Chapter Thirty-One
Nikolai
The first light of dawn bleeds into Pullman Yard in thin grey streaks, finding nothing worth illuminating.
I have relied on Timur for many things over the years. I never thought walking would be one of them. My good arm is slung across his shoulders and he takes my weight without comment, the two of us moving in an uneven rhythm across the floor.
Drag, step.
Drag, step.
The sound of it is the only sound left inside the building. Everything else has gone quiet in the particular way that follows violence—not peaceful, just emptied out.
Hannah holds Timur’s free hand. She hasn’t let go since he picked her up.
“Close your eyes,” Timur tells her, his voice firm and low as we move back through the main room. “Keep them closed until I say.”
She doesn’t ask why.
The aftermath of a firefight is something you never entirely adjust to.
Two decades in the Bratva and the smell still finds you—copper and heat and something underneath both of those that has no cleaner name.
Bodies are everywhere, impossible to route around.
Most of them are Aslanov’s men. The rest belongs to Popov, identifiable by the tattoos at the backs of their necks.
“Hold your nose as well,” I tell Hannah quietly. She presses her free hand to her face without opening her eyes.
Timur navigates us through it, picking a path with the calm efficiency of a man who has learned to keep moving in rooms like this.
I let him lead and focus on keeping my legs under me as much as I can.
Outside, the dawn is waiting—pale and indifferent, doing what dawn does regardless of what the night produced.
The air hits us when we clear the doors. Cool, open, thin with early light.
I peel two strips from the lower hem of my shirt and press them against the wounds—thigh first, then the bicep—wrapping each as tight as I can manage one-handed.
It costs me. I keep my face still because Hannah’s eyes are open again now, watching me with a careful attention that reminds me of her mother.
“Well.” The voice comes from my left, unhurried and faintly amused. “Look who walked out of there alive.”
Popov. Arms crossed, studying the state of me the way a man studies a deal that’s come in under value.
“Barely,” I say.
His eyes move over me—the makeshift bandaging, the leg that won’t take full weight, the arm hanging at an angle it shouldn’t. “Aslanov?”
“Inside. Alive, for now.”
Something crosses his face—not quite satisfaction, but close. He snaps his fingers once and his two remaining men turn back toward the building without being told. A moment later, the sound of something heavy being dragged across concrete carries out into the morning air.
“Eyes away, Hannah.” I put my working hand up before she can look.
She turns her face into Timur’s side.
Aslanov comes through the doors feet-first, one man gripping each ankle, his body leaving a dark trail across the threshold. What’s left of his face catches the early light in pieces.
“You worked him properly,” Popov observes, with something approaching professional respect. “Didn’t know you had that left in you.”
“Neither did I.”
He almost smiles. Then his hand moves to his jacket.
The gun comes out slowly. He raises it with the unhurried certainty of a man who has been patient for a very long time and has decided that his patience is finished. The muzzle closes the distance between us until it’s level with my head, and the morning goes very still around it.
Blyad.
I had considered this possibility.
Considered it, weighed it, and decided the alliance was necessary regardless.
That calculation made sense twenty-four hours ago.
Standing here now, with two bullet wounds and nothing in my hands and Hannah three feet away watching with her small face gone rigid—the math still holds, but the cost of it is considerably more immediate than I’d accounted for.
I meet Popov’s eyes over the barrel and don’t move. He doesn’t care. What he cares about is taking out the remaining competition.
From the edge of my vision, I see Hannah’s mouth begin to tremble.
“It’s okay, Hannah.” I keep my voice level. “Don’t worry.”
She doesn’t look convinced. Neither am I.
Beside me, I feel Timur calculating—his eyes moving to the nearest weapon, measuring the distance, running the same numbers I’m running.
Even if he could find a gun, Popov’s two men would cut him down before the barrel came up.
We’re outnumbered, outgunned, and one of us is still bleeding through a torn shirt onto the concrete.
The math just doesn’t work.
It hasn’t worked since the gun came out.
Popov exhales through his nose—almost disappointed, like he expected more from me than stillness.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Niko.” His tone is almost conversational. “You and I understand each other. Two men who built something from nothing, who know what it costs to protect what’s theirs.” He tilts his head slightly. “All I’m doing is removing the threat.”
“I’ve heard that before.” I scoff.
Something shifts in his eyes. “Meaning?”
“Liz Watson.” I hold his gaze. “Am I the next cautionary kill?”
The laugh that comes out of him is confirmation enough. Brief, unguarded, the kind that surfaces before a man can stop it. It tells me everything I didn’t want to be certain of.
Lauren spent years trying to find who took her mother from her. She only stopped looking when Hannah was born.
I knew. I’ve knew it before the alliance, before we got back to Atlanta.
I made the calculation that she couldn’t be told.
That if she knew the man standing with us against Aslanov was the same man who killed her mother, she would have burned the plan to the ground and been right to.
So I said nothing, and carried it, and told myself it was the only move available.
“Your girlfriend’s mother?” Popov’s amusement hasn’t fully faded. The muzzle scrapes against my forehead as he adjusts his grip. “Come on, Niko, you know how these things go. She was collateral. Same as you’re about to be.”
The smile drops.
His finger moves to the trigger.
I close my eyes and wait for the flash.
His finger begins to squeeze the trigger.
The shot splits the morning air—sharp and immediate, cracking across the open yard and rolling out into the pale sky beyond.
But I don’t fall.
The ringing in my ears settles, but I’m still standing. Still breathing. The concrete is still beneath my feet and the dawn is still doing what it was doing a second ago, indifferent and unhurried.
I open my eyes and look at Popov.
Everything that made him dangerous is leaving his face at once—the composure, the cold intelligence, the absolute certainty that he was the last man standing. It drains away and what’s left is nothing. Plain and still and already gone.
He drops.
The sound of him hitting the ground is heavy and final.