ANYA - Volkovskaya Estate, 0623 #3
“Solnyshko.” Roman’s voice reaches me from the floor where Luka has helped him sit upright against an overturned chair, his face pale with blood loss, but his eyes burning. “He’s dead, lyubov moya. He’s dead, and you killed him and—”
His voice breaks.
“—and I have never wanted you more than I do in this exact moment, Anya. You’re beautiful. You’re perfect.”
I lower the weapon.
Walk back to him.
Drop to my knees beside him and let him pull me close with his one working arm, let him press his forehead against mine, let him breathe the same air I’m breathing.
“You’re the monster now, Anya. My beautiful, terrifying monster.”
“Takes one to marry one.”
I kiss him. Nothing else matters in this moment except the way his mouth tastes and the way his hand fists in my hair and the sound he makes against my lips.
“I need to stop your bleeding,” I tell him when we break apart.
“Da.” His hand finds my jaw, tilts my face toward his, thumb stroking across my cheekbone with tenderness that makes my chest ache. “In a minute. Let me look at you for one more minute, solnyshko. Let me see what we made together.”
The dining hall doors burst open, and I have my empty gun up before I register that the men flowing through are Bratva captains, the ones who swore, the ones who waited for the outcome before declaring allegiance, Chernov limping but alive at the front with his hand pressed against a wound in his side and determination in his eyes.
They see everything.
Vadim’s corpse.
The blood.
Roman is barely conscious against an overturned chair with his bride kneeling over him in gore and gunpowder.
Chernov drops to one knee. “Pakhan. Tsaritsa.”
One by one, the others follow, eleven men kneeling on marble slick with the blood of the old regime, pledging themselves to whatever rises from the ashes.
The entire room is bowing except for Roman and Galina, and Luka, who stands guard at the door with his weapon still raised.
Galina steps forward from her position near the service entrance, and the captains watch her, registering the woman who has survived three generations of Volkov bloodshed and is still standing while men half her age kneel on marble.
“The old empire is dead,” she announces. “What rises from its ashes serves the Pakhan and Tsaritsa equally, or it doesn’t serve at all. Ponimayete?”
“Da,” the captains respond in unison, their voices blending into a single sound of submission. “Ponimayem.”
We understand.
* * *
I guide Roman to a chair that isn’t covered in viscera, easing him down.
Galina appears beside me with a medical kit.
“He’ll live,” she tells me quietly while I work to suture what I can reach, to pack what I can’t, to stop the bleeding that keeps trying to steal him from me.
“Volkov men are stubborn that way. They survive things that would kill reasonable people because they’re too arrogant to admit they should be dead. ”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.” Her hand finds my shoulder, squeezes once with strength that belies her age. “But it’s true. He survived the crypt, the river, the factory. He’ll survive this, too, especially now that he has something to survive for.”
Roman’s hand finds mine, stilling the needle mid-stitch, and I look up to find him watching me with an expression that makes my throat tight with emotions I don’t have time to process.
“We did it,” he says quietly, only for me.
“We did.” I squeeze his fingers. “Vmeste.” Together.
“There’s no throne without you. There never was. From the moment you walked into my house, I knew. I knew you would either save me or destroy me, and I was right about both.”
His blood soaks into wood that has held this dynasty together for a century.
I stand beside him with my hand on his shoulder.
Galina moves to stand on his other side, completing the picture—Pakhan flanked by the women who will burn the world before they let anyone take what they’ve claimed.
“The old way is finished,” Galina says to the assembled captains. “What comes next will be different. Better, if they’re wise enough to build it that way. Worse, if anyone tries to drag us back to what we were.”
Her hand finds Roman’s cheek, and she blesses him.
“Your mother would be proud,” she tells him, and her voice breaks for the first time since I’ve known her.
Sirens wail in the distance.
Getting closer.
“We need to move,” Luka says from the doorway. “Interpol’s approaching the estate perimeter. Eleanor Keene, Roman, the one from Geneva, has warrants. We have to go now.”
Roman tries to stand.
Can’t.
I slide under his arm, taking his weight on my shoulder, feeling him lean into me.
Galina moves to his other side, her small frame somehow supporting more of his weight, and together we lift him from the Pakhan’s chair toward the service entrance at the back of the dining hall.
“Vmeste,” she says, echoing my earlier word. “Together. That’s how Volkovs survive. That’s how we’ve always survived.”
We cross the dining hall as a trio, past captains who bow as we pass, past Vadim’s corpse cooling on marble, past the ruins of the old empire crumbling around us while something new struggles to be born.
The tunnels swallow us again.
Somewhere above, thermite charges detonate, the fire consuming ledgers and evidence, and the last traces of a regime built on suffering.
We emerge into the grey Moscow dawn.
Snow falls softly.
Three SUVs are waiting with engines running and drivers who don’t ask questions.
Galina presses a kiss to Roman’s forehead before releasing him to my care, her eyes bright with tears she refuses to let fall.
“I’ll handle the captains,” she tells me. “Get him somewhere safe and keep him breathing until I can reach you. Ya naydu vas. I will find you both.”
I help Roman into the back seat of the first SUV, slide in beside him, and watch Galina direct the others.
Luka tears away from the estate as flames begin consuming the upper floors, orange light painting the snow in colors that don’t exist in nature.
Roman’s unconscious within seconds, his body finally surrendering to the damage that’s been trying to kill him since the river.
I check his pulse.
Thready but present.
I hold him against my chest while Moscow streaks past the windows, my chin resting on top of his head, my arms wrapped around the man who chose me over everything.
Behind us, the Volkovskaya estate burns.
Ahead lies an empire fractured and unstable, captains who swore from fear as much as loyalty, Polina Tarasova moving on the ports, Eleanor Keene with warrants and questions, and the full weight of international law.
But Roman’s heart is beating against my palm, and Mishka is safe in Rotterdam, and the trafficking routes are burning, and the throne is ours.
We are the Volkovs.
Pakhan and Tsaritsa.
Partners in an empire we claimed with bullets and blood and love that should have been impossible.
The convoy speeds toward whatever comes next.
I hold him while Moscow wakes to news of the bloodiest succession in fifty years.
And I know with absolute certainty that I would do it again.
Every choice.
Every bullet.
Every body.
Because we are the wolves now.
And anyone who thinks they can take what we killed for is going to learn what happens when you threaten us.