AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The feeling of it in my hand doesn’t send a cold chill through me this time. I can’t think about anything other than the rage bubbling in my veins, the way I feel hot and angry, letting my emotion drive me for the first time in my life.
I deserve this catharsis. I’ve had so much taken from me. And the men kneeling in front of me deserve nothing at all.
“No, please!” Stepan starts to beg in garbled vowels, spit and blood bubbling as he chews at his lower lip, his eyes starting to tear as the one open eye goes wide. I realize at that moment that he hadn’t expected me to do it, that he’d thought I was too weak. That he’d thought he could sneer at me and spit at me, and I’d still refuse to take the gift of revenge that my husband had offered me.
Well, he’s fucking wrong,I think bitterly. And at that moment, I’m more sure than ever that this is what I want, looking down at the sniveling men in front of me.
“It’s your choice, whether to do it or not,” Viktor says calmly next to me as I look down at the gun. “They’ll die either way, but you don’t have to be the one to pull the trigger.” He pauses, and there’s a gravity to his voice when he speaks again that makes me look up at him, my gaze meeting his.
“It will change you, Caterina,” he says quietly. “You won’t be the same once you pull that trigger. You can’t ever go back to being a person who hasn’t killed another. It will follow you for the rest of your life. But it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can make you stronger, just like everything else I’ve shown you today.”
There’s a seriousness in his voice that gives me pause, that makes me wonder for the first time who Viktor was before he pulled a trigger for the first time, if he was a softer man, kinder. If there was someone else he could have been if he hadn’t done it.
I’m sure he didn’t have a choice, though, not really. I do. I can hand him the gun and walk away, go inside, and not have to even so much as witness their deaths. I can let someone else fight this battle for me.
But I’ve been letting other people fight my battles for way too long. Hell, my best friend was the one who took out my abusive husband. If she could do that, then I can take what Viktor is offering me.
A chance to have my revenge, to take back a piece of myself.
Whether he’s doing it as part of a plot to indebt me to him more or out of a genuine desire to give it to me doesn’t matter.
The result will be the same. And I want it.
“I wanted to give you the opportunity,” Viktor says, his voice deep and dark at my ear. “The choice to take it or not is yours.”
I don’t have to think twice. I give myself just a moment to savor the look of terror on Stepan’s face, to see his mouth start to form the words to beg me again. I hear something that sounds likeplease, and I feel a cruel smile twist my mouth, very much like the one I’ve seen on Viktor’s face in the past.
Maybe this will make me more like him. But I can’t bring myself to care.
“Fuck you,” I say, very clearly. And then I pull the trigger.
His eyes go wide when he hears me speak, but that’s all he has time for. I might have just winged the bottle during my practice, but he’s too close for me to miss, the muzzle of my gun nearly pressed to his skin when I pull the trigger. The shot rocks me backward, the acrid scent of gunpowder filling the air, and I watch him topple over as if I’m in a dream, the wound in his forehead blossoming open, blood trailing over his pale skin as he wobbles on his knees and falls.
My own blood is roaring in my ears, and dimly I hear another gunshot right next to me. Andrei falls too, his mouth open as if to beg for his own life, and when I look sideways, I see Viktor standing there, his own smoking gun in his hand as he looks down at the body of the man he just shot. There’s not an ounce of remorse on his face, and I know there’s none on mine either.
My husband lifts his head slowly, looking at me, and our eyes meet.
I can’t hear anything over the pounding in my ears, can’t feel anything past the adrenaline buzzing over my skin, can’t move from the spot where I feel rooted to the earth. My fingers go nerveless, dropping the gun to the ground for the second time today, but this time Viktor doesn’t reach for it.
Instead, he reaches for me.
With one swift movement, he hands off his own gun to Levin and sweeps me off of my feet into his arms, scooping me up bridal-style as he strides away from the bodies, from Levin and his other men, back towards the cabin.
VIKTOR
Iknow it’s fucked up that nothing has ever made me desire my wife more than watching her put a bullet through another man’s skull.
But the moment she pulled the trigger, I knew I couldn’t wait for another second to have her again. I know that she’s tired, sore, still injured, and still healing, but I’m past rational thought.
I need my wife. I need to make her mine again, to possess her and remind her who her body belongs to. To wipe away all the fingerprints those animals left on her and replace them with my own.
It feels good to sweep her into my arms again, to feel the delicate weight of her body as I stride away from my men towards the cabin, leaving the bodies behind for them to clean up.
That’s for them to deal with, not me. I am their leader, theirUssuri, theirpakhan, and I’ve done my part.
Now it’s time for me to be something else.
Caterina’s husband.
