Page 188 of The Final Cut

“Her people need to believe that she can fall before she actually does,” I continue. “The people under her need somewhere to stand when she hits the ground.”

Delia stares at the map.

Marisol’s gaze shifts to her daughter, then to me. “That will require more than your men.”

“Yes.”

Nash’s expression turns grim. “We’re going to need an army.”

For the first time since she walked into Noir, Marisol smiles. It isn’t soft. It isn’t motherly.

It is the smile of a woman who spent fifteen years watching a monster build a kingdom and memorized every door.

“Leave that to me,” she says.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

REVA

The plan uses a funeral.

Appropriate, I guess.

Viktor Volkov died two nights ago, which matters to me more than it probably has any right to. He was an old Bratva patriarch, a man with routes, money, soldiers, and enough history with Isabel that Marisol called his death useful before horror at her own pragmatism moved across her face.

Useful.

One dead man becomes a door.

One funeral becomes a stage.

One grieving crime family becomes the closest thing we have to an army waiting beneath painted saints and candle smoke.

I don’t like any of it.

The alternative is worse.

We arrive separately because apparently walking into a Russian Orthodox church as one grim little murder parade would be tacky. Nash goes first with Ever. Shiloh circles the block twice before bringing Delia and Marisol through a side entrance. Deacon brings me last, one hand at the small of my back, his face set in the blank expression that means he’s counted every exit and disliked half of them.

The church rises from a quiet street beneath a gray morning sky, gold domes dull under the clouds, the cross at the top catching a brief slice of light when the sun breaks through. Men in dark suits stand outside in clusters, pretending to be mourners and failing. They don’t draw attention to their weapons because they don’t need to. Weapons live in the way they stand, the cut of their jackets, the quick sweep of their eyes over each car that passes too slowly.

Inside, the scents of incense and melted wax drift to greet me as we enter.

Icons watch from the walls, solemn and gold-haloed, saints with long faces and painted sorrow. Candles tremble in red glass holders near the front. Voices chant low enough to get under my skin. The coffin sits beneath flowers so white they look like a stain against the dark wood.

Viktor Volkov must have been important. Or dangerous. I guess it’s the same thing around here.

Deacon guides me to the back pew. I sit between him and Shiloh, with Ever at the end closest to the aisle. Nash sits one row ahead, angled just enough to see the door without turning his head. Marisol sits with Delia on his other side, a black veil pinned over her hair, gloved hands folded tightly in her lap.

My mother looks like she belongs to grief. The thought lands wrong and stays there.

Delia sits beside her, spine straight, face empty. She wears black, sleek and simple, her hair twisted low at her neck. No bandages are visible today, long sleeves covering her wrists. Her mouth is painted a deep, careful red that makes her look older than twenty-two and harder than anyone should have to be before breakfast.

She doesn’t look at the coffin. She looks at the men.

The Volkovs line the front pews and side aisles, broad-shouldered, icy-eyed, silent in a way that makes the whole church feel colder. Their grief is organized. Their anger is too. At the center of them stands a man I noticed the second we entered, though notice is too soft a word for the way the room arranges itself around him.

Konstantin Volkov.