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“You can’t be serious.”

“The dress. The scene you made with Vanessa. You’re dressing up and causing a fuss because you want my attention again.” He says it as though he’s doing me a great kindness by noticing.

I stare at him. I dated this arrogant prick for five whole months and somehow never once saw the true size of his self-regard. Every single thing that happens, he folds neatly back into a story about himself.

“I don’t like you anymore, Maksim. I regret that I ever did.” I keep my voice clear and slow. “My dress has nothing to do with you. My fight with Vanessa had nothing to do with you either.”

“Come now, sweetheart,” he says, his eyes dropping to my chest and openly leering. “You got exactly what you wanted. I’ll even admit it. I regret ending things with you.”

“You’re disgusting,” I say. “Are you genuinely unwell in the head?”

“You won’t be saying that after I get my mouth on you.” He grabs my wrist hard and yanks me toward him.

His breath reeks of whiskey strong enough to make me want to vomit. His hand clamps hard around my chin and drags my face toward his.

I wrench my head sideways as hard as I can, and his lips only scrape my cheekbone. I hammer my free fist against his chest, but he catches that hand too and pins it flat.

“Get your hands off me, you fucking creep,” I snarl, and drive my knee up into him.

He grunts and folds a little, but his grip doesn’t break, and his wet mouth keeps coming for mine anyway.

I would sooner let a pig maul me than let a single second of this bastard happen.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing with your hands on her?”

The voice hits the hallway like a dropped anvil. Lev is already there, and his face is a mask of pure violence I’ve never once seen on him, murderous and savage all at the same time, his steel-gray eyes gone flat and lethal.

His fist lands square and brutal in the middle of Maksim’s face.

I hear the crack of bone. Maksim staggers backward with both hands flying up to his nose, and blood pours bright between his fingers and spatters across the marble. He screams.

“Get the fuck out,” Lev says, cold enough to frost the glass.

Maksim’s next words die in his throat the instant he sees what’s standing in front of him. He gives the two of us one long, ugly look, then stumbles off down the corridor, dripping red the whole way.

My knees go soft with relief. I understand, all at once, exactly how much worse this could’ve gone if Lev hadn’t walked in when he did.

“You’re all right now,” Lev says, and pulls me into him. His cool cedar scent wraps around me, and my hammering heartbeat starts to slow against his chest.

He keeps his hand at the small of my back the entire way back into the hall, and I straighten my spine under all the prying eyes.

A woman in a magenta gown dripping with diamonds steps directly into our path. She’s not the least bit afraid of him.

“You struck your own brother,” she says. “The same womb carried you both. Eleven minutes apart, the two of you. Your father would be ashamed to watch this.”

“Larisa,” Lev says, inclining his head, and the word carries respect and cold in exactly equal measure. “Mother, I honor my father’s widow, but I don’t honor the way you’ve spoiled Maksim his entire life. Ask him what he did before you bring your blame to me.”

The pieces slot together in my head. This glittering woman is the twins’ mother, the old Pakhan’s much younger wife. She gave one son to her husband to be forged into a hard, scarred killer, and she kept the other one soft and useless and close for herself. It’s why one twin is silver and cut with old scars, and the other is glossy and forty-four years old going on twenty-five.

Larisa lifts one hand and beckons, and Maksim and Vanessa come forward. Someone’s already packed Maksim’s nose, but it’s swollen huge and purple beneath the gauze.

She touches it, tender, and rounds on Lev. “Look at what you have done to my baby. You may have wrecked his pretty face for good. Have you spared a single thought for his wedding?”

Her baby by eleven minutes, the only one of the two she ever gave that word to.

Vanessa hovers at the edge of it, useless and uncertain, and I finally understand why Larisa dotes on Maksim and yet cares nothing for his engagement to Vanessa. The whole match was probably a joke to her.

“Ask your baby,” Lev says, “why I broke it. He put his filthy hands on my woman and tried to force himself on her in a hallway just now.”