I can feel Milana’s eyes on me. She’s waiting for me to start fighting back. She’s waiting for me to be the ruthless don I always have been. Crush the uprising. Execute the traitor. Grind every enemy beneath the heel of your boot.

“You wanna know what I’m going to do about it?” I ask softly. I pause, then I say the answer I’ve arrived at again and again and again every time I’ve thought about how this might end. “Not a damn thing.”

Milana and Adrian both look at me, stunned.

“June doesn’t want you dead,” I continue. “And I will not do anything that might hurt her.”

Milana looks panicked. She knows what’s going to happen next, long before Adrian’s sweaty, fear-soaked brain has even begun to piece it together. “Kolya… he will never stop coming for you. He’s selling young women into prostitution. He’s—”

“I know what he’s doing. And he will pay for it,” I promise her. “But I will not kill him.”

“That’s so generous of you, brother,” he mocks. “Making big promises when I’m the one holding the gun.”

I turn to him solemnly and sigh. “That’s true, Adrian. So the real question should be, what are you going to do?”

“You wanna know what I’m going to do?” His eyes glow with the pale poison of long-held anger and hatred. The kind that rots you soul-first. “I’ll tell you. I’m going to strip away everything beautiful in your life. I’m taking away your Bratva, Kolya. I’m taking back my woman and my child. At the end of it all, you’ll be left with nothing. And it starts now.”

I stand tall and prepare for the end. I hear the click of the hammer of the gun as he thumbs it into place. He sucks in a breath.

Then he turns and fires at Milana.

45

JUNE

I hadn’t meant to stay away so long.

I just wanted some time to myself. To walk. To think. To take stock.

It has been dark for a few hours now and I’ve gone from waiting for Kolya to show up in a rage searching for me, to wondering why he hasn’t shown up in a rage looking for me.

I catch a cab back home. As we drive up the sloping hill that leads to the mansion, I realize the gates are half open and there are at least a dozen men milling around. Even from the backseat of the cab, I can feel the tension in the air.

The cabbie slows down a little. “Uh… this your address, miss?”

“Yes,” I tell him as panic grips me. “Here you go. Keep the change.”

I get out of the car and pace fast towards the gates. Some of the men look at me in panic, as if I might be a threat. But then they recognize my face and move aside without a word.

I don’t recognize any of them so I don’t ask questions. I just rush past them, then up the driveway towards the front door. By the time I reach it, not only am I winded, I’m a hundred percent certain sure that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.