Chapter 49
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
DINARA
I brace myself for the worst when the lights die and the world goes pitch black. Everything stops. A beat of silence passes before gunfire erupts.
Muzzle flashes strobe through the darkness like a fucked-up lightning storm, illuminating bodies in brief snapshots. Shouting, boots pounding concrete, and the sharp crack of return fire come from multiple directions.
My heart slams against my ribs because I can’t see Kirill. I can’t tell if he’s safe or bleeding out on the floor.
I spit the wet, heavy cloth from my mouth, the metallic taste of blood and salt coating my tongue as I gasp for air.
“Katya?” I hiss into the darkness.
A choked sob answers me from a few feet away. She’s terrified, probably frozen in place, but we can’t stay here.
“Katya, knock your chair over.” I raise my voice enough to be heard. “Get on the ground. We need to stay low.”
I throw my weight sideways, tipping the chair hard. It crashes down and the impact rattles through my now throbbing shoulder, but at least now I’m horizontal, harder to hit if bullets start flying our direction.
My wrists are screaming where the ropes dig in, and my mouth tastes like copper, but I am trained for worse than this.
Another sob, then the clatter of wood hitting concrete tells me she followed suit.
The gunfire is relentless. This isn’t random chaos—it’s a coordinated attack. Either our savior or our demise.
I rock my body, using my core and shoulders to inch across the concrete toward where Katya’s breathing comes in sharp, panicked gasps. Every movement sends pain shooting through my shoulders but I don’t stop until my chair bumps hers.
“Listen to me,” I say, keeping my voice low despite the chaos. “Curl into yourself as small as you can. Keep your head tucked and don’t move unless I tell you to.”
She whimpers but I feel her body shift, pulling tighter.
The warehouse is a wall of noise: shouting, gunfire, and the thud of bodies dropping. I strain to pick out Kirill’s voice, some sign he’s still alive, but it’s impossible.
Smoke stings my eyes, and the metallic stench of blood coats the back of my throat as my panic spikes.
Then, through the madness, I hear, “Dinara? Katya?”
“Here! We’re here,” I shout back, breathless.
A few seconds later his hands are fumbling at my wrists, rough and shaking.
“Hold still,” he mutters. “I’m going to cut you free.”
I feel him sawing through the ropes. The moment my wrists come undone, I gasp, bringing my arms forward and flexing my fingers despite the pins-and-needles burn.
He releases my ankles next. Then his hands travel over me quickly, checking for injuries, patting down my sides and arms. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I rasp. “Are you?”
“Just dandy,” he husks out before his lips crash against mine, the kiss hard and desperate and brief.
“I love you,” he breathes against my mouth. “I was never going to choose. Never.”
“I know,” I whisper back. “Now free your sister so we can get the fuck out of here.”
He moves to Katya, his words soft and comforting, as he tears through the rope.
“I’m so sorry, are you okay?” Kirill’s voice is rough with emotion.
“Yes,” Katya chokes out. “I think so.”
He helps us both to our feet, keeping low. The gunfire is dying down now, just scattered pops instead of the constant barrage. I don’t know if that’s good or bad for us, but I do know we’re not going to stick around and find out.
It’s too dark to see our way, but we feel our way along the wall, palms flat against cold concrete, shoes sliding carefully forward to avoid debris.
“Stay along the edges,” Kirill says quietly. “Stay behind me. Stay low.”
He leads the way and I keep one hand on Katya’s arm, guiding her.
My head is still foggy from whatever Miron used to knock me out, and my legs unsteady, but adrenaline is doing most of the work.
We inch forward through the darkness, and I let myself believe for half a second that we might actually make it out of this warehouse alive.
Then just as suddenly as the lights went out, they flood back on and I’m blinking against the brightness, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.
Bodies. So many bodies of soldiers scattered across the warehouse floor, most of them not moving.
The few still alive are on their knees with their hands behind their heads, weapons stripped, masks ripped off.
Ruslan’s on his knees too, gun pressed to his skull, and despite everything I feel a grim satisfaction.
Surrounding us are soldiers in black tactical gear, and every single one of them has a silver bird of prey stamped on their chest plate. Night vision goggles pushed up on their foreheads, weapons raised, organized like a tight military unit.
Who the fuck are these people? I look to Kirill and ask the silent question. With a brief nod he confirms what I fear. “The Ghost.”
Waking up tied to a chair with Katya beside me and Ruslan standing over us was devastating enough.
But watching Kirill face that impossible choice was worse. I knew the truth as soon as I saw his face. He was going to sacrifice himself for us.
And after all that, we might still die anyway.
“It’ll be okay,” Kirill murmurs to Katya, while his hand finds mine. “We’ll find a way out of this.”
I’m not as confident but I don’t tell him that.
We stand together, backs against the wall. Kirill steps forward, positioning himself in front of us, shoulders squared and chin lifted like he’s preparing to face whatever hell comes next.
The click of heels catches our attention as the ranks of soldiers step aside for a woman striding toward us. Her blond hair is clipped to one side in a sleek wave and her lips are a bold red. Her white power suit is both elegant and lethal, the message clear that she’s the one in charge.
As she draws closer, something shifts in the air. And when she’s close enough for me to see her clearly, my heart jumps to my throat.
It’s like looking into a mirror. There’s no question who this woman is. She’s my mother.
She stops a few feet away, studying us with cool detachment. Her gaze sweeps over Kirill first, then Katya, then lands on me. And I wait for recognition, for warmth, for anything that says she’s happy to see me.
Instead, her expression stays perfectly controlled.
“I hear you’ve been looking for me.” She spreads her arms. “Well, here I am.”
I step out of Kirill’s protective shadow. There’s so much I want to say, and yet it’s Katya who speaks up first. “W-who are you?”
She laughs. “Excuse me for not introducing myself. I believe you call me the Ghost. An amusing nickname, by the way. My soldiers call me La Madrastra . The Stepmother. The matriarch of the most lethal cartel in Mexico.”
Every bone in my body turns to ice. I lock eyes with Kirill, his expression as stunned as mine. My mother isn’t just the Ghost, she’s a cartel queen with an empire.
I can barely get my head around everything we just learned, but I’m stuck on the one thing she didn’t say.
“You’re Marina Voronina,” I breathe. I search her face, looking for any trace of the woman I remember. “You’re my mother. You’ve been alive this whole time.”
She turns to me fully, her eyes traveling over my face slowly, taking in every feature like she’s memorizing me. A faint ripple of emotion crosses her face, softening the hard lines of her stare. “Yes, that’s also true,” she says softly. “In another life, I was your mother.”
In another life? Like I’m a ghost myself, something she left behind when she shed her old skin.
I imagine she knows exactly who I am and that she’s been watching me since I landed in New York.
But the woman standing here in her pristine white suit doesn’t give a shit. My heart fractures, her indifference cutting deep into my soul.
Marina turns away, like I’m nothing more than an inconvenient detail, her attention shifting to Ruslan, who is still on his knees with a gun pressed to his skull.
“Pakhan here used to call me his stupid little Voronin whore,” she says. “Didn’t you, Ruslan? Not very romantic. Maybe that’s why it never worked out between us.”
She circles him, like a shark in deep water circling its prey. This isn’t the woman who kept fresh flowers on our kitchen table, who sang while she cooked. The years have changed her in inexplicable ways.
Ruslan spits blood onto the concrete and glares up at her. “You should be dead.”
“I’m sure that’s what you hoped for. I bet you imagined me rotting in some gutter after I escaped from your house of nightmares.
But here’s the thing about trying to break someone—sometimes you just make them stronger.
” Her eyes glitter with darkness. “Hardship forged me into something far more powerful than you. And look where we are now. You on your knees. Me, with my own personal army. I built an empire in Mexico that makes your pathetic bratva look like a child’s lemonade stand. ”
Ruslan lunges and a soldier slams him back down with a rifle butt to the face. Blood pours from his nose and Marina chuckles, enjoying every moment.
“The last few weeks have been fun and games. Toying with you before I went in for the kill. But I’m done playing.
I’m here for your territory. For your city.
And then for all of the East Coast.” She drives the pointed toe of her high heel into his shoulder, grinding down until he grunts.
“Everything you’ve worked for, fought for, killed for will be mine. ”
Kirill meets my gaze, and the cold truth passes silently between us. She’s not only here to get revenge. She wants to take his throne.