Page 87 of Wicked Mafia Sinner

"You abandoned me." Something cracks behind those cold eyes and the boy underneath pushes through. He’s raw, furious and needs his father to hear him.

"Grandfather took me in. He taught me the Volkov creed. Told me you wanted nothing to do with me." The arm around my throat tightens and the muzzle digs into my temple hard enough to bruise. Cold steel and fragile skin do not make a great combo.

I don’t know when my luck is going to run out, but it hasn’t yet.

"You abandoned me after Mother died. You abandoned the family." His voice goes flat. Cold. "I'm next in line to be pakhan. But first I have to kill the man who stands in my way. Blood in, blood out. Right, Father?"

The hammer cocks.

My hands close around Nikolai's forearm. Survival kicks in. I have strong opinions about dying not today.

Very strong opinions.

I swallow and pull up courage from the depths of my soul and drive my elbow into Nikolai's ribs. Every ounce of strength I've built up from carrying bagged soil is the force behind my blow. My heart pounds so hard in my chest it’s the only thing I can focus on for the next two point five seconds. And then the pain hits. The impact travels up through my arm into my shoulder. White dots dance in my vision and my knees want to buckle. Instead, I focus on the painful grunt that punches out of Nikolai's mouth.

My heel slams into the arch of his foot and he staggers. I lean forward as far as the arm around my neck allows and crack the back of my skull into his face.

The wet snap of a nose breaking is a sound I will carry alongside the hammer click. Cartilage crunching against the back of my skull.

Pain blooms across the base of my head from the impact. I don't care because I'm free. The arm drops, and I stumble forward with my ears ringing and adrenaline flooding through me so hard my vision pulses white at the edges.

“You stupid bitch!”

I whirl around. Blue eyes shooting daggers come to rest on me.

A heavy hand comes down on my shoulder. “Behind me, Cora.” Rowan tries to put himself between me and his son, but not this time. This fight is mine.

Just as I shrug off Rowan’s hand, a gun clatters across the marble. I pick it up. The steel is heavy in my palm, warm from Nikolai's grip, and I wrap both hands around it. “Bitch? You come in here, shoot up the place and want to call me a bitch?” I snarl in Nikolai’s face.

The brothers surge forward to my right. Drake and Kon push through the remaining guards, closing the formation. Luca materializes from the corridor, joining the wall. Massimo crouches over a body. It’s one of Nikolai’s men, I realize.

To my left, Raine holds a gun on one of Nikolai's men with both hands and a posture that suggests someone taught her how to shoot, and I will be having a long, loud conversation with my sister about that later. Her face is ice. Her hands are steady. The Vale twins are armed in a mafia shootout. Go us, I guess. There’s a first time for everything.

Nikolai lunges for me, blood streaming from his broken nose. A pissed off Rowan forces me behind him. He absorbs the first blow across his jaw. Takes a second to the ribs. His body takes another before his hand shoots out and closes around Nikolai's throat.

“Enough,” he roars into the vast cavern.

His fingers wrap around his son's neck with deliberate restraint, holding where breaking would be easier. He controls the force of his grip when I witness murder and rage battle against that control for dominance.

“I told you I would end you if you hurt her.”

For a long second, I stare up at him in silence. He means to end his son’s life.

I can’t let him do that. It will destroy him. There’s no way Rowan can live with that on his conscience.

I step up and put a hand on Rowan’s arm. He doesn’t look at me but I see the veil of darkness suffocating him fall.

"That is enough." Rowan's voice fills the lobby, leaving no air for argument. "There will be no more killing. The blood on your hands, I take it as my own. Your sins are mine now to absorb and pay for when I get to hell. From here on out you will have no more reason to kill."

He wraps his son in a bear hug.

“Enough. My father filled you with poison. No more.”

A wall of protection closes in around me. Rafael places a hand on my shoulder and pulls me back. “Give them space, sweetheart.”

I follow his lead, but stay close enough in case Rowan needs me.

Nikolai fights it. His fists pound against Rowan's back, his body twisting against the hold. One second. Two seconds. The fists slow. The twisting stops. I watch as Nikolai sags into his father's arms, held by hands that should have been there twenty years ago.