Total pages in book: 52
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
She said nothing, but her mouth parted as if she were trying to breathe through something too thick to swallow. The gun still shook in her hands, and her eyes were wide, locked on her father like she couldn’t quite make sense of what she’d just done.
“Zoya,” I said gruffly. “Give me the gun, malyshka.” I didn’t want this darkness to take her under.
Andrey opened his mouth, but before he got a word out, she fired again. The round hit, and Andrey went still on the ground, blood spilling, blooming red and violent.
The house went quiet except for our breathing. I stayed still for another second, gaze locked on Zoya and how she was processing this. She exhaled, and the weapon dipped toward the floor as if it weighed too much for her to hold any longer.
I rose and straightened, pushing through the pain, and crossed the space between us. Blood soaked through my shirt and down my hip, but I barely felt it compared to what I felt looking at her.
She wasn’t staring at Andrey’s body anymore and instead had her focus on her hands, as if she didn’t recognize they were hers. Her throat worked repeatedly as if she might be sick, but my girl was strong. She didn’t cry, didn’t scream. She was slowly processing what was happening. I knew the shock was settling in, cold and hollow.
In this moment, Zoya realized she had killed her father. Not the monster he truly but the father she wished she had growing up. The fantasy one who protected and loved her unconditionally.
I gently took the gun from her hand, her fingers icy-cold, her eyes wide and her face pale.
“It’s done,” she whispered, but it didn’t sound like victory. It sounded like disbelief, as if she were trying to convince herself the world hadn’t just split open beneath her feet… like she hadn’t killed someone.
I looked at Andrey’s body on the floor then back at her.
The look in her eyes wasn’t weakness. It was the moment her innocence bled out, and something unbreakable took its place.
Chapter 21
Zoya
The first thing I felt wasn’t relief. It was the heavy, suffocating weight of silence. The kind that presses against your eardrums after it makes everything ring. The kind that makes your pulse sound too loud inside your own head.
My father’s body lay several feet away, blood pooling dark and slow beneath him. Dmitry made one call after it was done. The men who arrived weren’t paramedics or police. They were cleaners. Bratva-adjacent contractors who existed in the margins of the organization.
They were the kind of men who handled fallout and made problems disappear before sunrise. No one asked what had happened.
They stepped over bodies like debris, checked pulses out of habit, and began working. One man dragged plastic sheeting across the floor, and that’s when I looked away.
After several minutes, I glanced back and saw two of the cleaners crouch beside my father’s body. They didn’t hesitate as they rolled him onto thick plastic sheeting like cargo, wrapped him tight, and sealed it with wide strips of industrial tape.
Then they lifted him and carried him out to the van with the others. In this world, bodies weren’t mourned. They were managed.
The men from Dmitry’s crew moved efficiently around us. Shell casings disappeared. Glass was swept. Surfaces wiped. The river house would be sanitized to where it was like nothing happened. My father would vanish into paperwork and rumors. In this world, high-ranking men didn’t die publicly unless it served someone more powerful.
Within an hour, there would be no sign that bodies had littered the ground. That was how this world survived. It erased its own.
I waited to feel something, but I didn’t. My hands were still trembling, and Dmitry noticed before I did. He stepped closer, not touching me yet, just positioning himself in front of me so I had to look at him. Then I patched him up, white gauze covering his wound, blood seeping through.
“You’re shaking,” he whispered.
“I know.”
It wasn’t fear or regret. It was the rush of adrenaline in the aftermath. My body was trying to process the fact that I had ended a life. He’d been my father, but that word had always felt foreign.
“I don’t feel… what I thought I would,” I admitted.
“What did you think you’d feel?”
“Free,” I whispered.
Dmitry studied me carefully. There was no softness in his expression. Only understanding.
“You killed the man who raised you,” he said evenly. “Even if he deserved it, even if he was worthless and evil, your mind doesn’t separate those things.”
I swallowed, my throat raw. “I didn’t hesitate.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t. And that’s exactly what needed to happen. You were in survival mode.”
“What does this do?” I asked. “To you. To us.”
Dmitry finally reached for me then, his hand settling at the back of my neck, firm and grounding.