Chapter 183 183

Chapter 183 183
“Hellooo?” Carmine calls. “Mind sharing that with the rest of the audience? Seriously, this is the grand finale. Do we have to get a mic in here?” He taps his foot impatiently on the floor. “Care to loop me in, Yuri?”

I roll my eyes. This man never fucking shuts up, does he? “I said —”

“HE SURRENDERS!”

We all turn to Yuri. “The hell?” I whisper.

“You asked me to save them,” Yuri hisses. “So let me fucking save them.” Then he turns back to Carmine. “He says he surrenders. He accepts your deal.”

“My deal?” Carmine frowns.

“Yes. Your original deal.”

Finally, I realize what he’s up to.

You have three days to surrender yourself. If you do, no harm will come to your family. That’s the deal Yuri came to me with earlier. The original deal.

The room erupts in murmurs: disbelief, outrage, the whole shebang.

“That deal’s no longer on the table, consigliere,” Carmine tuts, his eye twitching with barely suppressed anger.

“The three days haven’t expired.”

He’s pushing it. If he keeps this up, he’s gonna get himself killed too. “Yuri —”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” he insists. “Matvey will be dead. His Bratva will be yours. What good will three dead girls do to you?”

“He’s got a point,” Vlad grumbles. “My idiot daughter can still be of use. And the Groza runt—her whore of a mother can raise her for us, preserve the bloodline. We can marry her off when it suits our needs.”

“No!” April screams.

I lock eyes with April at the edge of the arena. I can tell she wants to wring Vlad’s neck with her own bare hands, and Petra certainly isn’t looking any happier, but I need them to understand. To push their emotions aside and let me do this.

If they don’t, they will be killed. May will be killed.

This way, only one of us has to die.

“April…” Her hazel eyes look just like they did when I first met her: big, bright, beautiful—and filled with all the hope in the world. “Trust me.”

Wordlessly, she nods.

“Fine,” Carmine finally concedes, though not happily. “Then I guess we’d better make it official.”

He gives Yuri a signal. Immediately, he twists my arms behind my back. He isn’t using any strength at all, but he doesn’t need to: I let him.

“Matvey Groza…” My father grins. “I accept your surrender.”

OceanofPDF.com

60

APRIL

This is a nightmare.

It has to be. There’s no way this can be happening. There’s no way that Matvey…

He’s going to die.

He’s going to sacrifice himself for us.

I watch the man I love walk past me, hands twisted behind his back, and something inside me just snaps. My reason, my logic—it all goes flying out the window.

Because I can’t lose him.

“Matvey…” I whisper brokenly. “Matvey! MATVEY!”

Carmine’s men hold me back. I barely even feel them—like a banshee, I keep throwing myself forward and screaming. Wailing with a kind of pain they cannot possibly understand.

Until two seconds ago, I didn’t think I could, either.

“Will someone keep that bitch quiet?” Vlad spits from his podium of traitors.

“April,” Petra murmurs, “you need to calm down. There’s nothing we can do. He made his choice.”

But her words fall on deaf ears. “No,” I keep chanting over and over. “No, no, Matvey, you can’t—YOU CAN’T!”

With one last push, I free myself from the guards. I run like a woman possessed. Yuri looks at me like I’ve gone crazy, but it’s not me who’s done that. It’s him. “How could you do this?!” I yell. “He’s your brother! You’re killing him! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?!”

I can hear the symphony of guns clicking all around me, bullets waiting in their chambers, ready to strike me down. But for once, I don’t care. I keep yelling, clawing at Yuri like he’s the only thing standing between me and Matvey, even though I know it’s not that simple. Even though he isn’t lifting a single finger to defend himself.

Even though —

He’s the one who just saved your life.

But what good is my life if Matvey can’t be a part of it?

“Traitor!” I scream, oblivious to Carmine’s hand slowly rising to signal his men. Nothing can snap me out of my frenzy—nothing, nothing. “Traitor, traitor, TRAITOR —”

“Let me.”

Except that voice.

The guns go still. Carmine’s palm, too, one move shy from spelling my doom. “Fine. But make it quick.”

Then he motions for Yuri to step aside.

“April.” Matvey kneels down with me. His hands are free now, but he isn’t making a single move to run. Why? “Thank you. But you need to stand down now.”

“No,” I croak.

“Yes,” he insists, though gently. Without a single trace of force in his voice. It’s like, for the first time, I’m speaking to a version of Matvey who’s at peace.

Problem is, I’m not. I’m at war with the world. I am hatred and fury and a single selfish wish: Take me with you.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You will.”

“I won’t —”

“For our daughter.”

Our daughter. That’s right. I have a daughter. I…

I lift up my gaze. The bundle in Carmine’s arms is stirring, trying to fight whatever potion he’s given her. Trying to reach me.

Finally, the fog clears. “For our daughter,” I murmur back.

“Yes. She’ll need you,” Matvey continues to speak into my ear, low and gentle. “More than ever now.”

“It’s not fair,” I sob.

“Nothing’s fair,” he rasps, catching a falling tear with his thumb, “in love and war.”

Then he stands up again. “Yuri.”

Like old times, Yuri obeys the unspoken command in an instant. He secures Matvey’s hands behind his back one more time and curses, low enough that only he and I can hear, in a Russian dialect I can’t understand.

“You should’ve just killed me,” he whispers to Matvey in English. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

Matvey doesn’t reply in English. When his words come, they come in his native idiom. “Potomu chto ty moy brat.”