Page 82 of One For my Enemy

“Roman will suffer in his own way,” Marya said flatly. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

She looked impossibly cold, and inhumanly beautiful; like a diamond, cut to shimmer in the light.My daughters are diamonds,as Yaga so often said.Nothing is more beautiful. Nothing shines brighter. And most importantly, nothing will break them.

“Don’t forget at whose bidding Roman did all of this,” Marya warned Sasha, tucking her hair comfortingly behind her ear. “Roman Fedorov is only Koschei’s blade. A knife doesn’t wield itself.”

But it was Roman who should have died, not Lev—

But it was Roman whose blood I wanted—

But it was Roman, all this time it was Roman, and now—

Sasha swallowed her doubts, forcing them down.

“He’ll suffer in his own way,” she agreed, and then stepped coolly from Marya’s grip; not to create distance between them, but rather to stand on her own, without prompting. To exist on a plane of her autonomy.

“So, what will I do, then,” Sasha asked her sister, “if not work at the store?”

“Koschei has no reason to know you’re alive,” Marya reminded her, “and we won’t give him one. He has no reason to know what else we have in store for him.”

“But business will simply… continue?” Sasha asked, frowning.

“Business willgrow,” Marya corrected. “You closed the deal yourself, didn’t you? That was only one dealer, Sashenka. That was only one pawn, but there are more. There are always more.”

“But how will selling drugs to magicless addicts bring down Koschei’s empire?” Sasha said, frowning. “Satisfaction, maybe. Money, sure, but—”

“The only way to win anything is to have it all,” Marya reminded her. “To take every scrap of him; to rid him of his possessions and his authority and his influence until all he has is his pride, and then we’ll rid him of that, too.” Her dark eyes flashed with meaning. “We’ll become so powerful, so vast, that Koschei will have to bow to us, and when he bends at the knee to everything we’ve built—”

“We’ll see his empire fall,” Sasha murmured.

If his business is his everything, she thought, then I will raze it to the ground.

“Can you do it?” Marya asked seriously. Her hand drifted to the scar Sasha knew remained on her chest, marked out over her heart. “Tell me the truth, Sasha, because it won’t be easy. There is little wisdom in power. There is even less in vengeance.”

“I don’t want to be wise,” Sasha said. Lev had been a fool, hadn’t he? Lev was killed by his own father’s negligence, by the brother he fought so blindly to save, and why should she be any different?

“I don’t want to be wise,” she repeated slowly. “I want to win.”

Gradually, Marya’s lips curled up, pleased.

“Where would you begin, then,” Marya asked, “if you wanted to rid a man of everything?”

Easy. Sasha had been a business major at one of the most competitive schools in the country. She understood the basic principles; the economics of survival.

“Destroy his resources,” Sasha said. “Rid him of access to anything he needs to survive.”

“Good,” Marya said, nodding. “And?”

“Turn his allies against him,” Sasha said. “His influence. Cut it off.”

“Yes. And?”

She paused a moment.

“Wipe out his army,” Sasha replied flatly. “The other two sons.”

At that, Marya was glorious. The arch of her smile shone bright, brilliant, blinding.

“Sashenka, you were born for this.”

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