Page 7 of Beautiful Ruin

Shoving my gun back into the holster at my hip, I flip the folder open.

The pages are creased from how it was being transported, the corners faintly dampened by blood. Inside are typed notes and route logs, things typical of surveillance details. I register all of that in the first quick sweep, my brain already categorizing what I’m seeing.

For one wild second, I think it’s Ivan’s file.

Of course I do. Who else would be worth prepping with this level of an ambush for? My eyes skim the first page, expecting to see details about his routines and known safehouses, maybe even the names of his drivers.

Instead, what I find printed across the top of the page is a name that nearly stops my heart.

Sofia Kuznetsov.

Everything inside me goes still immediately.

I stare at it as though force of will alone might rearrange the letters into something else. Some other Sofia, some decoy file planted to mislead whoever found it. But the rest of the page continues with what I can no longer deny.

Her age, the alias she is currently living under, a travel history log filled with information too accurate to be fabricated. The educational institution she is currently studying at that should not have any record that she is even attending.

My hand tightens on the packet until the paper crinkles.

None of this should exist on paper. Not anywhere outside Ivan’s private vault.

She has been hidden for eleven years, every trace of her scrubbed from official databases. Ivan built that invisibility personally after what happened to her parents. He trusted almost no one with the full story. I know only pieces of it because I helped oversee some parts when it was absolutely necessary to do so.

I turn toward Ivan then, finding him leaning against the SUV. My eyes trace down to where he has one hand pressed to his abdomen. Dark red spreads between his fingers.

He looks at me right when his knees buckle.

2

ROWAN

Blood soaks through Ivan’s shirt faster than I can press my palm against it to slow the bleeding.

Heat pours over my hand in relentless waves, slick and thick and impossible to contain. It slides between my fingers, runs over my knuckles, darkens the fabric of my sleeves. I bear down harder anyway, grinding the heel of my hand into the wound until my shoulders start to burn from the strain.

Sirens scream in the distance.

“Don’t you dare fucking die on me,” I mutter under my breath. The words come out rougher than I intend, more plea than command. It is a stupid thing to say, as if he can be bullied into surviving by force of my will alone.

The world has narrowed to this—my hand on his body, the blood refusing to stop, and the terrible rhythm of his breathing under the pressure of my palm. His chest rises and falls in short, strained motions, his body already struggling to remember how to keep itself alive. His eyes are open, fixed on me, but with every passing second they seem to drift farther away, the focus inside them dimming in a way I have seen too many times in the aftermath of a shootout.

Not him.

Anyone but him.

“Ivan.” I snap. “Stay the fuck awake.”

His eyes flicker, a slight uptick to the corner of his mouth. The rest of the world could be on fire and Ivan Kuznetsov would still look like the only person in the room who already knows how it ends. That expression has guided me for years, reassuring me, anchoring me, enraging me to the point where I have been close to raising my fist at him.

It drags me backward through years in the span of a heartbeat. Back to a teenage boy half-starved and feral, fists split open from underground fights and petty theft, looking up at a man who should have walked past him and didn’t. A hand extended not in kindness, exactly, but in opportunity, refined violence into something useful. He took me from the gutters and built me into a weapon sharp enough to carve his enemies apart.

Now that same weapon is kneeling in the street trying and failing to hold his maker together.

Tires screech against the asphalt nearby, headlights flaring over us. Voices echo from somewhere beyond the wreckage as doors slam and boots pound closer. But it all blurs into background noise as meaningless static against the sick thud of my pulse in my ears.

I’m pulled back by several hands.

Paramedics drop their bags at their feet and take over. I snarl but give them space only because they’re faster than I am. I step back with Ivan’s blood still warm on my hands and watch the scene unfold. My eyes never leave my Pakhan as they cut away fabric and slap on pressure dressings, moving him carefully onto an awaiting stretcher.