Chapter 35
Zoya
The nave swallows sound like a tomb. Every footstep echoes off stone, every breath hangs visible in the incense-thick air.
I keep my chin level, my pace measured, even as my pulse hammers against the pearls at my throat.
The weight of a hundred stares presses against my shoulders, but I don’t look left or right.
Only forward, to the coffin that probably holds rocks instead of my father’s body, while he breathes somewhere in the shadows.
The priest’s voice drones through the liturgy, words that taste of centuries and blood.
I stand when the congregation stands, cross myself when they cross themselves, but my mind is elsewhere.
On the letter folded in my coat pocket. On Roman’s plan.
On the promise that in less than an hour, Nik will be dead.
Nik stands three pews behind me on the right side, surrounded by men who think they’re backing the winning horse.
I can feel his attention like a blade between my shoulders.
He’s waiting for me to falter, to prove I’m nothing more than a grieving daughter who’ll step aside when a real man claims what’s his.
He’s going to be disappointed.
The priest raises his arms, and the choir swells with a hymn that makes the stained glass windows vibrate. I close my eyes and let the sound wash over me, drawing strength from voices that have sung these words for generations.
The hymn ends, and I open my eyes. Silence falls like a curtain.
“We gather today to remember Mikhail Antonov,” the priest begins, his voice carrying to every corner of the nave. “A man who served his family, his community, and his God.”
Lies wrapped in ceremony. But that’s what funerals are for, isn’t it?
To make death palatable. The priest continues his eulogy, listing charitable works, devotion to the church, and love for his daughter.
All true, in their way. All missing the point entirely.
He was Bratva. He was pakhan. He was a man who understood that sometimes love means making choices that damn your soul.
I tune out the priest’s words and focus on my breathing. Four counts in. Six counts out. The rhythm that will keep me steady when I walk to that lectern and shatter every assumption these men have about what a woman can be.
Twenty minutes pass. Thirty. The priest’s voice rises and falls like waves against stone. Somewhere behind me, a woman weeps softly. Not for my father, I suspect, but for the husband or son or brother she lost to this world. We’re all mourning someone today.
“And now,” the priest says, his words cutting through my thoughts, “Mikhail’s daughter would like to share some words. Zoya.”
This is it.
I rise slowly, letting the silk of my dress settle around my legs. The veil shifts across my face, a barrier between me and the wolves in the pews. Roman’s presence is solid as I step into the aisle, but I don’t look at him.
My heels click against stone as I approach the lectern. Each step feels like a small death, a shedding of who I was for who I have to become. The girl who went to Pilates and bought crystal ducks dies a little more with every breath.
At the front of the church, I can see everything.
Every face turned towards me. Every hand is resting near a jacket that might conceal a weapon.
Every exit that Roman has planned for, mapped, and secured.
The congregation looks like an oil painting of dark suits and solemn expressions, but I know better. These are predators.
I reach the lectern and rest my hands on the smooth wood. The microphone hums softly, waiting for my voice. I catch Katya’s eye as she moves in behind me. She gives me the slightest nod, her bag slung casually over her shoulder as she hands me a tissue.
Theatre.
“Thank you all for coming,” I say, my voice carrying clearly through the nave. “My father would have been moved to see so many friends gathered to honour his memory.”
A few heads bob in agreement. Safe words. Expected words. The kind of thing any dutiful daughter might say.
“He was a complicated man,” I continue, letting my voice catch slightly on the words.
“Demanding. Protective. Sometimes impossibly stubborn. But he was also a man who understood legacy. Who understood that the choices we make echo long after we’re gone.
” I pause, letting the silence stretch. “Who understood that sometimes the greatest act of love is preparing those you leave behind for a world that won’t be gentle with them. ”
Nik shifts in his pew. I can see him from the corner of my eye, his jaw tight, his hands clasped in front of him like he’s praying. Or plotting.
“Before he died, my father left me something.” I reach into my coat pocket, fingers closing around the envelope. The paper crinkles softly as I draw it out. “A letter with instructions to read it at his funeral.”
I open the envelope with trembling fingers. The letter unfolds in my hands like a weapon being drawn from its sheath. The words are brief. Brutal in their simplicity. I look up and give a shaky smile, holding it up, showing them Mikhail’s—the Antonov family—crest at the top.
I turn it back around and blink.
“Zoya Melina Antonova, you will lead when the time is right.”
My voice carries clearly through the silence.
I pause and look up, confused and nervous all of a sudden.
I clear my throat, avoiding Roman’s gaze.
If I look at him, I will laugh inappropriately.
“When the time c-comes, you will show this to Nik. He-he will understand his place. If he doesn’t, he will be removed by those whose n-name you hold.
My decisions are final. M-Moscow concurs. ”
The words detonate in the silence like grenades. Grunts echo off stone. The priest has gone dead white beside his altar.
My hand shakes as I meet Nik’s eyes across the nave.
His face has gone through several expressions. Shock. Fury. Now settling into something cold and calculating that makes my skin crawl.
“This is fucking ridiculous!” he roars, surging to his feet so violently that the pew creaks. “A woman cannot lead a Bratva family! It’s unheard of! That is my place. We all know it.”
The church erupts into chaos. Voices rise in anger, confusion, and argument.
“Moscow concurs,” Roman says, standing up, ready to move when shit will inevitably hit the fan.
The priest is already being hustled away.
That’s when the phones start chiming. Dozens of them, all at once. The soft cascade of message notifications rippling through the congregation like dominoes falling.
Roman’s evidence package. Wire transfers. Communications. Photographs. Nik’s betrayal laid bare in black and white.
The whispers grow louder. Sharper. I see men pulling out their phones, faces darkening as they read.
“What is this?” Nik snarls, pulling out his phone. His face goes white as he reads, then red with fury. “Where did you get these?”
“Get what?” I ask calmly.
The congregation is buzzing now, men showing each other their screens, voices rising in anger. Not at me. At him. At the man who betrayed their pakhan for Albanian money.
“You scheming bitch,” Nik breathes, his mask finally slipping. “You think you can waltz in here with your forged documents and stolen evidence and take what’s mine?”
“I’m not taking anything,” I reply, folding the letter carefully. “This was my father’s wish.”
He steps closer, his hand moving towards his jacket. Several men rise from their seats, tension crackling through the air like electricity before a storm. But Roman moves smoothly between us, his presence calm but unmistakably dangerous.
“Not on consecrated ground,” Roman says quietly, his voice carrying despite its low volume.
Nik’s eyes dart between us, calculating odds, escape routes, options. When his gaze fixes on me again, I see murder there. Pure and simple.
I’m already planning out my next move. The side door. The slip past my guards. The run to the car park behind the priest’s cottage, where Roman will be waiting with a gun and a promise.
I lift the page higher, so the crest catches every eye and take one step left, widening the angle Roman drilled into me. The murmur swells. Nik’s hand twitches closer to his jacket.
“Zoya,” Roman says, low as a blade. That single word means move.
I turn with the paper raised, grief carved into my face like it belongs there, and step off the dais. Katya is already on my left, bag angled, veil neat. Andrei ghosts the aisle, a ripple in the sea of suits.
Nik breaks. He starts down the right side, fast, anger dragging him forward. “Don’t you dare walk away from me,” he spits, voice cracking the air.
I pivot into the aisle. A man steps to block me—some eager dog angling for favour. I lift the page into his face, tilt, and slice the edge across his eyelid. He howls and grabs his eye as I slide past, heels silent on stone. “Left,” Katya snaps. I go left.
Incense and wax singe the back of my throat. The choir vanishes through the sacristy door, scattering like smoke in the wind. I slip through the side door and out into the cold and rain. Andrei and Katya have been briefed and allow me to slip their guard, so I’m on my own.
Please be there, Roman. I say the silent prayer over in my head as I lengthen my stride.
Rain hits my veil in pinpricks. The courtyard is wet flagstones, slick moss, and breath that hangs white. The cottage squats by the yews, windows dark, a crucifix warped by years over the door. I take the path that hugs the hedge. The car park sits beyond the last elbow of clipped green.
“Stop,” Nik barks. Closer now. “Turn around.”
I hear the scrape of a shoe on wet stone, and the soft curse of a man annoyed that his prey runs in heels. Good. Keep pulling him.
The yews open. The gravel of the car park crunches underfoot.
Two bins, a battered Astra, a blind corner where the hedge bulges to cover a downpipe.
My pulse trips. The bracelet is ice on my skin.
I stop just beyond the hedges and let my breath fog.
My coat and veil are wet. I’m the vision of a mourning girl lost in a sea of confusion and high stakes.
“Got you,” he grits out, hand shooting out for my arm.
I pivot in, not back. Thumb. Twist. The joint gives with a dry pop. He swears, a hot, filthy word. He grabs for me with the other hand. I slam my knee up, catch him half-on, half-off target. He folds a fraction; it’s enough.
Roman steps out of the shadow like he was carved from it. Black suit. Calm eyes. Gun up. The muzzle tracks the centre of Nik’s face as if it knows his name.
“Roman,” Nik says, shocked enough to forget rage for a beat. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.” The words drop like stones into water. No echo. No flourish. “For her.”
Nik’s hand jerks towards his jacket. Roman fires once.
A flat thump, suppressed but still loud in the open air, enough that birds explode from the trees. Nik’s head snaps back. He drops hard, knees first, then the rest of him, a puppet cut free. Blood pools quickly on wet grit, thinned by rain, iron in the air.
Everything slows. The veil shifts with my breath.
Roman doesn’t move. He holds that pose a heartbeat longer, then lowers the gun in a clean line and tucks it away. He crosses to me, eyes slicing over my coat, my hands, my face. Not a single speck of me escapes assessment.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, voice even.
“No.” I swallow. “His thumb is.” My own hands shake, belatedly. I close them on air.
“Good girl.” His gaze flicks to the path we took. “Andrei.”
Andrei peels from the corner of the hedge. He sweeps the lot with his eyes and nods.
I jump a mile when Alexey rounds the corner with a group of men behind him. I instinctively move closer to Roman.
“Gospozha Antonova,” he says with a slight bow of his head.
I gape at him, and then at Roman, who seems unsurprised.
Alexey’s deference steals the air from my lungs. Roman stands at my side like a wall, calm and lethal, but it’s the way Alexey’s men hover a beat behind him with their hands loose and eyes steady, that makes my spine lengthen.
“We are with you.”
“How many?” Roman asks, flat.
“All,” Alexey replies. “Those who thought they weren’t will remember their manners.”
Roman tips his chin once.
Nik lies open on the stones like a cut word. The urge to retch claws up and stops at the base of my tongue. I breathe. There is no room in me for anything but outcome.