Ilya's on my left, dropping three more in the same breath. He's always been better at this part than me.
"PAKHAN!" One of ours catches my eye between shots.
"Where is she?" I shout back. "Where's your pakhanessa?"
"Safe room, Pakhan! We sent three of our best women with her. Sonya's got her sidearm, they're locked in!" He fires twice more between sentences, taking down a shooter who'd peeked around a doorway. "She's safe, I swear it on my life, she's safe!"
I can’t feel relief until I have her in my arms and can confirm it with my own hands.
I need to finish clearing this floor before I go find her myself. When the rest realize their numbers are dwindling, they’ll make a run for it themselves out of the estate.
Doesn’t matter. I’ll hunt them to the end of the earth.
We push forward, room by room, Ilya covering my back through the west corridor. Their numbers are thinning fast. Ten left, maybe fifteen, and every one of the Bratva men is fighting like a demon.
My mind keeps running the same name on a never-ending loop.
Nora. Nora. Nora.
Almost there. Almost done. Then I find her.
Chapter Seventeen
Nora
Sometimes in life, you have to make a choice.
And sometimes that choice changes the entire trajectory of everything that comes after—for better, or for so much worse.
Today is that day for me. And I have to make the choice under gunfire.
This is exactly the scenario I always knew was waiting somewhere down the road in Slava's world. Nothing but violence. Blood. Filth that goes past anything I was ever taught to consider a sin. I always knew this moment would come eventually, the second he dragged me into this life. I just never knew if I'd survive it, or when it would actually arrive, or who it would take away from me.
It's a filthy, ugly world.
And it's the only version of life that has my Slava in it. The man I love with a passion that scares me most days. He spoils me endlessly—except it's filthy money paying for every bit of it. He holds me like I'm something precious every single night, touches me in ways that feel like the closest thing to heaven I've ever known—except his hands are blood-stained.
Slava is not a good man. He is, by every conventional measure, a very bad one.
And I have to choose.
Accept him exactly as he is. Learn to live as a sinner by association, and spend every day praying I don't lose him tosome mafia war. Or run. Slip out the back, buy myself peace and a clean conscience, and let go of the only man I've ever loved.
Right now, in this exact chaos, I could actually do it. Slip through the back door while everyone is distracted. Nobody would notice until it was already done.
It's now or never.
As if Ada can read my thoughts, her grip on my wrist tightens. "Please. Stay. You soften his edges, dorogaya. Don't leave him."
Leave. Or don't leave.
A bullet shatters a vase somewhere behind us, and I flinch hard, my shoulder slamming into the cabinet.
Am I going to survive this? Is he?
I need to decide, and I can feel my eyes dragging toward the back door every few seconds.
Ada releases my wrist. "You have five minutes. I won't stop you either way, whatever you choose. In five minutes, Sonya comes to take us to the safe room. That is all the time either of us has."
