9. Wren
WREN
The world splits open.
One second I'm watching Lev rise—watching that terrible stillness settle over him like armor—and the next there's motion everywhere, noise that punches through my skull, and Maxim's body slams into mine so hard we both hit the porch siding.
His chest crushes against my back, one arm banded across my ribs, the other bringing a gun up past my ear.
The muzzle flash is so close I feel the heat lick across my cheek.
"Stay down," he says, and his voice is steady. Calm. Like we're doing yoga. "Eyes on me, solnyshko, not out there. Just me."
I can't. Can't look away. Through the gap between his arm and the porch post I see Lev walking into the middle of it—bullets chewing up gravel, men scattering or dropping, and he just walks, unhurried, his gun up but his face empty of everything except purpose.
One of Yuri's men moves toward him and Lev puts two rounds in his chest without breaking stride.
There's a shoe on the gravel. Just one. Brown leather, expensive, lying on its side like someone stepped out of it on the way to the mailbox. My brain locks onto it. Won't let go. That shoe is the only solid thing in a world that's come unglued.
Maxim fires again. The recoil shoves against my spine. "Breathe," he says, soft and easy, and then he kills someone else. I hear the body hit.
I'm supposed to be scared. I am scared—my whole body's vibrating, my ears ringing so loud I can barely hear him. But I'm watching Lev cross that driveway like the bullets are someone else's problem, and the thing crawling up my throat isn't only fear.
Kostya peels off to the left. I catch him in my peripheral vision—black shirt, shoulders like a wall, moving fast and low toward the tree line where the muzzle flashes keep sparking. He doesn't have a gun. He has a knife.
One of Yuri's men comes out of the trees and Kostya closes the distance so fast it's over before I process it started.
The knife goes in under the ribcage, angled up, and Kostya steps into it, his other hand clamping over the guy's mouth.
The guy goes limp. Kostya lowers him almost gently and moves to the next one.
No hesitation. No flinching. Like he's clearing brush.
Maxim's hand finds mine where it's fisted against the porch boards. He squeezes. "You're okay," he says. "I've got you."
I should look away. Should close my eyes. Should be horrified.
I keep watching.
Kostya moves through Yuri's men like water through a cracked dam—inevitable, impersonal, unstoppable.
There's a second one, then a third. He doesn't stop to check if they're down.
He knows. The man who made me coffee and called me brat is doing this, and both things are true at the same time, and my brain doesn't know what to do with that so it just..
. keeps cataloging. The economical way he moves.
The fact that he's not even breathing hard.
The blood on his hands that he wipes on his jeans without looking.
What is wrong with me?
I wait for the horror to hit. Wait to feel sick.
It doesn't come.
A shot cracks from the tree line—someone Kostya missed or someone smarter—and Maxim swings his aim without leaving me, without taking his body out from between me and the world, and fires three times. Silence. He lowers the gun. Checks me over his shoulder.
"You hurt?"
I shake my head. Can't get words out.
"Good girl."
The gunfire sputters. Stops. The sudden quiet is worse than the noise—so complete it rings, broken only by someone's wet, rattling breathing somewhere off to the left. Yuri's voice, high and thin, saying something I can't make out. And then silence swallows that, too.
I push up onto my knees. Maxim lets me, his hand still on my arm, steadying. The driveway looks like something out of a nightmare. Bodies. Blood. Bullet casings glittering in the dirt like spilled coins. The brown shoe, still there, still alone.
Lev stands in the center of it.
Yuri's on his knees in front of him, hands up, mouth moving fast.
Kostya moves to Lev's side, blood streaked up his forearms, knife still in his hand. Maxim stands, pulling me up with him, his body still between me and the open ground even though the shooting's done. He doesn't trust it yet. Doesn't trust anything.
Yuri sees me. His eyes lock onto mine—wet, desperate, still trying to calculate an angle. "You," he gasps. "Tell him—tell him I didn't mean—your mother's alive, girl, she's safe, just tell him?—"
Lev moves. One step. Close enough now that Yuri has to crane his neck to see him. Lev crouches. Eye level. The gun's still in his hand but he doesn't raise it. He just looks at Yuri the way you'd look at a stain on the floor.
"You broke bread at my table, dyadya."
The word lands cold. Uncle. Family.
Lev lets it sit. Lets Yuri hear it. Then he switches the gun to his left hand—the wounded arm, blood still running down to his wrist—and pulls a knife from his belt.
"You put my father in the ground and your filth on my woman." His voice doesn't rise. Doesn't need to. "Tronesh moih—umresh."
The Russian rolls off his tongue—hard, guttural, final. I don't speak it. Don't understand it. But I feel the weight of it land like a sentencing, like a door slamming shut in a language I'll never be inside of.
Yuri's face crumples. "Lev, please—please—I'm your blood?—"
"Nobody crosses a Volkov and lives. Not even a Volkov."
The knife moves. Fast. Clean. Across Yuri's throat.
Yuri makes a sound—wet, surprised—and then he's falling, his hands coming up too late, blood sheeting down the front of his shirt. He hits the gravel and doesn't get up. His eyes stay open.
Lev stands. Wipes the blade on his jeans. His face is calm. Empty. Like he just finished a phone call.
Two of Yuri's men—alive, but barely—are on the ground a few feet away, watching. Lev looks at them. Doesn't say anything. Just looks. Then he gestures with the gun, a small, dismissive flick.
"Go," he says. Flat. Final.
The two men scramble to their feet, stumbling, not looking back. One of them is crying.
They run.
I don't understand. Then I do. He's letting them go. Letting them carry the story back. The message isn't just Yuri. It's everyone who backed him. Everyone who thought the Volkovs were weak enough to topple.
I should feel something. Horror. Disgust. Fear. I watch the man who kissed my forehead this morning wipe his uncle's blood off a knife, and all I feel is a cold, certain rightness. Yuri called me a whore. He threatened my mother. He killed Lev's father and tried to kill him, too.
Lev looks across the driveway. Finds me.
For one beat his face changes—just a flicker, too fast to name—and then it's gone. He crosses to me. Doesn't look at Yuri again. Doesn't need to.
Kostya and Maxim close in, forming a wall around me, and suddenly I can't see anything but them. Blood on Kostya's hands. Dirt and powder-burn on Maxim's shirt. Lev's arm still bleeding, the fabric soaked through.
"You're hurt," I say. My voice sounds far away.
"I'm fine."
"Lev—"
"I'm fine."
Kostya's hand lands on my shoulder. I turn and his eyes—those flat, unreadable eyes—are soft. Just for a second. Just for me.
"You okay, kotyonok?"
I nod. Then shake my head. Then nod again. My body doesn't know what it's doing. The shaking starts and won't stop.
Maxim's there, his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. He smells like smoke and sweat and something metallic I don't want to name. "You're okay," he murmurs into my hair. "You're safe. We've got you."
The adrenaline crashes. All at once. My knees buckle and Maxim catches me, holds me up, and I'm crying without meaning to, great choking sobs that sound like someone else.
"My mom," I gasp. "Lev—Lev, my mom?—"
"We'll get her back."
"He said—Yuri said he had her—Pavel?—"
"We'll find out." Lev's voice. Close now. His hand in my hair, tipping my face up. His eyes are brown and clear and I see both men in them—the one who just killed his uncle and the one who touches me like I'm breakable. "I need you to breathe."
I try. Fail. Try again. The air won't go in right.
"Good," he says, and his thumb strokes across my cheekbone, smearing something I don't look at. "Again."
I breathe. The world stops spinning quite so fast.
Lev's phone rings.
He looks at it. His jaw tightens. Then he answers. "Da."
I can't hear the other side. Can only watch Lev's face, reading it like my life depends on it. His eyes flick to me. Then away. His mouth thins. He says something in Russian—short, clipped. Then he listens.
"Where," he says in English. Then more Russian. Then he closes his eyes, just for a second, and the tension drains out of him so fast he sways.
"Lev—" I start.
He holds up a hand. Listens. Nods. "Understood. Keep them there." He lowers the phone. Looks at me.
"Your mother's safe."
The words don't land. Not at first. I hear them and they just... sit there, not meaning anything, like a sentence in a foreign language.
"What?"
"Pavel got her out before Yuri's men hit the safe house. They're clear. She's asking for you."
The world tips sideways. Maxim catches me again—I didn't realize I was falling—and Lev's still talking but I can't hear him over the roaring in my ears. My mother's alive. Safe. Not in Yuri's hands. Not bleeding out somewhere. Alive.
Lev holds the phone out. "Talk to her."
I take it with shaking hands. Press it to my ear. "Mom?"
"Wren." Her voice breaks. "Oh my God, Wren, are you—are you okay?"
"I'm okay." The lie comes out automatic. Then I realize it's not a lie. I'm here. I'm alive. She's alive. That's all that matters. "Are you?"
"Pavel got us out—he said there were men coming but he knew, he got us out in time—" She's crying.
I'm crying. We're both talking over each other, fragments and reassurances and nothing that makes sense.
It doesn't matter. I hear her voice and the part of me that's been braced for the worst this whole time finally, finally lets go.
"I love you," I say. "Mom, I love you, I?—"
"I love you too, baby. So much. Are the boys taking care of you?"
I look up. Lev, Kostya, and Maxim are all watching me. Bloodied. Dangerous. Mine.
"Yeah," I say. "They are."
We talk for another minute—her asking if I'm eating, if I'm sleeping, all the mom things that shouldn't matter and somehow matter most—and then Pavel's voice rumbles in the background and she has to go. I hand the phone back to Lev.
He takes it. Doesn't look away from me. "You're sure you're all right."
"I'm sure."
"You watched me kill a man."
"I watched you kill the man who tried to kill you. Who killed your father. Who called me a whore. Who threatened my mother." My voice is steadier now. Clearer. "I'm not sorry he's dead."
Something flickers in Lev's eyes. He reaches out, slow, telegraphing it, and cups my face in his hands. Blood on his knuckles. Dirt under his nails. Gentle anyway.
"I love you," I say.
The words fall out before I can stop them.
Before I can think. They just—come. Because he's here and I'm here and my mother's alive and he just did the most terrible thing I've ever seen and I don't care.
I love him anyway. I love him because of it, maybe, because he's exactly what he is and he doesn't apologize and he'd burn the world for me.
Lev goes still.
Then he kisses me. Hard, fast, like he's sealing something. When he pulls back his eyes are bright.
"Ya tebya lyublyu," he says, and I don't need a translation for that.
I turn to Kostya. He's standing a few feet away, arms crossed, watching me with that flat, unreadable expression. Blood drying on his hands. The knife still tucked in his belt.
"I love you," I say.
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. Not quite. "You're out of your mind, kotyonok."
"I know."
"Good." He reaches out, rough and careful at once, and pulls me against his chest. His heart's pounding. I can feel it through his shirt. "I love you too," he says into my hair. Quiet. Like he's telling me a secret.
Maxim clears his throat. When I look at him he's smiling—real this time, not the easy charm he wears like a mask. Just him.
"Don't leave me out," he says.
I cross to him. He catches me, lifts me off my feet, spins me once before setting me down. His hands frame my face.
"I love you," I say.
"I know." He grins. Then the grin softens into something that makes my chest ache. "I love you too, solnyshko. Even though you're terrible at following instructions and you have absolutely no sense of self-preservation."
"You like that about me."
"I love that about you."
We stand there—the four of us, bloodied and alive, on a driveway full of bodies—and I feel it settle into place. The truth of them. The truth of me. What I just saw, what they just did, what we are now and what we're going to be.
I looked at the worst of them and I'm still here.
And I'm never leaving.