ANYA - Volkovskaya Estate, 0623
The tunnel swallows us whole. I refrain from grabbing Roman’s arm and dragging him back toward the factory, where at least the danger was familiar.
Eighteen steps down the stone passage before the ceiling drops low enough that Roman has to duck. He winces when the movement pulls at his shoulder, his jaw going tight with pain he refuses to acknowledge.
Twenty-three steps before Luka signals the first halt, and I press myself against the damp wall beside Roman, close enough that our arms touch.
Thirty-one steps before Dmitri Antonovich, the soldier with the shrapnel scar across his left temple, leans close to my ear and whispers that he has a daughter named Katya who just turned four and he hasn’t held her in eight months and he wanted me to know her name in case something happens tonight because he doesn’t want to die as just another body count in someone else’s war.
I squeeze his forearm once, hard, and he nods and pulls back, and we keep moving.
Roman’s hand finds the small of my back when the tunnel narrows further, guiding me forward through darkness.
“Ostorozhno,” he murmurs against my hair when I stumble over an uneven flagstone, and his fingers spread wider across my lower back, holding me upright, holding me close. “Careful, solnyshko, I need you in one piece.”
The endearment settles into my chest and stays there, warm and fierce, while we descend deeper into the earth beneath the estate where his uncle has been waiting for twenty years to finish what he started in a church full of bodies.
Galina appears from a side passage so suddenly that three soldiers have weapons raised before anyone registers who she is, her small frame wrapped in the same black wool she always wears, rosary beads clutched in her fingers, eyes blazing with fury.
“Galina.” Roman’s voice cracks on her name, and his entire body changes, the Pakhan fading and the boy emerging. “Bozhe moy, I thought he’d killed you, they said he had you in the east wing—”
“He tried,” she cuts him off with the sharp dismissal of a woman who has survived worse men and refuses to be impressed by this one’s cruelty.
“Kept me in a locked room for three days, wanted to use me against you, threatened things he thought would frighten me into compliance.” Her hand finds Roman’s cheek, her palm covering the jaw.
“I survived Stalin’s purges when I was younger than your bride.
Vadim Volkov is nothing but a man with borrowed power and borrowed time. ”
Roman’s eyes close for a moment.
The sound he makes isn’t quite human, and I step closer on instinct, pressing my body against his side, sliding my arm around his waist because he’s shaking and I don’t think he realizes it.
“Ya s toboy,” I tell him, the Russian feeling strange and necessary on my tongue. “I’m with you, Roman, whatever happens up there, I’m with you.”
Galina’s attention shifts to me, and I force myself to hold her gaze
“You love him.”
“Da.”
“You’ll kill for him.”
“Already have.”
“You’ll die for him.”
“If I have to.” My arm tightens around Roman’s waist. “But I’d rather live with him, so let’s focus on making that happen.”
She nods once.
“Then let’s go end this.” She releases Roman’s face and turns toward the passage leading up into the estate proper.
“I know where he keeps his soldiers stationed, I know which passages are guarded and which have been forgotten, I know the layout of every room we’ll pass through.
” Her head turns, eyes finding Roman over her shoulder.
“Let me lead you to him, vnuchok. Let me watch you take back what he stole.”
Roman’s hand finds mine in the darkness and squeezes hard.
“Stay close to me,” he says against my temple, his lips brushing the skin when he speaks. “Whatever happens up there, Anya, you stay close to me, ponimayesh?”
“Ponimayu.” I understand.
We follow Galina up.
The wine cellar opens around us —bottles lined up in neat rows, climate systems humming softly to maintain optimal aging conditions, two of Vadim’s guards smoking cigarettes by the stairs leading up into the main house with their weapons holstered and their attention on a phone screen glowing between them.
They don’t see us until Roman is already moving.
His Makarov coughs twice, suppressed fire barely louder than the climate control, and the first guard drops with his cigarette still burning between his fingers, body crumpling against the stone floor.
The second guard turns toward the sound, and I’m the one who takes him, a single shot through the space where his skull meets his spine, the recoil traveling up my arm.
Roman’s eyes find mine across the wine cellar.
“Moya devochka,” he breathes, so quiet the words barely reach me. “My girl knows how to shoot.”
“Your girl knows how to do a lot of things.” I eject the magazine, check my remaining rounds, slam it home again with hands that don’t shake anymore because the shaking stopped somewhere in the river, and I don’t know if it’s ever coming back. “Now focus, Roman, we’re not done yet.”
His mouth curves at the corners, and he gestures for Galina to continue leading.
She takes us up stone stairs, through service corridors lined with damask wallpaper and paintings that belong in museums, past doorways leading into rooms I’ll never see because we’re moving too fast.
Gunfire erupts ahead of us, and I drop to a crouch on instinct, pressing my back against the wall while Roman moves forward to engage, his Makarov barking in rapid succession as he takes down two of Vadim’s soldiers who stumbled onto our position from a side corridor.
Return fire clips his Kevlar, and he staggers but stays dangerous in ways that shouldn’t be possible given the damage his body has already taken.
I understand now why men follow him, why they swear blood oaths and die for him—he refuses to fall when any reasonable person would have surrendered to the darkness hours ago.
One of our soldiers goes down, a bullet through his thigh, and I’m beside him, my hands finding the wound, while Roman and Luka clear the corridor ahead.
“Femoral artery is intact,” I tell him, pressing gauze against the entry wound. He hisses through his teeth. “You’re going to live, but you can’t walk on this, Peter, you need to stay here and keep pressure on—”
“Nyet.” His hand closes around my wrist with surprising strength for a man bleeding on expensive marble. “Keep moving, Tsaritsa, I’ll manage, just keep moving and end this.”
Roman appears above me, his hand finding my shoulder, pulling me gently but firmly to my feet while his eyes stay fixed on the corridor ahead, where more of Vadim’s men could appear at any moment.
“He’s right,” Roman says. “We have to keep moving, Anya, we don’t have time to—”
“I know.” I squeeze Peter’s hand once, quick and fierce, and then I’m up and moving again, following Roman deeper into the house where his uncle waits.
The service kitchen opens before us, and I count three people in civilian clothes before I’ve fully processed the room—commercial appliances gleaming, prep stations cleared for the night, the smell of bread that was baked hours ago still lingering in the air.
A cook, middle-aged woman with flour dusting her apron, hands flying up in surrender before anyone speaks.
A maid, young enough to be in university, already crying with fear that has nowhere to go.
And a boy.
He’s maybe seventeen, probably younger, with dark hair falling across his forehead and brown eyes that don’t understand what’s happening, don’t understand why armed people have invaded his kitchen.
He looks exactly the way Mishka will look in three years, and the realization hits me so hard I actually stop moving, my feet rooted to the tile while I stare at a stranger wearing my brother’s future face.
“Na pol,” Roman commands. “On the floor, all of you, hands where I can see them, seychas.”
They drop.
The cook sobs quietly with her face pressed against the tile.
The boy just stares, eyes fixed on Roman’s gun with the incomprehension of someone who has never been truly afraid before and doesn’t have a framework for processing it.
We’re moving past them.
I’m almost through the door when I hear it.
Fabric rustling.
Movement behind me.
I spin with my weapon raised and watch the boy reach into his pocket with fingers that tremble so badly he can barely grip whatever he’s trying to retrieve. I open my mouth to tell him to stop, to freeze, to put his hands back on the ground where they’re safe, but the words don’t come fast enough.
The shot cracks before I can speak.
Yuri Petrovich fires on reflexes. The bullet catches the boy in the chest and sends him sprawling backward onto the tile he was already lying on.
Red spreads across his white kitchen uniform.
His hand comes free from his pocket, holding a photograph with laminated edges worn soft from years of being carried everywhere, falling from his fingers to land face-up on the marble three feet from his outstretched hand.
A girl his age with dark hair and a smile.
He was reaching for her.
His eyes are going glassy, and the cook is screaming now, a raw animal sound ripping from her throat while she tries to crawl toward her son’s body.
Roman’s hand closes around my upper arm and pulls me toward the door with force that allows no argument.
“Dvigat?sya,” he says. “We have to move, Anya, there’s nothing we can do for him, we have to move—”
I step over the boy’s body.
My boots leave prints in his blood.
Galina appears beside me in the corridor, her hand finding mine.
“The throne costs,” she says quietly, for my ears only. “Every Volkov learns that price eventually. You carry the ones you couldn’t save, and you keep moving because stopping doesn’t bring them back.”
“He was seventeen.” My voice comes out strange, flat, nothing like my own. “Maybe younger. He was reaching for his girlfriend’s picture, Galina, he just wanted to hold her picture—”