Chapter 35 ROMAN - Moskva Riverbank, 2334
Eight of Vadim’s men are still standing in those trees, and I’ve got six rounds left in my Makarov, and Anya is at my left flank, firing a Glock with hands that should be shaking but aren’t, and I can’t stop watching her even though watching her is going to get me killed.
She drops a man with two rounds to the chest.
The recoil travels up her arms, and she adjusts her stance the way Luka taught her last month in the basement range, feet shoulder-width apart, weight forward.
The coat rides up when she moves, and I see the red marks on her thighs.
The steam rising from the barrel. I don’t look at the enemy. I look at her.
“Three o’clock,” she says, and her voice is calm and cold, and it goes straight to my cock even now.
Two more shots. Another body drops.
I’ll murder anyone who tries to take her from me.
“Roman.” Chernov’s voice cuts through the gunfire from somewhere behind me. “We need to move; they’re flanking east.”
I scan the treeline, and he’s right, I can see movement through the birches, three figures working around our position toward the riverbank where the snow slopes down to the frozen Moskva. If they get behind us, we’re dead, all of us. Anya will die, and I can’t let that happen.
“Anya.” I grab her arm, and she’s freezing under my fingers, her skin ice-cold from standing in the snow wearing nothing but cotton. “Tree line. Go. Luka’s got the vehicles two hundred meters north.”
She shakes her head and fires another round, and someone in the trees screams. “I’m not leaving you.”
“That wasn’t a fucking request.”
“And I don’t fucking care.” She racks the slide, and brass casings hit the snow. She’s magnificent, she’s terrifying, she’s everything I never knew I wanted, and I can’t lose her, I can’t, I won’t—
“Go.” I shove her toward the treeline with one hand and turn to lay down covering fire, and that’s when I see him.
The sniper.
Sixty meters out, prone in the snow behind a fallen birch, and I know that rifle, I know the scope, I’ve seen that exact setup in Grozny when we were clearing buildings and losing men. Dragunov SVD. The effective range is eight hundred meters. And he’s aiming at my wife.
I see the muzzle flash. I move. I don’t think. I just step in front of her. I’m already turning to push her down when the first bullet hits me.
Shoulder.
The impact spins me sideways, and I make a sound that isn’t words, just air leaving my lungs in a rush of pain that whites out everything else.
My Makarov falls from my fingers, and I’m stumbling, trying to stay upright, trying to keep my body between her and the shooter because if he gets a second shot at her—
Gut shot. Wet heat spreads. My legs fold.
I’m dying.
The thought is almost calm, almost peaceful, and then she screams my name and the peace shatters into rage because I can’t die, I can’t leave her alone, I promised to protect her, and I’m failing, I’m fucking failing—
My boots hit ice.
I didn’t realize how close we’d gotten to the riverbank, didn’t see the slope under the snow, didn’t account for the frozen Moskva stretching out behind us in a solid sheet of white that’s been there all winter.
The ice groans under my weight, and I try to stop, try to get my balance, but my legs won’t listen, and my shoulder is useless, and the blood is making everything slippery.
I fall.
The ice cracks on impact, not all at once but in stages, first a spiderweb of fractures spreading out from my body and then a sound that’s almost a scream, almost human, and then the world drops away, and I’m in the water.
Cold.
Blyad, cold doesn’t cover it, cold is a word for winter mornings and air conditioning, and this isn’t that, this is knives, this is every nerve in my body shrieking at once and then going silent because the signals can’t make it to my brain through the ice water flooding my clothes and filling my mouth.
I’m sinking, and I can’t see which way is up.
My lungs are burning for air, and there’s blood in the water around me, my blood, spreading in clouds that I can’t see in the darkness, but I can feel, warmth leaving my body faster than I can stop it.
I kick.
My boots are full of water, and my coat is dragging me down, and my shoulder won’t move, but I kick anyway, thrashing toward what I think is up, toward the hole I fell through.
The current wants to pull me sideways, wants to drag me under the ice and away from the light, and I fight it with everything I have left, clawing at water that’s too cold to feel, my lungs screaming for air.
Light.
There’s light above me, and I swim toward it with my one good arm, dragging myself through water that feels thick and wrong. My hand breaks the surface, and the cold air hits my skin, and I grab the edge of the ice.
I haul myself up.
The ice groans under my weight but holds, and I drag my chest onto the frozen surface, gasping, choking, vomiting river water while the cold wind cuts through my wet clothes.
The gunfire is still going, I can hear it now, Luka shouting orders and Chernov’s men returning fire, and somewhere in all of it, Anya is screaming my name.
“ROMAN!”
She’s there.
Ten feet away, dropping to her knees at the edge of the solid ice, and I can see where the fractures end and the thicker ice begins. She’s crawling toward me with both hands extended, and her face is white, and her eyes are wild, and she’s moving too fast, not watching where she puts her weight.
“Anya, stop.” The words come out broken, barely a whisper, and I can feel the ice shifting under my chest. “Stay on the solid ice. Don’t come closer.”
“I don’t fucking care.” She keeps crawling, and a new crack spreads somewhere beneath us. Her body shifts as the surface tilts. “Give me your hand, I can pull you—”
“The ice won’t hold us both.” I’m trying to drag myself forward, trying to reach the solid section where she’s kneeling, but my gut is on fire, and my shoulder is useless, and every movement makes the fractures spread further. “Go back. Get to Luka.”
“I’m not leaving you here.” She stretches her arm toward me, and her fingers are close, so close. The tears freeze on her cheeks, and I want to touch her one more time before I die. “Take my hand, Roman, please—”
I reach for her.
Our fingers brush, and the ice under my chest gives way in stages, cracks racing outward from where I’m lying. The section I’m on is breaking off from the rest, tilting toward the black water, and if I grab her hand, I’ll pull her down with me.
“Anya.” I look at her face, memorize it, the way her hair falls across her cheek, and the shape of her mouth, and the grey of her eyes that’s the same color as Moscow winter. “I need you to listen to me.”
“No.” She’s crying now, reaching further, her fingers stretching toward mine. “Don’t you fucking dare say goodbye—”
“Mishka needs you.” The name cuts through her stubbornness, and she flinches. “The formula, the antidote, all of it needs you. You can’t save any of them if you’re dead.”
“I don’t care about any of them.” Her voice breaks. The ice is cracking louder now, the whole section starting to tip. “I care about you. I need you. I can’t—”
“Yes, you can.” The ice lurches, and I’m sliding backward toward the hole that’s opening behind me. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. You poisoned me, saved me, and killed a dozen men in the last three months. You don’t need me to survive.”
“I don’t want to survive without you.”
I see the crack racing toward her. If she touches me, we both die.
“Live,” I say. “For me.”
And I shove the ice away.
My palm hits the fractured section between us, and I push with everything I have left, pushing myself backward toward the hole, pushing the cracking ice away from where she’s kneeling. The force of it sends her sliding back across the solid ice, away from the edge, away from me.
She screams.
It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard, worse than my family dying in the church, worse than the men I’ve tortured, worse than anything I’ve done in thirty-two years of becoming a monster. Her hands grab at empty air where I was, and the ice shelf collapses under me, and I’m falling.
Water.
Cold.
Dark.
The current takes me, and I’m spinning, tumbling, can’t tell up from down or left from right.
My lungs are burning, and my shoulder is screaming, and my gut is leaking warmth into the cold, and somewhere above me, she’s still reaching, still screaming my name, still not running like I told her because she never does, she never fucking listens—
I love her.
I promised to protect them all, and I’m failing, I’m dying in a frozen fucking river because I stepped in front of a bullet meant for my wife.
I’d do it again.
I’d do it a thousand times, a million times, I’d die every day for the rest of eternity if it meant she lives.
The current takes me. Darkness closes in.
Vadim wins.
The empire burns.
I don’t care.
She lives.
Solnyshko.