Chapter 131: Took a bullet for her

Fabio’s face had gone the color of ash, all his earlier composure stripped away entirely, replaced now by the stark, undeniable understanding that whatever plan he’d built to escape with Sienna had just come apart beneath him quite literally in a shower of sparks and screaming metal.

And somewhere behind them, through the haze of dust and smoke still hanging thick over the ruined runway, Viktor was already walking forward again, lowering his gun only slightly, his expression carved from something far colder and far more patient than relief.

The jet wasn’t going anywhere. Not today.

Viktor reached the wreckage of the jet just as Fabio staggered out through the torn hatch, blood trickling from a cut above his brow, his composure finally, completely stripped away.

"You’re going to have to do better than this," Viktor said, voice low, gun rising.

Fabio didn’t answer. He lunged instead, closing the distance faster than a man his age had any right to move, driving his shoulder into Viktor’s chest hard enough to send them both crashing into the dirt.

The gun spun free from Viktor’s hand, skittering out of reach as Fabio’s fist connected with his jaw, once, twice, years of hardened experience behind every blow.

Viktor absorbed it, rolled with the momentum, and drove his elbow up into Fabio’s ribs with enough force to hear something crack.

Fabio grunted but didn’t slow, grabbing a fistful of Viktor’s jacket and hauling him sideways into the twisted metal of the jet’s landing gear, sparks still hissing faintly against torn steel.

They traded blows like that for what felt like an eternity, brutal, ugly, nothing clean or cinematic about it. Fabio caught Viktor across the temple with a vicious hook that sent the world tilting sideways for half a second; Viktor answered by slamming his forehead into Fabio’s nose, feeling cartilage give way beneath the impact, blood spraying hot across both their faces.

Fabio stumbled back, hand flying to his shattered nose, and Viktor didn’t waste the opening. He drove forward, tackling Fabio bodily into the dirt, forearm pressing hard across the older man’s throat, years of restrained fury finally finding a single, undiluted outlet.

"No one touches," Viktor snarled, pressing harder. "You put your hands on my wife."

Fabio wheezed beneath him, one hand scrabbling weakly at Viktor’s arm, the other reaching, slow and unnoticed in the chaos, toward the small pistol tucked at his ankle.

Viktor caught the motion half a second too late.

Fabio’s hand closed around the grip, and he wrenched it free, firing wildly as Viktor threw himself sideways to avoid the shot. It went wide, cracking harmlessly into the dirt, but it bought Fabio the half-second he needed to shove Viktor off and scramble backward, blood streaming from his ruined nose, chest heaving, gun now leveled unsteadily in front of him.

That was when he saw her.

Sienna, finally free of the wreckage, running toward Viktor across the scorched runway, relief and terror both written plainly across her face.

Something ugly and final settled into Fabio’s expression. If he couldn’t have her, if his son was already gone, his plans already in ruins, his empire already crumbling somewhere behind him, then no one would.

He swung the gun toward her instead.

Viktor saw it a heartbeat before the trigger moved, and there was no calculation left in him at all, only instinct, pure and absolute.

He surged forward, closing the last few feet between himself and Sienna, wrapping both arms around her and twisting his body between her and the gun in one desperate, unthinking motion.

The shot cracked out across the runway.

It caught Viktor square in the back.

He staggered, breath tearing out of him in a sharp, strangled gasp, but he didn’t let go of her if anything, his arms only tightened, shielding her fully even as his knees began to buckle beneath him.

A second shot rang out immediately after, sharp, final as one of the Gallon boys dropped Fabio where he stood, a clean shot through the skull ending him before he could pull the trigger a second time.

Fabio crumpled instantly, lifeless, the gun falling uselessly from his hand into the dirt beside him.

Sienna froze the moment she felt Viktor’s weight sag against her, the moment she registered the warm, spreading heat soaking through the back of his jacket beneath her hands.

"No... no, no, no..." The scream tore out of her before she could stop it, her legs giving out as she lowered him carefully to the ground, cradling his head against her lap, hands pressing frantically, uselessly, against the wound at his back.

Viktor coughed, blood flecking his lips, and even now, even like this, the corner of his mouth twitched faintly toward something almost like a smile.

"Don’t cry," he rasped, voice already fraying at the edges, one hand lifting weakly to brush trembling fingers against her cheek. "Please."

"Viktor, no..." Sienna’s voice broke entirely, tears spilling freely now as she pressed her palm harder against the wound, as if sheer will alone might be enough to hold the blood inside him.

"Stay with me. Stay with me, do you hear me? You are not doing this. Not now. Not after everything."

Around them, the runway had gone eerily quiet, smoke still curling up from the wreckage of the jet, Fabio’s body lying still and forgotten in the dirt, none of it mattering to Sienna at all, not the war, not the danger, not the answers she’d almost died chasing.

Only the man bleeding out in her arms, fighting to keep his eyes open, fighting to hold onto her even now.

Given the location of the wound, Viktor was rushed to one of the private hospitals the Kessler name quietly funded the kind of place equipped with everything money could buy and staffed by people paid well enough to never ask questions about gunshot wounds arriving before dawn.

The blood on Sienna’s hands had gone tacky.

Sienna stared down at it, at the dark, drying lines cracking across her knuckles every time she flexed her fingers, and couldn’t make herself go wash it off.

Washing it off felt like admitting it had already happened, like some part of her still believed that as long as his blood stayed on her skin, some part of him stayed with her too.