35. Anya
ANYA
For one moment, nobody moves.
Yaromir stands in the corridor with his gun raised, his shirt torn at the side, blood darkening the fabric near his ribs. Dmitri is on the floor against the wall, pale and shaking, one hand pressed to his wounded arm.
And Yaromir is looking at me as if I’m not real.
As if grief has finally become cruel enough to give him my face.
I take one step forward and nearly fall.
Viktor catches me immediately. “Careful.”
Yaromir hears his voice, sees Viktor’s hand at my waist, sees the hospital coat around my shoulders, the bandage visible where the fabric shifts.
Then his face changes. The cold, murderous stillness breaks.
“Anya.” My name leaves him like it hurts.
I try to smile, but my mouth trembles. “I’m alive.”
That’s all I manage before he reaches me.
One hand comes to my face, the other to my waist, stopping just short of the bandage like he’s afraid the wrong touch will make me vanish.
His eyes move over me wildly. My face. My throat. My arms. My side. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m okay.”
“You were shot.”
“Yes.”
His jaw tightens.
“Not badly,” I say quickly. “The doctor said I was lucky.”
His eyes come back to mine, and there’s nothing controlled in them now.
Not anger. Not yet.
Worse.
Fear.
I’ve never seen it on him like this. Not hidden, not buried under threats, not shaped into commands. Just fear, raw and terrible, because for a few hours he believed I was gone.
“I found your ring,” he says.
My throat closes. “I know.”
“There was blood.”
“I know.”
His hand tightens against my cheek, and then he pulls me into his arms.
I gasp because it hurts.
He starts to release me immediately, but I grab his coat and hold on.
“No,” I whisper. “Don’t.”
He goes still for half a second. Then he wraps himself around me more carefully, one arm across my back, the other behind my head. His body is warm and solid and alive. I press my face into his chest and breathe him in under the smoke, blood, and gunpowder.
“I’m sorry,” I say into his coat. “I never should have left the house without telling you. And then he tried…”
“Shh it’s okay,” he says. “You’re here now that’s all that matters.”
“I pushed him away.”
“I know.”
I pull back enough to look at him. “You do?”
His thumb brushes my cheek. “I know you.”
The words break something in me. I nearly cry then, in the middle of that ruined corridor, with guns still raised and Dmitri bleeding only a few feet away.
Yaromir lowers his forehead to mine, and for a few seconds, the house disappears.
There is no Kirill Volkov bleeding at the bottom of the stairs. No Dmitri curled against the wall. No men with weapons watching us like they don’t know whether to look away. Only Yaromir’s breath against my mouth and his hands proving to himself that I’m still here.
Then Dmitri moves. I see it over Yaromir’s shoulder. His good hand slides toward the gun lying near the baseboard, half-hidden in shadow. His face is twisted with pain and hatred, eyes fixed on Yaromir’s back.
My body goes cold. “Yaromir?—”
Dmitri grabs the gun. He raises it.
I don’t even have time to scream.
A shot cracks through the corridor. But it doesn’t come from Dmitri.
Dmitri cries out, the gun flying from his hand as blood splatters across the wall behind him. He collapses sideways, clutching his wrist, face white with shock.
At the foot of the stairs, Kirill Volkov lowers his gun. He’s half sitting against the wall, blood on his face, one arm held awkwardly against his body. His breathing is heavy, but his eyes are clear.
“Enough,” he says. The word cuts through the smoke.
Dmitri stares at him, horrified. “Father.”
Kirill’s face doesn’t soften. “I said enough.”
Galina screams from somewhere behind the men on the landing and tries to push forward, but one of Kirill’s guards catches her before she can reach Dmitri.
“You shot him,” she cries.
Kirill doesn’t look at her. “He was going to shoot his brother in the back.”
Yaromir goes completely still. I feel it because I’m still in his arms.
His head turns slowly toward Kirill. For the first time since I entered the house, father and son look at each other without weapons between them.
Peace is not that easy. But something has shifted.
Kirill is bleeding on the floor. Yaromir is bleeding through his shirt. Dmitri is sobbing against the wall, and men from both factions stand frozen with guns in their hands, waiting to see whether this becomes another massacre.
Yaromir’s arm tightens around me.
Kirill’s eyes move to me. Then to Yaromir’s hand at my waist.
Then back to his son.
“She is alive,” Kirill says.
Yaromir’s voice is low. “No thanks to your son.”
Kirill’s mouth hardens. “He will answer for what he did.”
Dmitri lifts his head sharply. “Father?—”
“Quiet.”
Dmitri stops.
The command is old. Automatic. Even wounded, even terrified, he obeys it.
Yaromir laughs once, without humor. “Now you discipline him?”
Kirill doesn’t flinch. “Too late, perhaps.”
The admission is small. Not apology. But for a man like Kirill Volkov, it is almost violence against himself.
Yaromir looks like he wants to reject it, tear it apart, throw it back in his father’s face. Instead, his hand shifts against my back, and he glances down at me.
I know what he sees. Hospital coat. Bare feet in borrowed shoes. Bandage under my ribs. My face probably pale from pain and shock.
I grip his coat. “Please.”
He looks at me.
Please take me out of this house.
Please come back to me instead of disappearing into the part of yourself that wants to finish this.
His jaw tightens. Then he looks at Kirill again. “This is not over.”
“No,” Kirill says. “It’s not.”
“But not tonight.”
Kirill’s eyes hold his. After a long moment, he nods once. “Not tonight.”
The corridor exhales.
Slowly. Carefully.
Men lower their guns by inches, not trust, just calculation. Alexei moves closer to Yaromir’s side. Viktor stays near me, one hand ready in case I sway. Kirill’s men shift around Dmitri, uncertain whether they’re guarding him or containing him.
Yaromir looks at Dmitri. The hatred in his face is so cold it makes my fingers tighten around his sleeve.
Dmitri sees it too. He starts shaking harder.
“You will not leave the city,” Yaromir says.
Dmitri doesn’t answer.
Kirill answers for him. “He will not leave this house.”
Yaromir’s gaze cuts to him. “If he does, I hunt him.”
“I know.”
Another silence. Another fragile thread drawn across a room full of men who would rather shoot than trust.
Yaromir bends and slides one arm under my knees.
I tense. “I can walk.”
“No.”
“I really can.”
“No.”
His voice leaves no room. Normally I would argue, but the pain is getting worse now that the rush is fading. My side throbs, my head feels light, and the corridor is beginning to tilt at the edges.
So I let him lift me.
His face tightens when I wince, but he says nothing. He only adjusts me carefully against his chest.
I rest my head near his shoulder. His heart is beating hard.
“Your side,” I whisper.
“It’s nothing.”
“You were shot.”
“So were you.”
“That doesn’t make it nothing.”
His mouth brushes my hair. “Later.”
I close my eyes for one second.
Later.
The word feels like a gift.
A few hours ago, I didn’t know if either of us would have one.
Yaromir carries me down the stairs through the wreckage of his father’s house. Broken glass crunches beneath his shoes. Smoke hangs under the ceiling. Men stand aside as we pass, some with blood on their shirts, some staring openly at me as if they’re seeing a ghost.
At the bottom of the stairs, Kirill remains against the wall.
Yaromir pauses. For a moment, neither of them speaks.
Kirill looks older now. Not weak, exactly, but stripped of the distance that made him seem untouchable. Blood has a way of making men ordinary.
His gaze drops to me. “You should be in a hospital.”
“I was,” I say.
His eyebrow shifts slightly.
Yaromir’s arm tightens.
Kirill looks back at him. “Take her back.”
“I will.”
“And Yaromir.”
We all go still.
Kirill’s voice lowers. “Whatever comes next, it’s between you and me. Not her.”
Yaromir studies him. I feel the answer in his body before he says it.
“Then keep your son away from my wife.”
Kirill nods once.
It’s not enough, but it’s still something.
We leave through the broken front doors.
Outside, the night air hits my face, cold and clean after the smoke inside. Cars line the drive. Men move around us, speaking into radios, helping the wounded, watching the windows.
The old Volkov house glows behind us, cracked open and bleeding light.
Yaromir doesn’t look back.
I do. Just once.
Through the shattered doorway, I see Kirill still sitting near the stairs, looking after us. Behind him, the house that built men like Dmitri stands damaged but not destroyed.
An uneasy peace.
Not forgiveness. Not surrender. Only a pause between wars.
Yaromir carries me to the waiting car, and Viktor opens the door.
As he lowers me inside, I touch his face.
He stops.
“Come with me,” I say.
His eyes search mine. Maybe he hears what I’m really asking.
“I’m here,” he says. Then he gets in beside me and pulls me carefully into his arms.
The car starts moving.
The house recedes behind us.
For the first time since the river, I let myself breathe.