“She. Is. Alive.”

Milana sighs and then nods. “Okay. She’s alive.” She glances at the red smear that was once Vikentiy Kulikov. “He was the last lieutenant, you know.”

She’s reminding me that his death marks the death of our last substantial lead. Without him, we have nothing. Just casting around blindly in the dark.

“Ravil has more men out there,” I say. “They’ll have scattered to the winds by now, but we can track them down.”

“Kolya, you’re talking about hundreds of men, most of whom almost certainly don’t know a goddamn thing. Hell, I bet half of them have never even heard of June.”

“Only one way to find out.”

Her jaw pulses erratically. “We can’t afford to keep this search up, Kolya,” she says. “I know you’re grieving—”

I twist around, grab her by the throat, and push her up against the window. My hand is more of a threat than anything else. This is not about hurting her; it’s about reminding her.

“Who am I?” I snarl. “Who the fuck am I?”

Her eyes tremble with both fear and defiance. “You are my don.”

“Precisely. And as your don, I expect my orders to be followed.”

She grits her teeth and slaps my hand off her throat as her anger boils over. “And I will follow your orders, reckless and fruitless as they may be. But I need you to hear me. You still have a Bratva to run. You have businesses that need your attention, not to mention allies you need to appease.”

“They can wait.”

“No,” she snaps. “They won’t wait, Kolya. No man is an island. We need them.”

“I don’t need—”

“Yes,” she interrupts, “you do. You think we can run our empire with the Golubevs? Without the Skull Riders? Without the Greeks, the Albanians, the Cubans? Because if you really do think that, you’re about to find out how wrong you are. Our allies and suppliers are cutting us off one by one, Kolya. We’re bad news. We’re split down the middle and burning at the edges. They’re right to do it, too. Can’t even blame the bastards. It’s just bad business at this point.”

Her words hang over us in the dusty room like a crown of thorns.

“Jesus,” I growl, running a hand through my hair.

June used to do that for me at night—stroke her fingertips through my hair again and again. A meditation. A hypnosis. It doesn’t feel real, that week. One week after the wedding went from a fake threat to a real promise, and June Cole went from an obligation into my fiancée.

“As I said,” Milana resumes, “we need to re-focus, Kolya. You need to refocus. If you let this consume you, then we’ll lose everything. I don’t think we can afford that. Not when we’ve already lost so much.”

She’s right, I know she is.

I just don’t want to hear it right now.

“She couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air,” I say softly.