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Lena has never tried to save me from this life. She knew better than to believe that was possible. Instead, she learned how tostand close enough to intervene when I came too close to losing myself entirely. Her tenderness is not expressed in reassurances or pleas. It is expressed in vigilance. In questions that sound like challenges. In moments like this when she leans back and looks at me not as aPakhan, but as her brother.

“You warned her,” she says at last. “How unlike you.”

My jaw tightens.

“You realize what this looks like. To Malyshko, I mean,” she continues calmly.

“I’ve already gotten the lecture,” I reply flatly. “I don’t need it from you too.”

She doesn’t rise to the bait. Lena never does when it matters. Instead, she tilts her head slightly, studying me from a new angle as if recalibrating. “The Iron Pact knows you’re keeping her indefinitely?”

“Yes.”

She watches me for a long moment, her gaze sharpening, losing what little softness it had left. “He’s going to have you kill her if he believes you’re getting attached. You know that, right?”

I don’t answer immediately.

Without meaning to, my eyes drift back to the monitor. To Alina’s room.

Lev has finally arrived, standing just inside the doorway with his usual impassive posture. She’s speaking animatedly, her hands moving as she talks, clearly frustrated and unimpressed by whatever excuse he’s giving her. Even through a silent securityfeed, I can tell she’s arguing her case with the same stubborn fire she’s shown me since the moment she arrived.

I watch Lev gesture toward the hall, watch her pause, sigh, then follow him out of the room.

I fight the instinct to switch the feed to the hallway cameras, to track her every step the way I normally would. My fingers twitch toward the controls before I can stop them. I curl my hand into a tight fist instead, nails biting into my palm.

I don’t miss the way Lena’s eyes flick to my hand.

She’s right, and I hate that she is.

Nikolai Malyshko is the youngest among the four of us in the Iron Pact, yet he is also the most ruthless. He came into power a little over five years ago, carving his place out of his father’s legacy after a coup so violent it left entire districts scrambling to rebuild from the wreckage. He did not inherit his syndicate’s loyalty through the usual means like the rest of us through our fathers’ passing the torch.

He stole his through force.

As our unofficial king, he has made it abundantly clear that sentiment has no place in our arrangement. That distraction is a weakness. That interpersonal relationships—especially ones that blur the line between leverage and attachment—are liabilities to be excised swiftly and without remorse.

‘We are not meant to want. We are meant to control.’has been his personal mantra for years now.

I know the moment Nikolai decides that Alina Morozova is no longer a useful piece on the board but rather a crack in my armor, he will not hesitate to force my hand. He will frame it asnecessity, as preservation of balance. As an order issued not out of cruelty, but out of responsibility to the Pact. To Moscow. To the empire our families built together for generations.

Kill her or lose everything.

I drag in a slow breath, forcing my expression back into something unreadable. “I’m aware.”

Lena’s gaze doesn’t soften. If anything, it hardens. “You need to be careful with your next steps moving forward. You’re gambling with more than territory this time, Sashenka.”

I don’t respond because anything I say would be redundant.

The cost of my defiance will not be measured in lost ports or seized accounts. It will not be counted in dead soldiers or burned routes. This time, the price will be personal, designed to break something inside me rather than merely inconvenience my operations.

Nikolai doesn’t just punish disobedience. He creates examples. If he decides I’m compromised, he won’t stop at forcing my hand. He’ll dismantle me and my family piece by piece. He’ll turn my allies into witnesses to my downfall and my victories into cautionary tales.

This time, the battlefield is not Moscow. It is my own resolve.

For the first time in years, I am not certain which of us—Nikolai or I—will be the one to see this through to the end.

6

ALINA