronged and build something that would last for generations. An empire that would make the Kozlovs look like street thugs. And you destroyed it. Just like you destroyed everything else I tried to create.”
We’re almost at the door now. Another few steps and he’ll have me outside, away from Tony and Boris and any chance of rescue.
I don’t know what’s waiting on the other side of that door.
A car. A helicopter. Another warehouse full of men loyal to Adrian’s money.
Whatever it is, I know I can’t let him take me through it.
One chance. That’s all I get. One moment of surprise before he pulls the trigger.
I meet Tony’s eyes one more time. I try to tell him with my gaze what I’m about to do. Whether he understands or not, I can’t wait any longer.
I drop my weight and let my body go completely limp.
The sudden dead weight catches Adrian off guard.
He staggers, and his arm loosens around my throat as he tries to keep us both upright.
His balance is already compromised from the infected wound, from the fever eating away at his strength.
He pulls the gun away from my temple for just a fraction of a second as he struggles to adjust his grip.
I let the glass slide down from my sleeve and close my hand around it. The shard bites against my skin as I drive it backward into his thigh with every ounce of strength I have.
Adrian screams. The sound is raw and animalistic, torn from somewhere deep in his chest. The gun clatters to the concrete as both his hands fly to his leg. Blood spurts between his fingers where the glass is still embedded in his flesh, bright red against his expensive trousers.
I throw myself sideways and hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me. My shoulder takes the brunt of the impact, and pain shoots down my arm. But I’m clear. I’m out of the line of fire.
Tony’s shot comes before I finish rolling. One round center mass. The report echoes off the warehouse walls like thunder. Adrian jerks backward, and his mouth opens in a silent O of surprise. His hands leave his wounded leg and flatten against his chest, as if he can somehow hold the blood inside.
The second shot follows within seconds. Adrian crumples like a puppet with cut strings. He hits the concrete face-first and doesn’t move. A pool of crimson begins spreading beneath his body, creeping across the gray floor.
For a long moment, the warehouse is silent except for the ringing in my ears.
Then everything happens at once.
Boris’s men lunge forward to secure Adrian’s body. Two of them kick away the fallen gun while a third checks for a pulse and shakes his head. Tony sprints toward me, shouting my name. Somewhere behind me, I hear Dmitri’s voice barking orders.
Tony reaches me first. He drops to his knees beside me and runs his hands over my arms, my shoulders, and my face, checking for injuries. Checking that I’m real and whole and breathing.
His voice breaks on my name. “Sasha, are you hurt? Did he hurt you? Talk to me.”
“I’m fine.” I grab his wrists to stop his frantic examination. “Tony, I’m okay. It’s over.”
He hauls me against his chest and holds me so tight I can barely breathe.
I don’t complain. I wrap my arms around him and let myself shake, let the adrenaline and terror finally work their way through my system.
He smells like gunpowder and sweat and something uniquely him, and I bury my face against his neck and breathe him in.
Dmitri appears above us, and his face is pale beneath his usual stern composure. “Sasha.”
My voice is muffled against Tony’s shoulder as I repeat, “I’m okay. Really. Just some bruises. Maybe a few cuts from the glass.”
I pull back from Tony just enough to show them my palm, which is still bleeding sluggishly from where I grabbed the shard.
“Resourceful as ever,” my eldest brother comments with pride.
Alexei is right behind him. “Is Belmont dead?”
“Very,” Boris confirms from somewhere behind me. “Two rounds to the chest. He’s not getting up again.”
Tony’s arms tighten around me. He’s still trembling, but he doesn’t say a word.
“Come on,” Dmitri mumbles. “Let’s get you both out of here. Boris can handle the cleanup.”
The next few hours pass in a haze of debriefing and damage control. Boris’s team handles the bodies while Dmitri and Alexei coordinate with their London contacts to ensure Adrian’s death doesn’t create additional problems with local authorities or rival families.
By the time we make it back to the hotel, I’m exhausted in ways I didn’t know were possible.
Every muscle in my body aches. My throat is bruised, and my palm throbs beneath the bandage one of our men applied in the car.
My mind keeps replaying that moment when I drove the glass into Adrian’s leg, wondering what would have happened if I’d missed.
If my grip had been too weak. If he’d pulled the trigger before I could act.
Tony and I sit on the couch in our suite. He’s cleaned up and changed clothes, but the haunted look hasn’t left his eyes. He keeps glancing at me like he expects me to disappear if he looks away for too long.
Neither of us has spoken since we walked through the door.
Finally, he breaks the silence.
“I love you.”
I turn to look at him. He’s staring at his hands, which are clasped between his knees. The same hands that held a gun steady while Adrian had me at his mercy. The same hands that have touched me with such tenderness over these past weeks.
“I think I’ve been in love with you for weeks.
Maybe even since the day I met you at Alexei’s wedding.
” He lifts his gaze to meet mine. “I was terrified I’d never get the chance to tell you.
When Adrian had that gun to your head, all I could think was that you’d die without knowing how I feel.
That I’d spent so much time being afraid that I’d wasted whatever time we might have had together. ”
I swallow hard against the lump that has lodged itself in my throat and try to blink away the tears that are burning in my eyes. “I love you too,” I whisper.
Tony’s breath catches. “You do?”
“After everything that happened with my family, with Adrian, with the lies and the manipulation... I convinced myself that letting someone in would only lead to more pain. That keeping my distance was the only way to protect myself from being hurt again.”
I reach over and take his hand in mine. “But watching you risk everything to save me, seeing your face when you thought you might lose me... I don’t want to protect myself anymore. Not if it means losing this. Losing you.”
Tony brings my hand to his lips and presses a kiss against my knuckles. When he looks at me again, his eyes are bright with something I’ve never seen in him before. Hope.
“Marry me,” he says.
A nervous giggle sputters past my lips as I ask, “What?”
“Marry me, Sasha. Build a life with me. I know it’s fast. I know we haven’t known one another all that long, and half of that time we were running for our lives or trying not to get killed. But I’ve never been more certain of anything in my entire life.”
“Tony...”
“I’m done being afraid,” he interrupts. “I’m done assuming the worst is going to happen and holding back because of it. We’re finally free. Adrian is dead. Your family is safe. For the first time since I met you, there’s no threat hanging over our heads. No mission. No deception. Just us.”
He gathers my face in his free hand. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to wake up next to you every morning and fall asleep beside you every night. I want that apartment near Patriarch Ponds we talked about. I want to watch you build your authentication consultancy and come home to you after working with your brothers. I want to build something real and permanent. Something worth fighting for.”
I search his face for any sign of doubt or uncertainty. I find none. Just love and hope and a future I never thought I’d get to have.
“Yes,” I breathe.
Tony’s face transforms. The fear and exhaustion melt away, replaced by joy so pure it makes my chest ache.
“Yes?”
“Yes.” I laugh, and it comes out watery. “Yes, I’ll marry you. Yes, I want to build a life with you. Yes to all of it.”
He kisses me then, so soft and tender it almost feels like a dream. A promise of everything to come.
When we finally break apart, he rests his forehead against mine and just breathes. Like he’s memorizing this moment. Like he wants to hold onto it forever.
We clawed our way through hell to get here, and I would do it all again for this single moment.