Prologue #2
A hand hooks under my arm and yanks me from the water. Pain flashes through my shoulder, but I can’t scream. I can’t even cough, no matter how hard my body tries.
“Hey! Wake up! Breathe.”
The man drags me onto a jagged embankment and shoves at my chest until water bursts from my nose and mouth in sharp, burning spurts.
“Goddamn, kid. What the hell happened to you?” he mutters, rolling me onto my side as I choke and vomit what feels like every drop of the Schuylkill River. “Wait here—I’m gonna get help.”
When I look up again, he’s gone. The only sign he was ever here is a small tent flapping in the dark.
Shivering, I push to my feet. Blood runs down my arms, mixing with river water as I limp toward a dirt path, slip through a gap in a rusted chain-link fence, and keep limping.
I have no idea where I’m going, only that I have to move. Have to get away. I stagger down the narrow trail until it spits me out onto a street beneath a flickering light pole.
“F-fuck,” I groan as the adrenaline drains, leaving every broken part of me screaming. I lean against the post, trying to take the weight off my leg.
“You look like hell, dog.”
My eyes snap open. That voice.
No.
Pyotr steps out of the shadows, his silver teeth flashing under the blinking light. I stumble back on weak legs and hit the ground hard. He doesn’t rush to me because he enjoys watching me squirm and fall apart.
Flicking open a silver pocketknife, he crouches in front of me and grins.
“I don’t know if you’re the luckiest or unluckiest bastard alive,” he says with a low laugh. “Either way, you owe me. Daniil was one of my best men. Now his brain’s smeared across my leather seats.”
He extends a hand. “Give me yours.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
His laugh turns mean. “We’ll see which one of us is fucked.”
I try to crawl backward, spine scraping against the cold pole as he brings the blade to my throat.
Then it happens—a harsh screech of metal against concrete, sparks spitting out into the dark.
Pyotr stops mid-breath.
I peek around his shoulder just as the shadowed figure steps into the light. It’s a woman, dragging a katana across the ground. Her gaze drops to the knife in Pyotr’s hand, then climbs back to his face as a slow, amused smile curls her lips.
“Cute,” she says, voice dripping with mock sweetness. She tilts the sword, letting the edge catch the weak glow of the streetlamp. “But if we’re comparing blade sizes, you’re a little out of your league.”
His jaw flexes, and for the first time tonight, he doesn’t laugh.
The woman’s eyes shift to me, and her smile fades. There’s something about her. She’s not just some lunatic with a weapon. Nobody walks the streets at night carrying a sword unless they know exactly how and when to use it.
“Are you lost, sweetheart?” Pyotr straightens, stepping back just enough to create space between them. He tries to play it cool, his voice thick with fake charm, but I know him well. I see the stiffness in his shoulders, the twitch in his jaw. He suspects the same thing I do.
This isn’t some lost girl. She’s a predator. And she looks dangerous.
Her smile returns, sharper this time, and she twirls the sword once, like it weighs nothing.
“Lost?” she echoes, tilting her head. “No. I know exactly where I am. The better question is…are you?”
There goes that laugh of his, one meant to remind everyone who’s in charge.
He slides a hand into his coat pocket, tugging it wide so she can see the gun’s handle. Her gaze flicks down for half a heartbeat, then back up, unbothered and unimpressed.
If anything, the corner of her mouth tips higher.
“Just out here for an evening walk with my son,” he says. “Any particular reason you’re carrying that around? You even know how to use one of those?”
She taps the flat of the blade against her thigh. “This thing? Oh, I picked it up on a little trip. Cool, right? I wasn’t planning on it, but the second I saw it…” Her grin widens. “I knew I just had to get my hands on it.”
“That’s…quite the souvenir.”
She shrugs, never breaking eye contact. “What can I say? I always get what I want.”
The street goes quiet. Just the buzz of the dying lamp above us and the weight of the moment between them. No more banter. No more disguises. It’s as if both of them know exactly what happens next. The pleasantries are over, and blood is inevitable.
I scoot back, away from the pole, ready to bolt the second things go south. Because once she’s done with him, I know where that blade’s turning. And I don’t have an ounce of fight left in me.
But what if…
No. She’s not here to save you. No one ever is. Remember that.
The thought barely forms before both bodies move. Pyotr reaches into his waistband, and the woman’s sword arcs through the air. A gunshot cracks, followed by a dull thud, and a clattering of something heavy hitting concrete.
It takes a full heartbeat before I understand what I’m seeing. Blood patters onto the concrete, spreading fast as Pyotr’s severed hand lies a few feet away, curled like it’s still trying to hold the weapon.
“You…crazy—”
The word never makes it out. Metal sings through the air and opens his throat in a single, perfect line. My breath catches, and I’m frozen. I can only watch as the man I’ve hated, the one I’ve dreamed of killing for so long, stumbles toward death without me lifting a finger.
He slumps to his knees, then folds back, his body collapsing at the wrong angle. The woman stands over him, eyebrow arched like she’s checking out her handiwork.
“Don’t ever call me crazy.”
Blood bubbles in his mouth as he tries to speak, but she drives the sword into his neck, then deeper until the gurgling stops.
I was wrong. She is a lunatic with a blade. I haul myself up, every muscle screaming, and her eyes snap to me.
Shit.
Swallowing the pain, I limp as fast as I can manage.
“Wait. Stop.” She takes off after me.
As I move faster, pain flares, my limp becomes heavier, and my throat suddenly burns with a different kind of ache. Tears rush forward, distorting my vision, and I trip on uneven pavement.
“No…no, please,” I beg, dragging myself now. Always fucking begging like the dog he always said I was.
Sobs seize my chest until I can’t breathe, and I curl in on myself, shaking. “Just…Just do it. Do it fast.” My voice splinters.
“Hey.” The sound is softer than I expect, almost gentle.
Not the cold tone she used with Pyotr “I’m not going to hurt you.
” She lays the sword on the ground and reaches for my shoulder.
“But I need to know you’re okay. You’re bleeding…
everywhere.” She brushes wet hair from my face.
Still careful. No one has ever been that way with me in a long time…
maybe ever. “You’re soaking wet, shaking. God…he did this to you?”
My cries slow, and I lift my head to look at her. Trust is a feeling I’ve forgotten. And despite having just murdered a man, something about this woman makes me feel…safe.
“I…jumped. Off the bridge.”
Her brown eyes widen. “South Street Bridge?”
I nod, blinking hard to clear my eyes. “I-I had to. He said he was going to…sell me.”
Her gaze shifts toward Pyotr’s body, the look in her eyes turning dark. But when she looks back at me, the sharpness quickly fades.
“Was he your father?”
I shake my head. “My family’s dead. All of them.”
Her expression softens. She reaches out, wiping a smear of blood from my cheek with her thumb. Her eyes are kind, like she’s seeing me and not the mess of blood, grime, split skin, and bruises. For a second, I expect her to pull away, but she doesn’t.
I try to hide my face again, but she tenderly tips my chin.
“Mine too.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurt. It’s useless and hollow, but it’s what comes out. “It sucks…to be alone.”
“It did, for a while,” she answers softly. “But I’m not anymore. Family isn’t always who you’re born to. It’s who shows up, the ones who stay, and the kind of people you can count on—even on your worst days.”
A strange warmth spreads in my chest. I can’t imagine what it’s like to belong to a family like the one she described. Even when my parents were alive, some days I felt like a burden, like my only purpose was to be the man my father wanted.
A dog to be trained.
“I’m Helena.” She pauses and smiles again. “Leni. What’s your name?” she asks, tearing a leather strap from her thigh and tying it carefully around my arm as a tourniquet.
“Maksim…” I hiss when she tightens it. “Belov.”
Her hands go still, eyes lifting slowly to meet mine. “Belov?” Her face doesn’t change, but I can see the pieces slotting together. “As in…Dmitry and Yuri Belov?”
“Dmitry was my father,” I whisper. “Did you know him?”
She doesn’t answer. Just studies me, silent, her eyes moving like she’s sorting through memories and deciding what to do with me.
“Leni, love. You all right?”
The voice comes from behind her. Male with a British accent. He sounds concerned, not threatening. Still, my body locks up. Trust isn’t something I give. Not anymore.
And there isn’t a man alive I’d ever hand it to again.
“It’s okay,” she says, with that same gentle smile. “Silas is my husband.”
A friend of hers, not an enemy. It should soothe me, but it doesn’t. My head drops, shoulders curling in, and I can’t meet her eyes, can’t make my mouth work. But Helena doesn’t press. Instead, she holds out her hand.
“Come with me, Maksim. Let me help you.”
The words hit somewhere I didn’t know still existed, and my whole body starts to shake.
Help me?
No one’s ever said that before. No one’s ever meant it.
A sound breaks out of me, half sob, half breath.
She squeezes my shoulder. “I promise you. No one will ever hurt you again.”