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“Papa, please don’t let him die,” she begged.

All the fury that had held me upright seemed to drain, replaced with something sharp and gutting. Fear. I had no doubt that Yuriy would pull the trigger. His reputation wasn’t smoke and mirrors. He was unnecessarily cruel and brutal, barbaric even.

I nodded toward the kicking young man, still fighting for his life. “Cut him down.”

Nico didn’t hesitate. Knife out, he sliced the rope. Zasha fell in a heap, coughing, gagging as the noose loosened around his throat. He rolled onto his side, hacking, tears cutting clean lines through the grime on his face.

Yelena crumpled into sobs, reaching out her hands as if to go to him, but Yuriy held her tight. The sound of her crying filled the warehouse like a wound splitting open.

“Yuriy, don’t,” Zasha wheezed, climbing to his knees. “She’s innocent. Let her go.”

“I’ve cut him down.” I grabbed Zasha’s shoulders and jerked him to his feet. “Release my daughter this instant.”

Hatred burned me hollow. Hatred for Orlov, for his insolent little brother, for the weakness clawing at my ribs because my daughter’s life was in that man’s hands. I had thirteen men on standby to pepper him with bullets, but I didn’t dare ask them to pull the trigger. Not when my daughter could become a casualty.

“What do you take me for, Zhukovsky?” Yuriy snapped. “The second I let her go, we’re all dead. I’ll release her on one condition. I want a corridor for me and my brother out of your territory and back into mine.”

The word corridor landed heavy in my chest, and my mouth went dry. For a second, the warehouse fell silent except for the wet rasp of Zasha’s breathing. All the focus tunneled down to that single, absurd request. He expected me to open a clean road for him after jamming a gun to my daughter’s temple?

Pride flared, hot and ugly. The idea of letting Yuriy walk away untouched made something in me recoil. Every attempt I’d made to erase him had ended with him grinning like a man who’d cheated death. He’d survived bullets and betrayals the way some men survived winters. To give him safe passage after that? It felt like handing him my balls on a plate.

My family would be a laughingstock in our world.

But beneath the roar of my anger filtered fear for Yelena. She was my only child. I’d raised her on my own since her mother divorced me and returned to her home country of Armenia. Yelena had only been three at the time. Since then, we’d been Papa and Lena against the world. Until she started college and met this Orlov bastard.

My men were waiting for my command. My body wanted blood. But the cost was too great. Yelena was irreplaceable.

I swallowed the choke of it down.

“Why should I give you immunity?” I spat, hand itching to grab my gun still holstered under my coat. “Your brother touched my daughter.”

Yuriy gave a bark of laughter. “Ask your daughter, Zhukovsky. She’ll tell you she was the one begging for it.”

He smirked. The fucker. As her father, I didn’t want to know about my daughter’s sex life. She was old enough for me to know she had one, but I didn’t need the particulars spelled out for me.

“Yuriy, don’t,” Zasha wheezed. “Don’t talk about her that way. I already told you, I love her.”

“And look where it’s gotten you,” Yuriy snapped. “I told you to stay away from her. No good can come from dating a Zhukovsky. Our families are sworn enemies, but you didn’t listen.”

“I love him too,” Yelena said with a sob, piercing my heart with each word.

“Khvatit!” I growled at my daughter to get her to shut up. “You insist on dating this lowlife, I’ll have no choice but to send you out of the country to live with your mother.”

“Look, your broken family dynamics are entertaining and all,” Yuriy said. “But it doesn’t solve the situation. Do we have immunity or not on account of keeping your daughter’s brains intact?”

The warehouse tightened around me, every man’s breath a drum in my ears as Yuriy waited for my answer. He held Yelena like a shield and a threat.

I measured the costs in heartbeats. Yelena’s sobs scraped my nerves raw, and the taste of iron sat at the back of my tongue. My men shifted, rifles cupped in their hands and aimed. Nico’s face was a mask, steady, unreadable. He was ready to do whatever I commanded.

“All right,” I said at last, the word leaving me ragged. “You get your corridor. You and your brother walk out of my jurisdiction, and you don’t look back.”

“Your word’s your honor.”

Honor was a useless thing to some, but in our world, it was architecture. Order kept men from killing each other on a whim. Promises kept blood from spilling into families until it had to.

Who would care if I broke my word and wiped him and his brother out the second they left? Maybe no one. Maybe the city would cheer. But there were rules. A man who went back on his word became no better than a stray dog.

It was dishonor. It was chaos. And chaos ate us all.