34. Yaromir
YAROMIR
The front hall is full of smoke within seconds.
Gunfire cracks against marble and wood. Men shout over each other from the upper landing. Glass rains from the chandelier as a bullet clips one of the hanging crystals, sending it spinning wildly above us.
The house I was never allowed to enter properly is now breaking around me.
I move behind a stone pillar as shots tear through the space where I stood half a second ago. Two of Kirill’s men fire from the balcony. Alexei drops to one knee beside me, aims upward, and shoots one of them through the shoulder. The man falls back with a shout, crashing into a side table.
“Left corridor!” Alexei yells.
I turn in time to see three men coming from the dining room, guns raised.
I fire twice. One drops. The second ducks back. The third keeps coming until I put him down near the Persian runner Galina once told my mother she would never be allowed to walk on.
The memory is brief. I have no room for it.
My men push into the hall behind me. Kirill’s men answer from the staircase, the gallery, the rooms on both sides. The old house won’t survive a night like this.
A bullet punches into the wall near my head. Plaster sprays across my face. I keep moving.
“Clear the west wing,” I tell Alexei.
“And you?”
“Upstairs.”
“That’s a terrible idea.”
“Don’t follow me.”
Naturally, he follows.
We move toward the staircase. One of my men throws smoke into the right corridor, cutting off the shooters near the library.
Another team enters from the west side almost at the same time, and for a few seconds the house becomes pure confusion.
Men firing through smoke. Shadows moving behind doorframes.
Boots on marble. Bodies hitting the floor.
Then a voice cuts through it.
“Enough.”
The gunfire doesn’t stop immediately. It breaks apart slowly, like no one wants to be the first man to lower his weapon.
Kirill Volkov stands at the top of the staircase.
My father.
He wears a dark suit, no tie, white hair pushed back from his face. There’s a gun in his hand, but he holds it lowered at his side.
Behind him, several of his men remain armed.
Behind them, half-hidden near the corridor, I see Dmitri. His face is bruised. One eye dark. Mouth swollen from my fist. Still handsome enough to hate. Still alive enough to kill.
His eyes find mine. For the first time, I see fear in them.
It’s not enough.
Kirill looks down at the hall, at the dead and wounded men scattered across his marble floor, then at me. “You always did enjoy making entrances,” he says.
My gun stays in my hand. “You should have given Dmitri to me.”
“You should have learned patience.”
“She was my wife.”
“Was?” He cocks his head.
“Don’t pretend as if you don’t know.”
His face shuts down. “I don’t know what games you’re playing, but I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Alexei says my name under his breath, but I barely hear him.
Kirill sees the hit land and doesn’t smile. That’s the worst of him. He doesn’t need obvious cruelty. He prefers clean cuts.
“She’s dead,” I yell, “because of your son.”
For a second, I think that my father has an iota of sympathy left for me.
“You brought this on yourself,” he says, proving me wrong once again. “You made one girl into the center of your pride.”
My finger settles on the trigger.
Then Dmitri fires.
Not at my men.
Not in panic.
At me.
The shot hits my left side, high along the ribs, more burn than impact at first. For one second, my body doesn’t understand it. Then pain opens, hot and sharp, and I stagger back half a step.
Alexei fires immediately. Dmitri jerks behind the wall, swearing. My men surge forward.
Kirill fires once into the ceiling. “Stop!”
The sound stills the room again, but only barely. Everyone is breathing hard now. Everyone is one wrong movement from finishing this with bodies piled across the staircase.
I press one hand to my side. Blood warms my fingers.
Not fatal. Not even close.
Annoying.
Kirill looks at Dmitri with disgust, then back at me. “He always lacked discipline.”
“He shot my wife.”
“And now he has shot you.” Kirill’s eyes move over me, cold and assessing. “Yet you are still standing.”
“I’m going to kill him tonight.” And you too.
Kirill steps down one stair. “He is my son.”
“So was I.”
For the first time, something changes in his face. Recognition, maybe. The smallest acknowledgment that the thing between us is not only about territory, men, or blood spilled tonight.
Then it disappears.
“You were a complication,” he says.
There it is. The truth, finally spoken without velvet around it.
I move up one step.
Alexei shifts behind me, but I lift a hand to stop him.
Kirill notices. His mouth curves faintly. “You want this to be between us?”
“It always was.”
He comes down the stairs slowly, handing his gun to one of his men.
A murmur moves through the hall.
Dmitri appears again near the upper corridor, breathing hard, one hand braced against the wall. His gun is still in his hand.
Coward.
Kirill reaches the middle landing and takes off his jacket. “You think beating an old man will make you whole?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because you are in my way.”
For a second, he almost looks amused.
Then he moves.
For his age, he’s fast. He comes down the last steps with a short, brutal punch aimed at my injured side. I turn enough that it glances, but pain flashes bright through my ribs. He follows with an elbow. I block it and drive my fist into his stomach.
He grunts, but doesn’t fall.
He wasn’t always an old man. That’s easy to forget. Kirill Volkov built half this city with violence before he learned to hide behind men with guns. His body remembers what his suits pretend he outgrew.
He hits me across the jaw. My head snaps sideways, and blood fills my mouth.
The hall erupts with movement, but Alexei snarls, “Stay back.”
Good. Let them watch.
I hit Kirill hard enough to send him into the banister. Wood cracks under his shoulder. He grabs my shirt and pulls me with him, driving his knee up toward my wound. Pain bursts through me, and for one second my vision whites out.
He uses it.
A fist to my throat. Another to my ribs. Then his hand clamps around the back of my neck, forcing me close enough that only I hear him. “You should have stayed outside the door.”
The words do more than the punches.
I slam my forehead into his face.
Bone cracks. Kirill stumbles back, blood spilling from his nose.
The sound that moves through the hall is not a gasp. These men have seen worse. It’s something lower, more dangerous.
The old king bleeding in his own house.
I advance. He swings again, but slower now. I catch his wrist, twist, and drive him into the wall. He fights like a man who refuses to admit his body is failing him. That earns a part of my respect I wish didn’t exist.
Then he reaches for the knife at his belt. I break his wrist before he draws it.
He makes one sound. Short. Bitter. I take the knife and throw it aside.
He’s breathing hard now. Blood runs down his mouth and chin. His white shirt is torn. One knee nearly gives, but he forces himself upright.
“Finish it,” he says.
There’s no fear in him.
I grab him by the collar and throw him down the last steps. He hits the marble hard, and Galina screams from somewhere above.
Dmitri shouts, “Father!”
Kirill tries to rise.
He can’t. His injured wrist hangs wrong. Blood spreads beneath his temple where he struck the floor. He looks up at me, breathing through his teeth, and for one second I see the man clearly.
Just a man. Old. Bleeding. Breakable.
I step over him.
Dmitri raises his gun again, but this time, I fire first. The shot hits his arm, and the gun falls from his hand. He cries out and stumbles back into the upstairs corridor.
I start toward him.
Kirill’s voice comes from the floor behind me. “Yaromir.”
I don’t turn.
“You kill him,” he says, breath ragged, “and there is no coming back.”
I look over my shoulder. “There was never any coming back.”
Then I go up the stairs.
Dmitri tries to run. He slips on blood near the corridor, catches himself against the wall, and turns as I reach him. His face is pale now, all arrogance stripped away. The bruise at his jaw has darkened. His injured arm hangs uselessly.
He looks young suddenly.
He presses his back against the wall, one hand clutched to his bleeding arm, his face pale beneath the bruises. His mouth opens, closes, then opens again. For once, the beautiful arrogance is gone. No smile. No lazy charm. No polished Volkov confidence.
Only fear.
“Yaromir,” he says, voice cracking. “Wait.”
I keep the gun trained on him. “There is nothing left to say.”
“There is.” He swallows hard, eyes darting toward the stairs behind me, then back to the barrel pointed at his face. “Please. I made a mistake.”
I almost laugh.
A mistake.
That word again.
“She was running,” he says quickly. “I was angry. I wasn’t thinking.”
My finger tightens on the trigger. “You shot my wife.”
His face twists. “No.”
The word is so immediate it stops me.
“I didn’t kill Anya.” His voice breaks on her name. “I swear on my life, I didn’t kill her.”
“Your life is worth nothing.”
“I know.” His eyes shine with terror now. “I know. But I didn’t kill her.”
The corridor around us seems to narrow. Behind me, the house is still full of men, weapons, smoke, blood. Somewhere downstairs, my father is on the marble floor, breathing through whatever pride he has left. Galina is crying or cursing. I don’t care which.
All I hear is Dmitri.
I step closer. “Then whose body was found near the canal?”
Dmitri’s face changes. The fear remains, but something worse moves beneath it.
Guilt.
Real guilt. But not for Anya. For someone else.
My gun stays steady. “Answer me.”
His throat works. “Katya.”
The body near the canal. The one Viktor went to identify.
Dmitri’s eyes shine with panic. “She was there. She followed me. I don’t know how. She must have known something, or suspected. She kept saying this had gone too far.”
My jaw locks. “And you shot her.”
“No.” He shakes his head hard. “No, not like that. I didn’t mean to.”
“There is no accidental way to shoot a woman.”
“She grabbed my arm,” he says, desperate now.
“I was angry. Anya had run, and Katya came out of nowhere, screaming at me, asking what I’d done.
I told her to move. She wouldn’t. She kept saying she would tell everyone.
She reached for the gun, and it went off.
” He swallows, eyes fixed on mine. “She fell so quickly I didn’t even understand at first.”
I see it then, not because I pity him, but because guilt has finally made him sloppy. The confession is ugly, frightened, and real.
But it doesn’t matter to me, none of it does. He has to die.
I lift the gun.
He flinches so hard his head hits the wall. “Please,” he whispers. “Yaromir, please. I’m your brother.”
“No,” I say. “You were my father’s son.”
My finger settles on the trigger.
Then I hear it.
“Yaromir.”
A voice behind me. Hoarse. Soft.
Impossible.
My body goes still.
For a moment, I think the sound has come from inside my own head. Some last mercy from a mind that has finally taken too much.
Then she says it again.
“Yaromir.”
I turn.
At the end of the corridor, leaning heavily against Viktor, pale beneath the ruined lights, stands Anya.