Blood and Ballet (Blood & Bride #3)

PROLOGUE

Blood on Satin

Maksim

My wife is dying on our bedroom floor, and all I can think about is how her perfume still clings to the air like it's any other Tuesday night. Like she's about to turn around and ask me if I want tea before bed. Like our baby is still safely tucked inside her, instead of—

"Maksim." Her voice comes out wet. Wrong. Blood bubbles on her lips when she speaks. "The baby..."

I'm on my knees beside her, pressing my suit jacket against the wound in her stomach, but we both know it's too late.

The cream carpet is already ruined—a stupid thing to notice when my world is ending, but my brain won't stop cataloging details.

The way her ballet-callused feet still point perfectly even now.

How her wedding ring catches the light. The phone on the nightstand that won't stop ringing.

"Don't talk, moya lyubov. Help is coming."

She manages a smile that breaks what's left of my heart. "Liar."

The phone rings again. Fourth time. Fifth. The shrill sound cuts through everything—her labored breathing, my own hammering heart, the distant sirens that won't get here in time.

I snatch it up if only to stop the sound. "What?"

"You can't collect them all, Maksim." The voice is young, cocky, unfamiliar. There's something wrong with it though—like he's performing, putting on a show. "Some ballerinas are meant to fall."

"Who the fuck—"

"Did you really think you could have her? Elena Volovna, prima ballerina of the Bolshoi, reduced to a Bratva wife? She was art, Maksim. You turned her into a possession."

My blood freezes. This isn't random. This is personal.

"When I find you—"

"You won't. You'll be too busy burying your wife and child. Although..." He pauses, and I can hear him smiling through the phone. "I suppose it's just one coffin needed now. Efficient."

The line goes dead.

Elena's hand finds mine, her fingers already too cold. She's trying to speak, but blood keeps getting in the way. I lean close, close enough to feel her breath getting shallower.

"Promise me," she whispers, and I have to strain to hear. "Promise you won't let them make you weak. The reformers... They did this. They made us vulnerable."

"Elena, save your strength—"

"No!" The word comes out sharp, using up too much of what little she has left. "Listen. The reform movement, Alexei's grand plans for legitimacy—it's poison. Makes us soft. Makes us targets. This wouldn't have happened in my father's time. We were strong then. Feared."

She's not wrong. Her father ran the Volovna family like the old days—brutal, absolute, no room for weakness or modern ideas about cooperation with law enforcement.

When he died and his territory was absorbed, Elena came with it.

Part of the deal. ‘The most beautiful acquisition in Bratva history,’ Sergei had called her.

"Promise me," she says again, gripping my hand with surprising strength. "No reform... Keep the old ways. It's the only way to stay safe."

"I promise." The words taste like ashes and blood. "I promise I'll never let them touch our family."

She smiles again, softer this time. Her free hand moves to her stomach, where our child should be safe for three more months. "Our baby would have been beautiful..."

Would have been. Three words that rewrite everything.

"A dancer," she continues, her voice getting dreamier. "Like mama. I bought shoes yesterday. Pink satin. They're in the nursery."

I know. I saw them this morning, tiny and perfect, waiting for feet that will never wear them.

"Tell me about the nursery," I say, because talking keeps her here, keeps her with me a few seconds longer.

"Yellow walls. You painted them last week. You had paint in your hair." She's smiling at the memory. "The crib from your mother. The mobile with the dancing bears."

Her voice is fading. I press harder on the wound, but blood seeps through my fingers anyway. So much blood. How can there be so much?

"The rocking chair by the window," she continues. "Where I would have fed her."

"Her?"

"I know it's a girl. A mother knows." Her eyes find mine, suddenly clear. "Bury me in my red pointe shoes. The ones from Giselle. And... the baby shoes. Let me take them with me."

"Elena—"

"She needs shoes to dance in heaven."

I'm crying now. Can't help it. Maksim Petrov, who hasn't cried since he was seven years old, is sobbing over his dying wife while she plans her daughter's heavenly ballet lessons.

"I love you," I tell her. "Both of you. Forever."

"Forever..." she whispers. Then her hand goes slack in mine. Those perfect feet finally relax from their pointe.

I sit there in the spreading pool of blood, her body cooling in my arms. I think about the nursery, just down the hall, waiting for cries that will never come.

The closet upstairs, full of maternity clothes she'll never wear again.

The refrigerator that has those pickles she's been craving, the expensive ones imported from Russia.

All these pieces of a life that just... stopped.

The sirens are getting closer, but it doesn't matter. Nothing matters now except the promise I made, and the name I need to trace so I never forget.

I dip my finger in the blood—her blood, our baby's blood—and write on the cream carpet. E-L-E-N-A. Five letters that held my whole world.

I trace it again. E-L-E-N-A.

And again.

And again.

The pattern soothes something raw in my chest. My finger moves without thinking now, muscle memory already forming E-L-E-N-A over and over until the letters blur together, until my finger knows the path by heart.

"Pakhan?"

Sergei's voice comes from the doorway. I don't look up, can't look away from Elena's face. She looks peaceful now. Like she's sleeping after a long performance.

"The reformers did this," I tell him. "All their soft modern ideas about legitimacy and cooperation left us exposed. Made us targets."

"Maksim—"

"No more. We go back to the old ways. The strong ways."

I hear him step into the room, glass crunching under his shoes.

Glass? I look up for the first time and see the bedroom window is shattered.

That's how they got in. That's how they got to her while I was downstairs in my study, reviewing contracts for the new legitimate businesses we were supposed to launch next month.

Legitimate. The word tastes like poison now.

"Who?" Sergei asks.

"I don't know. Young. Russian accent but trying to hide it. Said ballerinas are meant to fall."

Sergei's expression darkens. "I'll find him."

"No." I stand slowly, my knees cracking from kneeling in blood. "I'll do it. But first..."

I look down at Elena one more time. She's wearing the pale blue nightgown I bought her in Paris last month. It's ruined now, but she's still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

"Bury her in her ballet shoes," I tell Sergei. "The red ones from her last performance. And..."

I walk to the nursery, each step feeling like miles. The yellow walls are cheerful in the moonlight. The crib stands empty, waiting. The mobile with dancing bears turns slowly in the airflow from the vent.

The shoes are on the dresser. Pink satin, impossibly small, with tiny ribbons that would have wrapped around ankles that will never dance. I pick them up, and they weigh nothing.

"These too," I say, returning to the bedroom. "She wants the baby to have shoes for heaven."

Sergei doesn't question it. He knows better. He's seen me trace Elena's name in blood for the past hour. He knows I'm different now. Broken in a way that won't heal.

They take Elena away eventually, but I stay on the floor, tracing those five letters until dawn comes through the broken window. A promise. A prayer. A vow written in blood.

ELENA. My world. My loss. My reason for everything that comes next.

The reformers did this. Their weakness infected our organization, made us soft, made us vulnerable to whoever that voice belonged to.

But I'll find him. I'll find them all. And I'll show them what happens when you leave a man with nothing left to lose.

I stand finally, my body stiff from hours on the floor. The blood has dried on my hands, under my fingernails, in the lines of my palms. Good. Let it stain. Let it remind me.

"Sir?" Sergei returns, and behind him are the cleaners. They'll remove the blood, replace the carpet, fix the window. By tonight, it'll be like nothing happened here.

Except for the empty nursery. Except for the closet full of maternity clothes. Except for the man I'm about to become. A man who doesn't bend, doesn't break, doesn't feel.

"Leave one thing," I tell them, pointing to the spot where I've been tracing her name. "That stays."

They look at Sergei, who nods. They'll work around it, leaving that one section of bloody carpet like a shrine. Let it remind me every day of what weakness costs.

I'll keep that promise. From now on, we do things the old way. The brutal way. The way that keeps people alive. I'll become steel. Untouchable. Unreachable. I'll trace Elena's name on every surface when I'm thinking, planning, killing, like a signature.

Tonight, Maksim Petrov dies with his wife, and Steel is born.

And somewhere in this world, a young man who thinks he's an artist is about to learn what real art looks like—like vengeance wearing a three-piece suit and tracing a dead woman's name in blood.