Chapter 36
TERESA
“Easy, sis. Just relax.”
I’m still strapped to the gurney in the back of the ambulance, blanket thrown over my legs, the ceiling lights washing everything in a sterile glow. Jack sits on the bench in a paramedic jacket, dark hair stuffed under a cap, stethoscope looped around his neck. He looks official.
The siren warbles once, twice, then drops to a low, steady wail as we slide through intersections, traffic peeling open in front of us.
“Almost there,” Jack says. He glances at me, then quickly looks away. “You’re okay. You did good.”
“Where’s ‘there’?” My voice sounds raspy. I swallow. “Where are we going?”
“Someplace private.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He gives me a quick smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “You’re safe, T.”
Safe. The word lands wrong. The ride is too smooth. I fumble for my bearings like a drunk trying to find something in her purse. The ambulance turns down a wide avenue lined with leafless trees and old stone townhouses.
“This doesn’t look like Queens. I don’t get it. Where are we going?”
“Just sit and relax. We’ll be there soon.” Jack pats my knee through the blanket. “Breathe.”
My jaw tightens. “Don’t pat me.”
He pulls his hand back and sighs.
The driver doesn’t speak. He takes another turn, then a long, curvy one.
Buildings thin. Trees thicken. The world is quieter.
The city’s bustle is long behind us. We pass a little gatehouse with no guard and roll onto a road flanked by snow-covered hedges and iron lamps that look straight out of a Dickens novel.
“Where are we?” I ask again, louder now.
Jack’s foot taps the floor. “Almost there.”
Those words again. I crane my neck, trying to see around the medical equipment and catch a sliver of dark fence through the rear window. It isn’t municipal fencing; it’s wrought-iron with spear tips and scroll work, the kind that keeps the world out and the residents in.
“Trina’s going to be there?” I push.
“Yeah,” Jack says. “She’ll be there.”
Something’s off in the way he says it, like he’s purposefully holding back information. I shift on the gurney, the buckles digging in. I slide my hand under the blanket and press it to my stomach again.
“I thought we were leaving town. That’s what Trina told me.”
Jack’s mouth flattens. “Just go with it. We’ll get where we need to be.”
The ambulance slows as an iron gate opens.
We crawl forward onto an upward drive. The lamps reveal towering pines, their branches bowed with snow.
Once we clear the trees, I see the house.
It’s huge, stone and slate, wide as a hotel.
Grand steps sweep up to double doors carved with wolves.
The windows blaze with warm light, but the warmth stops at the glass—the glow of a lion’s mouth.
I know this place. I’ve been here before with Maxim. My blood runs cold as I realize where we are, where Jack has taken me. And what it means.
Volkov’s mansion.
My breath cuts off in my throat. “No.”
Jack won’t meet my eyes. “T—”
“You brought me to Volkov.” My voice is thin. “You said… you said I’d be safe.”
“I said I’d get you out,” he corrects, his voice a little shaky. “And I did.”
“Are you out of your mind? He wants to kill me!”
The ambulance stops at the base of the steps.
Snow still falls, fat flakes tumbling lazily like confetti.
The back doors fly open, and cold air knifes in, carrying the smell of winter and cigarette smoke.
Two men stand there in black coats, thick necks tucked into scarves, eyes flat.
One of them has a pin on his lapel. Silver twin wolves. Volkov’s symbol.
“Ms. Winslow,” the taller one says. “Welcome.”
I grab the sides of the gurney. “Jack,” I say, not looking at the men, but staring at my brother. “Don’t do this.”
He looks over my head. “It has to be this way.”
“Why?” I demand.
He flinches. “Because things need to happen in a certain order.”
“What does that mean?” My mouth tastes like copper.
The taller guard steps forward and I kick out, the blanket tangling my legs. The gurney jolts. A hand clamps around my ankle firmly.
Jack stands, palms up. “T, please. Don’t make this harder.”
“I’m pregnant,” I snap, as if the words can grow armor. “And you’re delivering me to a man who wants me dead.”
Jack’s eyes finally find mine. For a second, something similar to grief flickers there, a boy I used to know standing behind the ruthless man he became. “I’m sorry.”
The men unbuckle the straps with cold, impersonal hands.
I thrash, slamming an elbow into one of the men’s ribs.
He grunts but doesn’t let go. They swing my legs off the gurney, my feet first finding cold metal then stone.
The snow bites my ankles through my socks. My breath plumes in frantic puffs.
“I can walk,” I bite out as they shift their grip from hauling to escorting, each taking an elbow, guiding me up the steps like a drunk guest. Jack follows close behind. I don’t look back at him.
“Vlad!” I scream. The sound rips out of my throat and vanishes into the trees. I feel like an idiot, hoping he’d followed me, that he’s ready to show up right in the nick of time and save me like he’s done before.
No one answers but the snow.
The doors swing open on a draft of heat. We enter a foyer the size of a small church. Marble floor in a black and white chessboard pattern. A chandelier throws light across wolves carved in the banister.
They steer me through the echoing hall, our footsteps tapping out a harsh rhythm.
Though it’s warm in the house, my body remains chilled.
Two more men appear out of nowhere, then melt back into shadows.
I glance around, spotting what seems to be a small army of Volkov men posted around the property.
My escorts lead me to a large room with a fireplace as wide as my old kitchen. Portraits look down from the walls—men in suits, women in gowns, a line of stern ancestors watching me.
On a sofa at the far end, one leg casually crossed over the other, sits Aleksander Volkov.
He’s dressed in a three-piece charcoal gray suit with a pocket square the color of dried blood.
A cigar burns low in a crystal tray beside him, its scent filling the air.
He wears a pleased smirk, as if everything is going according to plan.
He doesn’t stand.
“Bring her here,” he says calmly.
They march me across the rug and stop me in front of him. He doesn’t look at the men. He doesn’t look at Jack. He only looks at me, slow and deliberate, as if I’m a painting he commissioned. His gaze lands on my face, drifts to my hands, slides to my stomach, and pauses.
“Mrs. Volkov,” he says.
The title hits like a slap. “Ms. Winslow,” I manage, white-knuckled hands pressed into my coat.
A corner of his mouth twitches. “Ah, yes. You barely wasted any time putting my son behind you after his death, dropping his name.”
Rage fills me at the idea that I cared so little for Maxim. “I took my name back because every time I saw it, it was too painful. All I could think about was him!”
He raises his hand, silencing me. “I’m not interested in your theatrics, Teresa. I know how you feel and what you did.”
“I didn’t—"
“Jack,” he says, cutting me off and turning to my brother.
“You did not mention her condition.” I go rigid.
Alexsander sees my shock and smiles slightly.
“Surprised that I did my research? Funny how years with my son produced no heir, but a month with that pridurok Vlad and you're already growing fat with his child. Disgusting.”
Jack’s shoes scuff the rug behind me. “I just found out.”
“Spare me,” Volkov says, bored now. He flicks ash. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Well, it does in a sense—killing not only you, but Vlad’s unborn child makes things all the sweeter.”
My stomach does a slow, nauseous roll. The room tilts. “Please,” I say. “Don’t do this. You don’t have to.”
He chuckles dryly. “Mercy. From me?” His gaze flicks to Jack again, amused. “You hear that? The girl wants mercy.”
Jack doesn’t answer. His silence buzzes like a broken fluorescent bulb. I wonder if he’s regretting what he’s done.
Volkov snuffs the cigar with a casual twist. “You cost me my son,” he says, looking at me, eyes empty and dark. “And now you flaunt someone else’s bastard.”
The words hit my chest, knocking all the air out. “No.”
He tilts his head in that slow, infuriating way of men who know their power. “Do not waste my time with your denials. When Maxim lay in a pool of his own blood, where were you?”
“At his side.” The memory rises so fast it burns—the marble cold under my knees, the shock of red on white, the way his hand twitched like he was trying to grab mine. “I was holding him.”
He stares at me. “Someone gave the order, telling them when and where to hit.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do,” he says, his voice raising.
I want to scream. Instead, I breathe deeply, in and out, because the baby is counting on me not to shatter. “Whatever you think I did,” I say, “you’re wrong.”
“Mmm.” He looks at my stomach again. His eyes blaze with the wicked light of an old grudge held too long. “That,” he says, “should have been Maxim’s child.”
Every muscle in my body tightens. The tremor starts in my thighs and crawls upward. I will it to stop. “He’s gone. Nothing you do changes that.”
He nods. “Correct,” he replies pleasantly. “But I can at least set things right, exact justice.”
He reaches into the drawer of the end table next to where he sits, taking out a small, silver pistol.
“No.”
“Be grateful,” he says softly as he stands. The lines in his face deepen into chiseled cruelty. “I will be quick. One shot to the head, and that’s that. Quicker than my son’s death, bleeding out on the floor like a stuck pig.”
I stumble back and hit a human wall. The room closes in. The fire flares.
“Please,” I say, hating the word, hating him, hating that I’m using the last of my pride on a man who would eat it for breakfast. “Please, don’t.”
He smiles cruelly.
I think of the precious bundle I carry, everything inside me rearranging around that point of life, that insistence. I’m not a ledger entry. I’m not a grudge. I am a mother now, and I will do what I must to protect my child.
He steps closer, looking past my face into a future only he can see.
“It’s time,” Aleksander Volkov says, “time to finally end this.”