Chapter 30
Kirill
I wake to a violent crash from downstairs. The sound is so sudden and loud it stirs Stella from her sleep too.
“What’s going on?” Stella yawns beside me, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Stay here, dusha moya,” I order, pressing a tender kiss to the smooth curve of her shoulder before jumping out of bed, and dragging on my boxers. “I’ll be right back.”
I bolt from the bedroom and take the stairs two at a time, only to freeze halfway down.
Misha is on top of Sasha.
Not arguing.
Not shoving.
Beating him. Beating Sasha into a bloody pulp.
His fists come down in a blind, savage rhythm—bone against bone, wet and devastating. Sasha doesn’t even fight back. He just tries to shield his face as blood splatters across the floor.
“The fuck?!” Kostya shouts as he barrels in beside me. “Holy shit!”
Realizing that Misha will only stop when Sasha is no longer breathing, we launch ourselves down the last few steps and grab Misha by the arms, hauling them behind his back just as he tries to land another crushing blow.
He thrashes like a wild animal, screaming in Russian, veins bulging, grief turning him feral.
“The fuck is going on?!” I roar, struggling to keep my grip as he surges against us with terrifying strength.
“You took her from me!” Misha shrieks, voice shredded raw. “Bring her back! Bring her back!”
Sasha coughs, bloody and barely upright, one eye already swelling shut. “We can’t, brother,” he chokes out. “What you’re asking…we can’t, Misha. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
Misha lets out a sound that isn’t quite a scream and not quite a sob.
And that’s when the full weight of it hits me.
He’s not fighting Sasha.
He’s fighting reality.
And he’s losing.
“Bring her back to me! Bring her home!” Misha keeps screaming, his body surging against our grip with frightening strength. It’s getting harder to hold him—harder to keep him from killing Sasha like he seems hell-bent on doing.
“What is he talking about, Sasha?!” I shout over my brother’s madness.
“He wants us to bring Elena home,” Sasha rasps, his voice broken and raw.
Kostya looks at me, sheer panic in his eyes.
Fuck.
Did Misha forget that his wife is dead? Is his grief so powerful that his mind has simply erased the truth?
“I want her home,” Misha sobs now, the fight slowly draining out of his body. “Bring my Elena home. Bring her home, Sasha. I need her here. I can’t do this without her. Please.”
The word please nearly tears him in half.
And that’s when it hits both Kostya and me at the same time.
He wants Sasha to go back to the grave where his wife was laid to rest… and dig her out.
So he can bury her here.
Sasha isn’t a religious man—not even close. But like most Bratva soldati, he is superstitious. And disturbing a body once it’s been put into the earth? That’s the kind of sin that stains a soul forever. That’s bad karma of the darkest kind.
And yet Misha is begging for it like a dying man begging for air.
None of us knows how to react to that. None of us has the right words to reason with our erratic brother.
Then we hear it.
Soft sobbing from the staircase.
We all turn to find Kira clinging to Lucky for dear life, her entire body shaking with quiet cries. Beside her stands Stella, her eyes locked on mine, almost pleading, as if knowing exactly what choice is forming in my chest.
“We’ll get Elena,” I hear myself say, staring straight at my soul’s emerald eyes.
If the roles were reversed, I’d probably be on my knees too…begging to keep the woman I love close, in any way I could have her.
“We will?” Kostya asks, uncertain, fear threading his voice.
“Yes,” I answer firmly. “We will.”
“I’m coming with you,” young Romano calls from above. He presses a trembling Kira into Stella’s arms without hesitation, trusting his sister to protect the person that matters most in his life, while he willingly steps into hell with us.
I guess he understands it too.
Why a man would desecrate a grave just to be closer to the woman he loves.
I keep my frantic brother pinned long enough to pull back and look him in the eyes.
“We’ll get Elena,” I tell him firmly. “But in the meantime, you can’t kill Sasha. You hear me, Misha? Don’t fucking kill our brother or I’ll be rightfully pissed.”
He doesn’t answer.
Come to think of it, his screaming and cursing at Sasha has been the most I’ve heard him speak in days.
“I’ll watch over Misha,” Stella says assuredly, stepping forward. “You go. Do what you need to do. We’ll be here.”
On that, Kostya and I slowly release our grip. Misha immediately goes slack again—numb, empty, barely present in his own body.
I hold Stella’s gaze one last time before turning toward the door, Kostya and Lucky falling in behind me.
“I knew coming to Russia was going to be a clusterfuck,” Lucky mutters as we head out, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “But I never thought it would go this bad.”
None of us says another word on the long drive into Moscow, much less utter a sound when we reach the cemetery Elena is buried in.
The earth is still loose when we reach the grave.
That makes it worse.
Kostya drives the shovel into the soil with a curse under his breath, every movement sharp and angry, like he’s trying to punish the ground for what it’s holding.
“Gospodi, prosti nas, greshnykh,” he mutters, throwing a sign of the cross just to drive the point home.
Lucky pauses beside Kostya, watching the dirt fly.
“What are you fucking mumbling over there?”
“What do you think? I’m asking God to forgive us sinners.”
“Okay. I guess that’s as good a plan as any. Let me try,” he says and then, with exaggerated reverence, Lucky folds his hands and begins praying in Italian, “Madonna Santa, perdona noi peccatori, anche se siamo solo un branco di idioti.”
Kostya shoots him a murderous look. “This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing, asshole,” Lucky says solemnly, tossing another shovelful of dirt aside. “I’m hedging my bets.”
I keep digging without a word, needing this to be over and done with. The scrape of metal against wood comes too soon, causing us all to freeze in place.
Kostya crosses himself again. “Fuck. I can’t fucking believe we’re really doing this.”
Lucky clears his throat. “Technically, we haven’t crossed into soul-condemning territory yet. We could still turn back.”
“Grab the sides,” I order, ending their hesitation.
Together, we pry the coffin free inch by inch, the wet suck of the earth fighting us like it doesn’t want to let her go.
Kostya whispers another prayer.
Lucky repeats his again in Italian.
And somehow, their ridiculous prayers are the only thing holding us together as we lift Elena back into the world of the living.
Four hours later, when we return with the coffin, we find a manic Misha in the garden, digging a grave beside the flower beds Elena once tended for hours on end.
Frankie is nowhere in sight. She’s probably locked in her room, spared from witnessing this nightmare. But true to her word, Stella stands nearby, watching over Misha as he keeps digging like a man possessed.
When he realizes we’re back, he throws the shovel aside. Dirt clings to his hair, his face, his hands as he hauls himself out of the pit he carved through the earth with grief and desperation.
Together, we lower the coffin into its final resting place.
Misha refuses all help with covering it. He shovels the dirt back alone, methodical, trembling, relentless. When he’s finished, he simply stands there, staring down at the mound of fresh earth.
Then he pulls a photograph from his back pocket.
He presses a soft kiss to it… and lays it gently atop the grave.
Stella’s tears finally spill when we all recognize the image.
Misha and Elena on their wedding day—bright smiles on their faces as they exit the very church that held her funeral earlier that morning.
And then, as if God himself finally takes mercy on my brother, the rain begins to fall.
At first softly.
Then harder.
Until we are soaked to the bone.
Misha drops to his knees in the mud, whispering the same broken sentence over and over in Russian—his voice cracked, wrecked, unrecognizable.
“You’re home, my love. You’re home. Where you belong.”
The next day, we’re all gathered around the kitchen, every one of us running on no sleep after the hell we endured the night before.
Even Misha sits at the breakfast nook, staring through the window at Elena’s new gravesite in the garden.
Sasha rises from his seat to grab another ice pack for his swollen eye. My brother looks like he went a round with the devil himself, and yet he hasn’t uttered a single word of complaint.
“You should eat, Uncle,” Kira says softly, setting a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of Misha. But to no one’s surprise, he doesn’t even flinch.
She returns to the island and sinks onto the stool beside Lucky. They both watch Misha in silence, helplessly searching for something…anything…that might dull his pain.
But nothing will. Not yet. The wound is far too fresh.
Thank God baby Nadya slept through all the chaos. I’d hate for her first memory in this world to be watching her father come completely unglued. It will be traumatic enough when she someday learns that Misha ordered us to dig up her mother’s weary bones just to keep her close.
Poor Nadya.
What kind of world awaits her?
“What’s wrong?” Stella asks softly as she slips between my knees and rests her head on my shoulder.
“Besides everything, milaya? Nothing at all,” I murmur, tipping her chin back to steal a kiss, needing the reminder that there’s still something good left in this broken house.
“So this is a thing now?” Lucky drawls, popping a strip of bacon into his mouth. “We’re just supposed to sit here and watch you two make out at breakfast? Some of us are trying to eat, you know.”
I recognize the attempt to lighten the mood, so I let it slide.