Page 56 of His Contract Queen

My lips thin.

As true as that may be, I don’t care.

I’ve dealt with men like Katerina’s father my entire life, even before I became a Pakhan. Men wrapped in medals and ceremony who believe authority makes them untouchable. Men who hide behind institutions and expect reverence toprotect them from consequence. I’ve watched them posture and threaten only to fold just like everyone else once the illusion of their power cracks and they are reminded someone else will always have enough influence to take them down.

Uniforms don’t impress me.

Titles don’t scare me.

Government authority has never meant immunity.

The military is no different from an overly eager syndicate in my eyes. They posture when they believe it will get them what they want. They protect their own until it becomes inconvenient. Self-preservation always outweighs loyalty in the end.

I’ve seen it too many times to be cowed by warnings now.

Nikolai studies me closely, searching for signs of doubt, for a flicker of hesitation that would tell him I can still be reasoned with and still be controlled.

He won’t find it.

I’ve long since given up pretending Katerina’s revenge isn’t personal. That it isn’t hers alone to bear the weight of. That I’m not willing to risk every fragile equilibrium the Pact has built in order to give her the justice she deserves.

He sighs. “Chaos is not a fire you always get to control.”

I meet his gaze steadily. “Are justifiable consequences supposed to take a back seat, then? You can’t honestly tell me you’d agree with that. You of all people.”

His eyes flare suddenly.

The words hang between us. An unspoken line—one drawn years ago, etched into the fragile architecture of the Pact itself—has just been stepped over without hesitation. Yet, I refuse to take it back.

I don’t know many details surrounding Nikolai’s father, nor do I choose to.

If he had been weak enough to be taken over by a coup within his own Bratva, led by his own heir, he was not strong enough to lead us. That is a fact I have always reconciled no matter how hard it rocked the four of us when it happened.

Unlike Sokolov who still carries the memory of that time like a grudge he’ll never admit to, my respect for Nikolai has never been contingent on sentiment. It has always been contingent on one thing. His own moral code.

Sokolov sees our leader as a man unhinged enough to destroy the patriarch of his own family and nearly topple the syndicate in the process.

I don’t.

Nikolai is many things. He is cruel in ways that surprise even me at times. He is uncompromising, unforgiving. His unwillingness to bend his own values is what makes him nearly impossible to reason with, especially when it comes to his opinion on attachments and sentiment. He views them the way a surgeon views a tumor—threats to be excised before they metastasize.

But that is also what convinces me the death of his father happened for a justifiable reason.

Whatever turmoil had been brewing in the months leading up to the coup is anyone’s guess. Artyom Malyshko had been famouslytight-lipped when it came to his own syndicate, bordering on obsessive paranoia. He compartmentalized everything until even his inner circle knew only fragments of what was happening behind closed doors. There would have been no way any of us could have predicted the coup ahead of time, let alone prepared to stop it.

Nearly severing our careful control over Moscow had fractured the four of us for a long time. The power vacuum that came from the death of one of us lasted weeks. Tensions ran high enough that Sokolov and I nearly came to blows more times than I can count. Trust was thin, alliances were tested, the Pact itself teetered on the edge of collapse when we were forced to answer to a man more than ten years our junior.

Yet, despite all of that, I have never once questioned the shift in power.

Nikolai’s morals are unyieldingly clear, black and white in a world most of us inhabit in shades of gray. Whatever had caused him to deem his own father worthy of judgment and execution must have been severe enough to outweigh every bond of blood and loyalty the old man had ever demanded from him. Nikolai does not act on impulse. He never has in the three decades he’s been alive.

He acts purely on principle.

Which is exactly what I am hoping will exonerate me now from whatever ruling he is prepared to give me at the end of this.

I hold his gaze without flinching.

He exhales through his nose and straightens slowly, rolling his shoulders as though shaking off an unwelcome weight.