The world didn't just end; it tilted.
The explosion of the gas line sent a roar of orange fire spiraling a hundred feet into the air. The concrete beneath us groaned, the iron pilings snapping like dry twigs. We were standing on a shelf of burning stone that was rapidly sliding into the black, icy maw of the Hudson.
"Dimitri!" I screamed over the roar of the flames.
He didn't waste breath. He grabbed a heavy-duty mooring cable that had snapped from its winch, the steel wires frayed and dangerous. He wrapped it once around his arm and caught me by the waist.
"Hold on!"
We swung.
It wasn't like the movies. It was a bone-jarring, lung-crushing arc through a wall of heat and smoke. We slammed into the side of a stable shipping container on the un-collapsed section of the pier. Dimitri took the brunt of the impact, his grunt of pain echoing against the steel.
We tumbled onto the wet wood, gasping, as the section we had just occupied vanished into the river with a sound like a dying god.
*Clack-clack.*
The sound of the AT4 being reloaded.
Salvatore was still on the crane platform, thirty feet above us. He was fumbling with the next rocket, his hands shaking with age and adrenaline.
"He's not going to stop until we're ash," I panted, pushing myself up. My shoulder felt like it was on fire, and my face was masked in soot and blood.
Dimitri stood, his silhouette dark against the fire. He pulled his last magazine from his vest. "He wants the Pakhan? He can have him."
"No," I said, grabbing his arm. "He's watching you. He expects you. He doesn't see me."
Dimitri looked at me, and for a second, I saw the protest in his eyes. Then he saw the Glock 17 I had scavenged from the dead Romano soldier. He saw the cold, absolute clarity in my gaze.
"He's yours," Dimitri whispered. "I'll draw his fire."
Dimitri stepped out into the open, firing his .45 into the air, shouting a challenge in Russian that echoed off the warehouse walls.
Salvatore's head snapped toward him. The rocket launcher swung around, the laser sight dancing across Dimitri's chest.
"Finally!" Salvatore screamed. "Look at me, Volkov! Look at the man who ends your line!"
While Salvatore focused on the kill he had waited a decade for, I moved.
I didn't run. I climbed.
I hauled myself up the service ladder of the crane, the metal rungs burning my hands. Every muscle in my body screamed in protest, but I drowned it out with the memory of the warehouse, the memory of Sofia's ghost, and the memory of the man currently standing in a death trap to give me this shot.
I reached the top of the first gantry. I was twenty feet away from Salvatore, level with the platform.
He was laughing, his finger tightening on the trigger of the AT4. Dimitri was standing perfectly still below, his gun empty, his arms open. He was trusting me with his life.
I leveled the Glock. I didn't think about the recoil. I didn't think about the fact that I was about to kill the head of the Five Families.
"Salvatore!" I yelled.
The old man turned, his eyes widening as he saw me—the "debt," the "girl," the "queen"—standing in the firelight with a weapon in her hand.
"You're right," I said, my voice as cold as the river below. "Wars aren't won by lovers. They're won by the ones who survive."
I pulled the trigger.
The bullet caught him square in the throat. Salvatore's hand jerked, the rocket launcher firing into the empty sky, the projectile trailing a useless arc of white smoke toward the clouds.
He stumbled back, his hands clutching his neck, his eyes filled with a shocked, final realization. He hit the railing of the platform, teetered for a heartbeat, and then fell.
He didn't scream. He hit the concrete of the pier with a dull, final thud.
The silence that followed was deafening.
I stayed on the crane, the gun shaking in my hand, until the high-pitched ringing in my ears faded. Below, the remaining Romano soldiers, seeing their Patriarch fall, threw down their weapons. Yuri and his men moved in like shadows, securing the area with cold efficiency.
I climbed down, my legs shaking so hard I nearly fell.
Dimitri was waiting at the bottom. He didn't say a word. He just opened his arms and pulled me into him, burying his face in my hair. We stood there in the middle of the carnage, the heat of the fires at our backs and the cold wind of the river in our faces.
The sun began to bleed over the horizon, painting the Hudson in shades of bruised gold and violet.
"Pakhan," Yuri's voice came over the radio, sounding tired but triumphant. "The Romanos are broken. The docks are secure. The city is yours."
Dimitri pulled back, his hands framing my face. He looked at the blood on my forehead, the soot on my cheeks, and the absolute fire in my eyes.
"No, Yuri," Dimitri said into his collar-mic, his gaze never leaving mine. "The city is *ours*."
He leaned in and kissed me—a kiss that tasted of salt, smoke, and victory.
"The debt is paid, Maya milaya," he whispered against my lips. "The contract is ash. You are no longer a Sokolova. You are a Volkov. My wife. My Queen."
I looked at the sunrise, then at the man beside me. The girl who had walked into that study weeks ago was dead. She had been replaced by something stronger, something more dangerous, and something infinitely more loved.
"Let's go home, Dimitri," I said.
We walked off the pier together, hand in hand, as the world woke up to a new New York. One that belonged to the Emerald Queen and her Pakhan.