Chapter 151 151

Chapter 151 151
Maks.

Maks, who’s my right arm.

Maks, who’s been with me at every turn.

Maks, who held Desya down as I gouged out his eye.

Maks, who’s family.

“GET AWAY FROM THERE!”

Kazimir’s shout yanks me back to the present. When I raise my head, I see exactly why he’s yelling: a red dot on Maksim’s forehead.

I don’t think; I act.

I tighten my hold and throw my second-in-command to the ground. He hits the deck with a grunt of pain, but I can’t afford to be gentle with him. I’m too busy keeping him alive.

Desya’s bullet misses. Doesn’t burrow into my brigadir’s head like he wanted. Instead, it bites into my shoulder.

Pain explodes through my arm. I clench my teeth, force myself not to scream. Remind myself I’ve felt worse things than this. But it still hurts like fucking hell.

Chaos erupts on deck. My people start moving, raising their weapons. But soon, Desya’s silenced bullets aren’t the only thing piercing through the crowd.

It’s men in camouflage.

Prizrak.

They start boarding en masse, a flood of shadows and gunshots. Recruits start dropping, turning me into a liar in a matter of minutes.

No one dies tonight. Yeah, fucking right.

Failure burns on my tongue. But I can’t give up. Kazimir is still breathing—and so is Maks.

I drag us to the side of the yacht. The dark waters of the Hudson churn under us. It’s a steep drop, but it might be the only chance we’ve got.

Except that Maks is already struggling to breathe.

Blyat’. He’s got a punctured lung—there’s no way he can swim.

So I’ll have to play this differently.

I think back to everything Desya’s said and done. How he’s been hurting everyone around me—everyone but me. And then I understand what I’ve got to do.

“Kaz.” My last vor rushes over in an instant. “Protect him with your life.”

He gives a grim nod. “What are you going to⁠—?”

“What needs to be done.”

Prizrak is closing in on us, soldiers swarming from every side. I catch a glimpse of Desya at the center of the deck, eyepatch gleaming black, a sick grin on his face. Like he’s won.

He raises his gun. I don’t raise mine.

A bullet won’t save Maksim. It won’t save Kazimir. It won’t save Mia.

So I do the only thing that will: I grab onto the railing and throw myself overboard.

The three last things I see⁠—

Desya’s face twisting in horror.

His men, ditching Kaz and Maks to chase after me.

And the dark, churning waters, swallowing me whole.

51

YULIAN

Visions swirl before my eyes. Hazy, confused images, like dreams inside of dreams. Mia’s face. Mia’s smile, bright as the midday sun. Mia’s lips, calling my name.

For one endless second, I think I’m back in bed with her. That the yacht ambush never happened. She’s rolling over towards me, a huge grin on her face. Saying something that I can’t hear.

Her mouth shapes three words. I think I know what they are. I haven’t told her yet—been waiting for the right time, the right place.

“I love⁠—”

But when I open my eyes, it’s not Mia I see.

It’s darkness. It’s the Hudson closing in on me. Then it’s sand.

“Oh, no, no. Don’t even try.” A cold, abrasive voice cuts through the fog. “You don’t get to die yet. Not until I say so.”

Desya.

He drags me along the sandy bank, then rotten planks. I barely have time to realize what’s happening—that he’s pulling me out of the water, saving me—before he drops me unceremoniously near the edge of the pier.

I twist around, start coughing up water. My lungs burn. My shoulder throbs. Everything hurts.

But somehow, I start laughing.

Because I was right. I found it. The one thing Desya gives a shit about. A single, precious piece of leverage.

Me.

Desya’s face turns vicious in the moonlight. “You think this is funny?” He reels back his leg and kicks me in the stomach. Once, twice, again, again, until I lose count. “You think this is a fucking joke?! You’re mine, Yul. You don’t get to quit this game. Only I decide when you’ve had enough!”

His foot connects with my side over and over again. Soon, a metallic taste fills my mouth. The next time I cough, it isn’t water anymore.

I reach for my gun—waterproof, the height of StarTech research—but Desya instantly kicks it far away. Then he grabs me by the collar and yanks me up to meet his gaze.

“You abandoned me,” he snarls. “You left me to die. Worse, you didn’t even finish the goddamn job. Do you have any idea how hard it was? To pick myself back up after that? I wanted to die.”

“Then you should have.”

He throws me down again. I should feel weak, being pushed around like this. I should be ashamed. But I can’t find it in me.

Because, for once, I’m winning.

Desya killed two of my vory. He grazed a third, crippled a fourth, sent the fifth hiding. Tonight, he came for my right-hand man.

But I’m the one he wants.

And as long as that’s true, I’ve got the upper hand.

He yanks off his eyepatch. A blackened crater stares at me from where his eye used to be. The jagged scar there… I remember carving every inch.

“It wasn’t mercy, you know.” He’s laughing now, crazed and manic. “What you did. It was cruel.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You let me live.” His voice turns jagged with madness. “It was hell. You damned me, Yul. Forced me to live with my sins for twenty fucking years!”

Sins. That word lodges in my gut like a stray bullet. So he’s aware, isn’t he? He knows what he’s done. That he butchered my family for nothing. After all those bullshit justifications he fed me, all the mental gymnastics—in the end, they couldn’t hold up in the face of the truth.

I wish I could say it feels good, but it doesn’t. In our past, there are no winners. Desya’s war made losers out of us all.

His remaining eye is bulging. I look at him and can’t find a single trace of the boy I once knew. Just a twisted reflection in a broken mirror.

My anger drains from me. All I can feel is cold, bitter disappointment.

It didn’t have to turn out this way. None of this had to turn out this way.

You could have chosen differently.

But he didn’t.

And here we fucking are.