Sneak Peek
KAZ
Three hours ago, they found my brother gift-wrapped in barbed wire.
Now I stand in the warehouse where they dumped him, breathing in the reek of copper and piss, fear-sweat gone cold in the September air.
I step over pooled blood, Italian leather silent against concrete that has witnessed too much death. The metallic taste of rage coats my tongue like old pennies.
Nikolai lies on the metal table like an offering. My brother’s throat carved into a second smile, the wound surgically precise. Barbed wire wraps his wrists and ankles, not restraints. Decoration.
Gift-wrapping for the present Fyodor Antonov delivered to my door.
A note rests on his chest, three words scrawled in Russian:
Blood pays blood.
Three words that declare war. Fyodor wants to play by the old rules. He’s about to learn I wrote new ones.
The Antonovs didn’t just kill him. They displayed him. Turned my brother into a message written in flesh, and the grief sits like lead in my chest, heavy enough to crack ribs.
I don’t break. I never break.
“Pakhan.” Oleg’s voice cuts through the silence. “We found him three hours ago. Anonymous tip.”
I reach out, fingers brushing Nikolai’s knuckles. Cold. So fucking cold. The sound of blood dripping from the table edge echoes like a metronome counting down to vengeance.
Those hands painted watercolors. Played Chopin like he was speaking to angels. Stroked every stray cat until they followed him home.
Promise me you’ll keep him clean. My mother’s voice echoes from her deathbed. Keep him out of this life.
Sixteen years keeping my mother’s dying words. I failed her. I failed him.
“Any witnesses?” My voice doesn’t shake.
“None alive. But we know who gave them the information. Dmitri was seen at the Antonov compound yesterday.”
Dmitri. The soldier who sold us for whatever Fyodor offered.
“Find him. Bring him alive.” The words taste like violence and satisfaction. “I want him to understand exactly what betrayal costs before I send him to join Nikolai.”
“Already moving on it. But Pakhan...what about the Antonovs?”
I turn away from the table, away from my brother’s body wrapped in wire and hatred. The temperature drops as I move toward the windows, cold settling into my bones like winter.
Fyodor wants a war. He thinks he can provoke me into something rash.
He’s wrong.
“Not bullets,” I say. “Bullets are quick. Fyodor will expect bullets.”
Through the warehouse windows, Little Odessa sprawls below like a kingdom of shadows and salt air. Somewhere in this city, Fyodor Antonov sleeps peacefully, surrounded by family.
His daughters.
Hunger twists in my chest, sharp and immediate.
“I’ll take everything he loves,” I say. “Starting with his most precious possession.”
Zoya.
Her name tastes like revenge on my tongue, and something else I don’t want to examine. Something that has nothing to do with Fyodor and everything to do with the image of her burned into my skull from one year ago.
I flex my grip, knuckles cracking in the silence. The sound echoes off warehouse walls like gunshots. My fingers taught Nikolai to box when he was twelve, not because he wanted to fight, but because our world demanded he know how to protect himself.
He never used those lessons. Too gentle for violence, too trusting for our world.
Always said there was beauty in everything, even in the scars covering my knuckles from bare-knuckle matches in Moscow basements.
He’d trace them while I read him bedtime stories, never flinching from the evidence of what these hands had done. To him, they were just the hands that turned pages and tucked him in.
He was wrong. My hands destroy. They’ve broken bones, pulled triggers, signed death warrants. Tomorrow they’ll lower his coffin into the ground, and after that...
After that, they’ll take Fyodor’s most precious possession.
I was there to negotiate for Irina during those doomed engagement talks. Beautiful, compliant, everything a bratva wife should be. A porcelain doll bred for display.
Then her sister walked in and the room shifted. Two hours trying to focus on one daughter while my body demanded the other.
She moved like gravity bent around her, spine straight, chin up, owning every inch of space despite being the youngest person there. Dark hair caught the light when she turned her head. Eyes that catalogued exits before they catalogued people.
My pulse hammered against my collar.
I spent those negotiations tracking every breath she took, every shift in her chair, every time those dark eyes flicked toward me and away again, like she was solving a puzzle she didn’t want to be interested in.
The engagement fell through two weeks later. I told Fyodor his terms were unacceptable, but the truth was simpler and more damning. I couldn’t negotiate for one sister while my body demanded the other.
Nikolai died because I wasn’t ruthless enough. Because I let sentiment weaken me during those negotiations, walking away instead of taking what I wanted. That mistake cost my brother his life. It won’t cost me anything else.
Now she’s not forbidden. She’s payment.
Twenty-one years old and perfect. The daughter Fyodor actually treasures. Columbia educated, speaks four languages, graduated summa cum laude. His secret weapon, the girl he parades at diplomatic functions, who charms senators with carefully cultivated innocence.
The brilliant one. The useful one. The daughter who inherited his cunning wrapped in silk and honey.
The daughter he’s spent years protecting from men like me. The princess who thinks she’s safe behind her father’s bodyguards and charity work.
“The funeral,” I say, turning back to Oleg. “St. Nicholas Cathedral. Tomorrow at sunset.”
My voice catches on the word funeral. Just slightly. Just enough that Oleg pretends not to notice.
“Full honors?”
“Everything Nikolai deserved in life.” I swallow hard, the grief threatening to choke me. “White lilies. String quartet. The good wine at the reception.”
Oleg nods, understanding. My brother hated our world, but he loved beautiful things. Art. Music. Stories that ended happily. If I’m burying him, it’ll be surrounded by beauty.
“What about security? The Antonovs might—”
“Let them come.” The interruption carries deadly certainty. “Let Fyodor watch me bury the boy he murdered. Let him see what his war declaration cost.”
I look down at my hands, scarred and stained with violence Nikolai never wanted to witness.
These fingers taught him to tie his shoes when he was five.
Held him when nightmares woke him screaming.
Signed permission slips for art classes because I couldn’t let him know I wanted to go to every exhibition, every recital.
Tomorrow, I’ll use them to lower my brother into the ground. To throw dirt on the coffin containing every soft part of my soul.
Then I’ll use them to take Fyodor’s daughter.
“After the funeral,” I continue, “I collect payment.”
I head for the door, but stop. Turn back one last time.
Nikolai looks small on that table. Younger than twenty-eight. Innocent, even now. Even with his throat carved open and wire wrapped around his wrists like grotesque jewelry.
“Oleg.”
“Yes, Pakhan?”
“When we take her...” I pause, searching for words that won’t make me sound weak. “She doesn’t get hurt. Not physically. This is about her father, not her.”
Oleg’s eyebrows raise slightly. In years of working together, I’ve never given instructions about collateral damage. Never cared about innocent blood.
“Understood, Pakhan.”
I walk toward the exit, leaving Oleg to handle the body. To wrap Nikolai in something clean and white and worthy of the boy who painted sunrises and fed stray cats.
The warehouse door clangs shut behind me, sealing in the smell of copper and betrayal.
Fyodor thinks he can kill my brother and walk away. He’s about to learn that some debts can only be paid in precious daughters.
And his beloved daughter will discover that her father’s world has consequences she never imagined.
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