The sun hadn't even thought about rising when the first bucket of ice water hit my face.
"Five minutes, Sokolova," Yuri's gravelly voice barked from the doorway. "The range doesn't wait for late starters."
For the next ten days, my world was reduced to the smell of cordite, the sting of sweat, and the brutal weight of a weapon. I learned that shooting wasn't like the movies. It was about breath control, finger placement, and the cold realization that the metal in your hand was designed for one thing: to stop a heart.
By day three, my hands were a mess of blisters and bruises from the recoil. By day seven, I was hitting the center of the silhouette at twenty paces.
"Better," Yuri grunted, standing behind me as I holstered the Glock. "You have a steady eye. You don't hesitate. Most people hesitate the first time they see a man in the sights. You? You see the target, you neutralize it."
"I've already hesitated once," I said, thinking of the pier. "I won't do it again."
It wasn't just guns. Viktor took over in the afternoons, teaching me how to use my size as a weapon. He taught me that a knee to the groin was more effective than a punch to the jaw, and that a knife in the hand was worth ten in a drawer.
Dimitri watched from the balcony of the training room, his arms crossed, his gaze unreadable. He didn't interfere. He let them break me down so they could build me back up. But at night, when he pulled me into his arms, he would kiss my bruised knuckles with a reverence that made my breath hitch.
"You're becoming terrifying, *maya milaya*," he whispered against my skin on the tenth night. "I can see the fire in you now. It's no longer a flicker. It's a furnace."
"Is that a problem, Pakhan?" I teased, tracing the scars on his chest.
"No," he rasped, his eyes darkening with a mix of pride and raw desire. "It's a masterpiece."
The first test came sooner than any of us expected.
Salvatore Romano didn't send a letter. He sent a strike team. They targeted our secondary distribution hub in Queens—a warehouse we used for high-end spirits. But Yuri's scouts had seen them coming.
"They're taking the bait," Viktor said into the comms as we sat in the darkened back of an armored van. "Three vehicles, twelve men. They think it's a skeleton crew."
Dimitri looked at me. He had tried to make me stay in the van, but I had reached for my holster before he could finish the sentence.
"Stay behind me," he commanded. "If a shot comes near you, you drop. No heroics."
"I'm not a hero, Dimitri. I'm a Volkov."
We moved in total silence. The hub was a maze of wooden crates and heavy machinery. When the Romano vehicles breached the side door, they didn't find a sleeping crew. They found a kill zone.
The darkness erupted in a crossfire. I stayed low, moving through the shadows like Yuri had taught me. I saw a Romano soldier flanking Dimitri, his rifle raised.
I didn't scream. I didn't warn him. I stepped out from behind a stack of crates, leveled my pistol, and fired.
Two shots. One to the chest, one to the throat. The man went down like a sack of stones.
Dimitri whirled, his own weapon spitting fire, clearing the rest of the row. He looked at the fallen soldier, then at me. He didn't say a word, but the look in his eyes was one of pure, unadulterated respect.
As the smoke cleared and the remaining Romanos were either dead or zip-tied, the Bratva soldiers began to gather. They looked at me—truly looked at me—not as the Pakhan's debt, but as one of them.
"The girl has a steady hand," one of the older soldiers, a man named Lev, muttered. He looked at my emerald ring, then at the blood on my sleeve. "The Emerald Queen, eh? She's got more ice in her veins than the Pakhan."
The name stuck. By the time we got back to the mansion, the whispers had already started.
Back in our suite, the adrenaline was a living thing between us. Dimitri slammed the door and pinned me against it, his mouth finding mine with a hunger that bordered on violent.
"You were magnificent," he growled, his hands roaming over my body, checking for injuries he knew weren't there. "I have never seen anything more beautiful than you holding that line."
"We held it together," I gasped, my fingers tugging at his tactical vest.
The intimacy that followed was different. It wasn't about him protecting me or me surrendering to him. It was a collision of equals. Two predators finding peace in the middle of a war.
The peace lasted exactly two hours.
The secure phone on the nightstand rang at 3:00 AM. Dimitri answered it, his body going rigid beside me.
"Speak," he said.
He listened for a long minute, his face turning into a mask of stone. He hung up and looked at me, the moonlight catching the silver in his eyes.
"Salvatore Romano has landed at Teterboro," Dimitri said, his voice a low, vibrating hum of danger. "He's called for a meeting of the Five Families at the neutral ground in Little Italy. Tomorrow night."
"He's challenging you publicly," I said, sitting up.
"No," Dimitri said, reaching for his watch. "He's calling for a funeral. And he's invited the whole city to watch."
I reached out, taking his hand. "Let them watch. We're going together."
Dimitri squeezed my hand, his gaze fierce. "Yes. We are."