38. Sloane
SLOANE
The car doesn’t slow down.
“Viktor.”
He keeps his eyes on the road.
“Please,” I say, and I hate the sound of my own voice because it comes out too close to begging. “You have to stop the car.”
He doesn’t answer.
The city begins to thin outside the window, hospital blocks and shopfronts giving way to wider roads, shuttered warehouses, low concrete buildings, stretches of fenced land and yards full of trucks that look abandoned in the dull morning light.
My hands are shaking in my lap. I press one over my stomach and try to keep my breathing steady. “Viktor, I’m pregnant.”
“I know.”
“Then stop the car.”
His jaw tightens. “I can’t.”
“You can. You’re driving.”
He glances at me then, and for the first time since the garage, the calm mask cracks enough for me to see something ugly beneath it.
I stare at him. “You told me he was the monster.”
“He is.”
“And you?”
He doesn’t answer.
The car turns off the main road and takes a narrower lane between two long factory buildings. The place looks half-dead, all rusted gates, broken signage, weeds growing through the cracks in the concrete, and old loading bays with peeling numbers painted above them.
Finally, Viktor brakes hard near the side of a warehouse. The sudden stop throws me forward against the seat belt, and I grab at my stomach with a gasp.
He shuts off the engine. For a second, neither of us moves.
Then he says, without looking at me, “You should run.”
I turn my head slowly. “What?”
He stares through the windshield, his hands still on the wheel. “You should run.”
“Are you serious?”
Now he looks at me. There’s no charm in him anymore. He looks deadly calm, and that frightens me more than if he had been frantic.
“They have a tracker in my car,” he says. “They will find me any second, and after the stunt I pulled at the hospital, he won’t believe you were innocent.”
I shake my head immediately. “No. He wouldn’t—”
“He would.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“You still don’t understand him.”
“I understand him better than you do.”
That makes his mouth twist, but not into a smile. “He has probably been tracking you for weeks.”
My thoughts stop. “What?”
Viktor looks out the window again. “I got careless.”
The words settle slowly.
Can it be true? Could Vadim really have been keeping track of me?
I think of Vadim appearing exactly when I was attacked. Vadim knowing when I left the hospital, where I was, how close Petrov had come.
The trap at the garage. The message from my phone.
The men closing in from both sides as if the whole thing had already been arranged.
I hadn’t understood everything back at the hospital because betrayal had been too loud in my head, but now the pieces lock together with such obvious certainty that I feel stupid for missing it.
That was the plan.
I was the plan.
I should be furious. I should feel used, exposed, humiliated. Instead, all I can think is that Vadim knows where I am.
He’s coming.
And with that thought comes such sudden, frightening relief that I have to close my eyes.
I want to go back to him. God help me, after everything, I still want to go back to him. What is this insanity?
Viktor watches my face as if he can read enough of it to hate what he sees.
“All of this.” His hand tightens on the steering wheel. “Every mistake. Every dead man. Every ruined plan. All of it because I was too blind when it mattered.”
“What do you mean?”
Before he can answer, shots crack somewhere behind us. I flinch at the sound. Tires screech at the end of the lane.
Viktor curses and shoves his door open. “Out.”
I stay frozen.
“Sloane, move.”
He comes around the car, opens my door and helps me out too quickly for it to feel gentle, though his hand does shift carefully when I stumble.
More shots echo between the warehouse walls. The sound is much closer now.
“Hide there,” he says, pointing toward a low concrete loading dock partly shielded by stacked pallets and a rusted metal container.
“No.”
“Do it.”
“I’m not—”
“If you stand here, you will get shot.”
That works. I move because the baby moves, because fear becomes practical when there is someone inside me depending on whether I’m stupid or not.
Viktor guides me behind the pallets, then crouches in front of me for one second. “Stay down.”
“Viktor—”
He’s already gone.
I crouch behind the container with one hand braced on the rough concrete and the other over my stomach, trying not to breathe loudly, which is absurd because the whole lane is full of engines, shouting and the brutal, unmistakable sound of men arriving ready to kill.
Then I hear Vadim.
“Petrov.” His voice carries through the industrial yard with terrifying ease. “I know you enjoy making a spectacle, but hiding behind pregnant women is disappointing even for you.”
My heart lurches.
I shift just enough to see through a gap between the pallets.
Vadim walks into the lane with Anton and Marek several steps behind him, his gun in his hand, his coat moving slightly in the wind.
He looks nothing like the man who held me in the hospital suite.
Nothing like the man who touched my stomach and looked as if the world had stopped.
This is the man people fear.
Viktor steps out from beside the car, gun already raised. “Careful, Chernovar.”
Vadim’s gaze sweeps the yard once. Looking for me. I know the exact second he finds the place where I’m hiding because his eyes pause for less than a heartbeat before moving away again.
He doesn’t betray me.
He looks back at Viktor. “Where is she?”
“Safe.”
Vadim smiles without warmth. “Not a word I associate with you.”
“Funny. I was about to say the same.”
Anton shifts, but Vadim lifts one hand slightly. “Stay back.”
Viktor notices. “So it’s just us?”
“If you have the courage for it.”
Viktor laughs once. “You always did enjoy pretending your violence was honor.”
“And you always did enjoy pretending your cowardice was strategy.”
For a few seconds, they stand with guns trained on each other, the lane silent except for the idle of engines and the distant clank of metal somewhere beyond the fence.
Then Viktor lowers his weapon first.
Vadim watches him. Slowly, he lowers his too.
My chest tightens.
Both men drop their weapons onto the concrete. The sound is small and final.
Viktor rolls his shoulders once.
Vadim steps forward.
Before either of them strikes, Viktor says, “I’m sorry about what happened.”
Vadim stops. Every man behind him goes still.
Viktor’s face changes, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he looks less like a Pakhan and more like someone who has been carrying a wound too long for it to be clean anymore. “My brother shouldn’t have touched her,” he says.
My breath catches.
“No,” Vadim says. “He shouldn’t have.”
“I didn’t know at first.”
“You knew enough.”
“I knew after.”
“And you still came for me.”
Viktor’s face hardens. “You killed him.”
Vadim steps closer. “He assaulted my sister.”
My hand clamps over my mouth.
Mila.
For a second, everything inside me goes silent. Not because I don’t understand. Because I do. The protectiveness. The way Vadim reacted when Daniel startled her. The guarded way Mila moved through the house. The rage he never explained. The thing Petrov had said earlier.
All of this because I was too blind.
Viktor’s younger brother had hurt Mila.
Vadim had gone after him.
That was the family matter. That was the reason Viktor had wrapped revenge around every part of Vadim’s life.
Viktor’s jaw works. “He was twenty-two.”
“Mila was younger.”
“He was drunk.”
Vadim moves so fast I barely follow it. The first punch sends Viktor back against the car, and the sound of bone against metal makes me flinch. Viktor recovers quickly and drives his shoulder into Vadim’s ribs, forcing him sideways before swinging for his face.
Vadim blocks most of it. Blood appears at the corner of his mouth.
He smiles. It’s horrible.
Then they’re on each other. Just fists, knees, elbows, bodies hitting concrete and metal with sounds that make my stomach twist.
I should stay hidden. I know I should.
But I can’t look away.
Vadim fights like violence is not anger but skill, every strike controlled, every movement economical, while Viktor fights like a man who has waited years to put his hands on the person he blames for everything.
Viktor catches Vadim across the cheek. Vadim answers with a blow to his ribs.
Viktor staggers, then laughs through blood. “You know what the worst part is?”
Vadim grabs him by the coat and slams him into the side of the car. “I doubt you will live long enough to tell me.”
“I could have killed her.” Viktor coughs, then looks toward the place where I’m hiding. “I knew how precious she was to you. I saw it before you did.”
Vadim’s hand tightens in Viktor’s coat. “Don’t speak about her.”
“I thought about it,” Viktor says, his voice rough. “More than once. I thought if I killed Sloane, you might finally understand what it means to have someone you love taken from you.”
My blood runs cold.
Vadim hits him again. This time Viktor goes to one knee.
“But I didn’t,” Viktor spits.
Vadim stands over him. “Because you are sentimental?”
Viktor looks up, breathing hard. “Because I found out she was pregnant.” His eyes cut briefly toward me again. “I draw the line somewhere, even if I knew you were the father.”
Vadim’s face changes. He grabs Viktor by the collar and hauls him up, then drives him back so hard against the car that the window cracks.
Viktor’s knees almost give.
Vadim strikes him again. And again.
I know what’s coming. I see it before he does it.
Vadim shifts his grip, preparing for a final blow with the kind of terrifying calm that means he has already decided where this ends.
I run from behind the pallets.
“Sloane!” Anton shouts.
I ignore him. “Vadim, stop.”
Vadim freezes, but he doesn’t look away from Viktor.
I reach him and grab his arm with both hands. “Stop.”
“Sloane, move.”
“No.”
“He took you.”
“I know.”
“He used you.”
“I know.”
“He could have killed you.”
“But he didn’t.”
Vadim looks at me then, and the rage in his face is so raw that it almost makes me step back.
“Please,” I say.
His breathing is hard. Blood runs from a split near his brow and down the side of his face.
I put one hand against his chest. “Please.”
Something breaks in him. His hand opens, and Viktor drops hard onto the concrete.
I exhale, shaking. For one second, I think it’s over.
Then Viktor coughs and rolls onto his side. His hand moves under his coat.
Vadim reacts too late because I’m in front of him.
The gun appears in Viktor’s hand, aimed at us. “Still sentimental?” he rasps.
Vadim’s arm comes around me instantly, pulling me behind him. I feel his whole body turn into a shield.
Viktor’s finger tightens.
Then it stops.
He looks at me. At my stomach. At Vadim standing in front of me. His face twists with disgust, exhaustion and something that looks almost like grief.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” He lowers the gun. It drops from his hand and hits the concrete.
I breathe.
Vadim does not.
Behind us, a gunshot cracks through the yard.
Viktor’s body jerks. For half a second, he looks surprised.
Then he goes down.
I scream. Vadim turns around, his arm catches me again.
“If he is not going to kill you,” a familiar voice says behind us, mild and almost annoyed, “I am.”
I look past Vadim. Iosef stands near the mouth of the lane with a gun in his hand.
His face is calm. Too calm. The same mild-mannered face I trusted in hospital corridors, the same quiet man who told me I was confused, who led me upstairs to Ethan’s suite as if he were the only reasonable person in Vadim’s world.
Now he looks at Viktor’s body, then at Vadim.
“Honestly,” he says, “you have all made this much harder than it needed to be.”