Chapter 14 Volk #2
My chest tightens painfully like someone's squeezing my heart with a fist made of broken glass. "It doesn't have to end tomorrow."
"Yes, it does." Soft. Sad. Accepting. "Anatoly knows. The Pakhan suspects. The trap is closing. We can run or we can fight but either way the end is here."
She's right. I know she's right. But admitting it feels like surrender.
"If we're going to die anyway," I say slowly, "what do you want before we do? What one thing would make dying worth it?"
"Besides killing Father?"
"Besides that."
She's quiet, thinking. The silence stretches long enough I think she won't answer. That the question is too big or too complicated or too painful to touch.
"I want to know what it's like," she says finally, voice barely audible.
"To be normal. To wake up next to someone and not calculate how they could kill you.
To eat breakfast and go to work and come home and just..
.exist. Without rage. Without plans for violence.
Just exist as a regular person living her life. "
The confession breaks something in me. Something I didn't know still had the capacity to break.
"If we survive," I hear myself saying , " if we somehow make it through tomorrow, I'll give you that." Fuck it, I’ll give her all the hope in the world if it’s what she needs.
"How?"
"We can disappear. Leave the Bratva. Become people with fake American names and boring jobs and neighbors who think we're normal." I pull her tighter to me. "I'll make you breakfast and drive you to work every day until we're old and gray and death comes naturally instead of violently."
"You know none of that is possible."
"Maybe. But it's a good dream." I press my lips to her forehead. "And if we're dying tomorrow, anyway, I want you to have it. I want you to know what I'd give you if the world was different. If we were different."
She half-laughs half-sobs. "Normal doesn't suit you. You'd be bored in a week."
"Probably. But I'd be bored with you."
She kisses me then, soft and gentle. The opposite of everything we just did. The kiss of someone saying goodbye even though we're still here. Still breathing. Still pretending the future might not end us both.
When we break apart, I scan her face, memorizing the details. The small scar above her left eyebrow , the way her eyes crinkle slightly at the corners when she almost smiles, and the exact shade of green that's haunted me since I first saw her.
"My phone's going to ring soon," I say. Reality returning like it always does. "The Pakhan will want updates on the explosion. On Anatoly's suspicions. On everything that went wrong last night."
"What will you tell him?"
"Whatever keeps you breathing." My hand traces patterns on her shoulder, her skin warm beneath my fingers. "Whatever buys us more time."
"And when we run out of time?"
"Then we finish this. Together. The way it should've been from the start."
She's quiet for a long moment. Preparing herself for what's coming.
"I'm trusting you," she says finally. "More than I've trusted anyone since Momochka died. If you're lying …"
"I’m not." I tilt her face up. "I'm a lot of things. Liar. Killer. Traitor to everything I've ever sworn loyalty to. But I'm not lying about this. Not to you. Never to you."
She studies my face, and whatever she sees satisfies her. She nods and settles back against my chest. She lets herself relax in a way I know she rarely does.
My phone rings right on schedule. I check the screen. The Pakhan. Of course.
"I need to take this."
"I know."
I answer, keeping my voice steady and professional. The loyal second reporting in after a crisis. "Da?"
"What the fuck happened at my house?" The Pakhan's voice is tight and controlled, the way it gets when he's close to violence. "Anatoly says there was an explosion."
"Gas line ruptured in the pool house. Minor damage and no casualties." I keep my tone neutral. "Looks accidental but I'm investigating to be sure."
"Anatoly also had interesting news about that courier. The one Aleksandr's been using."
My hand tightens on Sofiya, warning her to stay silent and still. "What about her?"
"He says she looks familiar. Something about her reminds him of someone from years ago." The Pakhan pauses, letting that hang for a moment. "Someone who should be dead." He makes the implication clear.
"Lots of girls have familiar faces. It doesn't mean anything. You know Anatoly can be a fucking idiot."
"Maybe. Maybe not." Another pause, testing me. Is he waiting to see if I'll defend her too strongly? "Bring her in tomorrow. I want to see her again myself and ask her some questions."
"What kind of questions?"
"The kind that determines whether she lives or dies. Noon. My office. Don't be late." He hangs up before I can respond.
I set the phone down and stare at the ceiling, calculating odds and options and the rapidly shrinking window we have to work with.
"That sounded bad," Sofiya says.
"He wants to see you tomorrow at noon in his office."
"He's going to recognize me."
"Probably."
"And then he'll kill me."
"Not if I kill him first."
She sits up, looking at me with an expression I can't read. Fear mixed with something else. It’s too hard to tell in the darkness. "You're serious."
"Always."
"Volk—"
"No." I sit up too, meeting her eyes. "We're not waiting anymore. We're not planning. We're not giving him time to figure this out. Tomorrow, we end this. Together. Or we die trying."
"That's suicide."
"Maybe." I pull her close, kissing her forehead.
She's quiet for a long moment, then she nods small but definitive. "Together," she says.
"Together." I pull her back down, wrapping myself around her like I can shield her from what's coming through sheer will. Like holding her tight enough will keep tomorrow from arriving.
"Tell me one more thing," she whispers. " Before everything ends."
"What?"
"Do you regret it, saving me in the desert? Giving me that chance instead of putting a bullet in my head?"
The question hangs between us. Heavy with implications and the weight of everything that's happened since that day.
I could lie, tell her I regret nothing and every choice was strategic and planned and exactly what I intended.
But we're past lies now. Past pretending we're anything except two damaged people who found each other in the wreckage.
"Every day," I admit. "I regret it every day."
She stiffens and starts to pull away, but I hold her tighter.
"Not because you lived," I continue. "But because giving you that chance made you my responsibility, it made me care about whether you survived. I’ve spent ten years wondering if you were dead or alive while I continued serving the man who tried to kill you."
"That's on you. Not me."
"I know. But it doesn't change the fact that saving you destroyed me in ways I didn't see coming. Made me question everything. It made me realize I'd been serving a monster while pretending I wasn’t a monster too."
"And if you could go back, if you could change it?"
"I'd do it again." No hesitation. "I'd give you the water, and I'd drive away and spend the next ten years hoping you survived. Because the alternative is a world where you died at fifteen, and I don’t want to imagine a world that you’re not in."
She relaxes, melting back against me, her breath warm against my neck. "That's the most honest thing you've ever said to me."
"Probably."
"It's also the most terrifying."
"That too."
We lie there, holding each other in the darkness. Two tortured people finding rest before the final battle. Two damaged people pretending they might survive what's coming.
Outside, the city glows and pulses, people living their normal lives, not knowing that tomorrow everything changes. That tomorrow we declare war on the Pakhan.
That tomorrow we both become free or we become corpses.
Either way, we do it together. And somehow that feels like victory regardless of how it ends.