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“I don’t want names or money,” I seethe into his face. “What happened to Cora is personal. She is mine, Simeon. And nobody touches what’s mine. This is going to be personal, too.”

What follows is not fast. I am in no hurry at all.

Alexei watches impassively from the doorway.

Simeon begs. He bargains. He weeps on the floor, a coward who built an empire on the suffering of women who weren’t allowed to cry. He says he’s sorry. He says it won’t happen again.

I don’t listen to a word of it.

Every time I strike him, I think about Cora screaming in pain because of her broken wrist.

I think about her shivering in the dark, cold and hungry.

I think about a girl named Emily dying on a concrete floor while Cora held her close and begged me to save her.

Every one of Simeon’s bones that break under my knuckles is putting her world back together. Every drop of blood spilling onto his expensive rug is erasing more of the terror he put in her eyes. I tear apart the monster who dared to make my girl bleed. I keep going until there is nothing left of Pyotr Simeon that resembles the man who thought he could take my woman and survive it.

When it is finally over, I stand up slowly and roll my sleeves back down.

Alexei steps forward and hands me a Kleenex from the box on the desk, and I wipe the blood from my knuckles, looking down at the bloody heap on the floor.

That’s done, I think with satisfaction, staring at what’s left of him. You’re safe now, printsessa. No one will ever hurt you again.

Alexei and I go out the way we came in. The night air is cold and clean after the heavy warmth of the house. Moonlight stretches across the garden in long, pale stripes. We are both covered in blood.

Alexei falls into step beside me as we cut through the dark.

“Sweet thing, revenge,” he observes.

“It can be.”

We walk in silence for a moment, our breath misting in the cold air.

“I saw you yesterday,” I add casually. “On your phone.”

Alexei doesn’t miss a beat. “Did you?”

“You were looking at photographs of a dark-haired girl. Maybe eighteen, nineteen years old. Dozens of photos. I’d say she didn’t know they were being taken.”

A beat of silence stretches a fraction too long.

“Was I?” he asks mildly, not turning his head.

I level a look at him. He’s doing his cold, unreadable routine, but I know him too well.

“I haven’t laid eyes on the family in a long time, but she bears a striking resemblance to other Raskolnikovs I’ve met.”

The very people Alexei craves to take revenge on.

Alexei stops. Just for a second. The slight shift in his posture is so subtle, but to me, it’s a warning flare. He isn’t just planning to destroy the Raskolnikovs. He’s fixated on the girl. Who is she? A daughter? A niece?

“Is this how you take your pound of flesh? By breaking a Raskolnikov girl?”

Alexei turns his head slowly. In the moonlight, his eyes are pure obsidian, empty and ruthless. There’s no desire for justice in him. Only a dark, starving obsession.

“You’re getting married in the morning,” he reminds me. “Go home. Sleep.”

I look at him for a moment longer, watching the tension in his broad shoulders, before nodding slowly