Chapter 178

“But not April?”

Silence.

Petra scoffs. “Go. Get out of my sight.”

“Please, just listen —”

“I LOVED YOU!”

It’s worse than a scream—it’s a howl. Like there’s nothing human left there. Just a broken beast with a bleeding heart.

“I loved you,” Petra exhales when the echoes of her wail die down. “And you betrayed me. You betrayed us.”

“I saved us,” Yuri whispers, his pain just as real.

“No, you killed us. Now go.”

“Petra—”

“GO!” she screams. “Or I swear I will kill myself with the first sharp thing I find.”

It’s as good a threat as Yuri used with me. With us. He took Matvey’s family hostage, and now…

Now, Petra holds hostage his.

With a silent nod, Yuri obeys. He turns around, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, and leaves the same way he came.

The second his steps fade, Petra slumps against the bars. She takes one deep breath, then another. “Okay.” She turns to me, eyes blazing. “Time to get the fuck out of here.”

For once, we are in perfect agreement.

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57

MATVEY

At first, I think I’m dreaming.

There’s a hand combing through my hair. There aren’t many people I would give that privilege to, either in this world or the next, and right now, I’m unsure which one I’m in.

But then her scent reaches me. Not like snow and crackling firewood, but like flowers. Battered and bruised, but still stubbornly growing out of the cracks in the concrete.

April.

Her fingers skirt around the edges of my wound carefully, a nasty bump at the back of my head. I can’t have bled much, but I can still feel a matted clump of hair there, even as she does her best to avoid it. Her warmth surrounds me. When I move, my cheekbone grazes the exposed part of her knees.

If this is heaven, you can leave me right here.

“Dummy,” April snorts. “Heaven can wait. I still need you on planet Earth.”

It’s the one request I can’t deny.

I drag myself upright, already mourning the warmth of April’s lap, and scan my surroundings. It’s not very bright, but I’m used to the darkness by now. In a handful of seconds, my eyes have adjusted, and I can make out the place I’ve been tossed into.

A cold, damp cell.

“Rise and shine, solnyshko.”

Yep. Definitely not heaven. “I take it our fathers couldn’t splurge on separate cells?” I mutter, head pounding like crazy.

“Nope. Stingy motherfuckers.”

“How are you feeling?” April asks me, all concern. I finally take in her face: soot-stained, hair sticking to the sweat on her brow, her smudged makeup turning her into a raccoon.

She’s never been more beautiful to me.

“I should be asking that.” I take her hands in mine and squeeze. Her fingers are cold as ice, as if she’d been holding on to the iron bars for hours before I joined her. Guilt pierces me at the thought: once again, I’ve done too little, too late. “If they did something to you, I swear —”

“They didn’t,” she quickly reassures me. “Well, except give me a nasty bump to the head. But that just makes us twinsies, right?”

How can she crack jokes at a time like this? Any other civilian would be screaming their head off in this situation. Taken by the mafia and the Bratva? Even on the best of days, that’s not something ordinary people can handle. It’s just not.

But April’s always been different: a soldier in everything but name. A fighter. And today, we’re going to need that more than ever.

I pull her into my arms. Once we’re close enough, I whisper in her ear, “Guards?”

“Two,” April murmurs back. “Both at the entrance of the tunnel.”

Hm. That’s fewer than I expected. Guess Carmine’s feeling a little too confident, then. “May?”

“Carmine has her,” she rasps. “We can’t fail, Matvey. If we do…”

There’s no telling what he’ll do to her.

“I know.”

It’s taking everything I have to keep my boiling blood at bay. The old me would’ve started pounding the bars the second he woke up, barking threats for everyone to hear. He would’ve yanked the fucking things off their hinges, then gotten shot for his trouble.

Or maybe he’d have died surrounded by Vlad’s men, with no one to take his side.

But now, after everything that’s happened… I finally understand.

What it truly means to be a leader.

Until now, I thought going it alone was the only way. Getting angry, getting even: that was my creed. As pakhan and as a man.

But that’s not it. “Angry” doesn’t equal “right”; “alone” doesn’t equal “strong.” That recipe for misery and an untimely death—I’m done following its instructions. I’m done fighting for the sake of fighting.

Now, I finally have something worth fighting for. Someone worth fighting for. Someone who will fight with me, for me, in return.

My family.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s make a plan.”

A grin blooms on April’s face. “Yes, pakhan.”

“Look at you. You finally learned how to say it.”

She flips her hair, preening at the praise. “Of course I did. I’m your future piranha.”

“Pakhansha.”

“Details.”

God, I love her. It’s absurd how often the thought keeps blindsiding me. In the smallest of things, the most insignificant moments: I love her. I never want to let her go.

Once this nightmare is over, I’m putting a ring on her finger. I don’t care if I have to drag her to the courthouse in her pajamas—I’m not waiting a fucking month. I’m not waiting another minute.

But first, we have to get out of here.

“We need to do something about the cuffs.”

“I might have a solution to that,” April murmurs. “But we’ll need a distraction.”

“Excuse me?” Petra interjects, irritated. “Care to loop me in?”

We both turn to look at her at the same time. I’m no psychic. I don’t even believe that shit. But when I lock eyes with April again, I can practically see her thoughts.

Because they’re exactly like mine.

“Uhh…” Petra says, uncomfortable. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Petra…” April pipes up, her pitch an octave higher. “How would you feel about another heist?”

“This is stupid,” Petra mutters.

“No, it’s not,” April retorts. “It’s our only play.”