Page 153 of Merciless Queen

Frustration pours off her as her gaze drills into me, not her uncle. She has an expression I know all too well. One she spent all of yesterday fighting to hide from me before allowing me a peek when I left the club. Her attention is on my injury, her lips pulling up on one side. It’s in her eyes, with her next blink, she reveals it to Ivan as well.

She turns her head to the side, uttering her command without hesitation but packed with a desire to deny. “Lower your weapons.” She counters her own words when her fingers clench tighter around her gun.

After a second’s hesitation, her soldiers obey and their weapons landing on the ground make the worst song ever, with Anastasia following last, her glare directed toward Ivan.

“Yours too.” Ivan pushes the barrel bruising into my head, making his point to her.

She ignores him.

He cocks the gun, the sound of the bullet entering the chamber excruciatingly loud in my ear as death hovers one click away.

“Now.”

I shuffle my feet for a better stance and try to imagine the couple of ways I can fight my way out of this before my brain ends up on the ground.

Still, she calls his bluff because she’s fucking smart and knows. As she stated earlier, Ivan wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble only to force her to choose between two people’s lives that he has no stake in.

“Serafina’s gone, so what is it you actually want?”

“The Bratva. Round two, Vanessa: Mancini’s life or the Bratva?”

“So that’s what this is about.” She smirks but it’s empty. Nothing like the ones I know, but rather the one snapped in pictures when I was stalking her. “This is all about you trying to take what’s mine.”

“The Bratva shouldn’tbeyours.” Frustration drips through his statement, his control slipping bit by bit. If only she keeps him talking, he’ll become more unhinged, easier to break.

“When will you realize, Ivan, you’llneverbe Pakhan? The soldiers will never follow you.”

“They’ll follow or they die,” he replies as he shifts the gun from the back of my head to beneath my chin, his arm pinning me by my neck. He thinks he’s gaining a better hold on me, but he’s actually given me easier access now that his arm is in reach. “Choose, Vanessa. Name me Pakhan, swear fealty, and you and Mancini walk out of here alive.”

Vanessa looks from her uncle to me.

I see her struggle, her fear.

I see her concession, her apology.

So many choices led to this moment. My plans, all of which failed. My addiction to her, making me a target for Ivan. It’s almost fitting a Volkov has my life in his hands, like a full circle. Like there was no other path meant for me.

Vanessa holds up her hands, one folded around her gun, the other open and empty.

It’s the hand with the weapon she opens, one finger at a time as she reluctantly loses her protection.

“Let him go, Ivan. You’ve won.”

My breaths remainfragmented until the weapon is lowered from Zeno’s throat.

At that moment, I really am the failure Ivan calls me. The woman Papa never saw fit to do what he deemed as a man’s job.

I’ll fight until I die to retain control of the Bratva, but for now, I’ll toss it all away without regrets because I refuse to see Zeno killed. The blood from Ivan’s first shot was enough to give me a taste of a world without him because when I heard him yell, saw the blood, watched as his face paled, and I wasn’t sure where he was shot exactly, I thought that might have been it.

Behind me, Anastasia shifts with anxiety, and a slight rumble of muted conversation travels through the remaining soldiers from both sides.

My uncle taps Zeno’s chin with the gun’s barrel. “You truly are not fit to run the organization if you gave it all up forhim.”

“Maybe I’m not. Being a Pakhan doesn’t have to mean giving up my soul. Let him go.”

I think about the statement in Padre’s journal:No Pakhan’s soul is ever intact.And the questions I had for myself a month ago: if I was already there or if I had yet to lose mine.

Maybe if it was already gone, I would have made a different choice today. One where I’d walk away a victor with a bloodied crown upon my head and a gameboard stained with past mistakes.

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