“Did you check her sister’s?” Their steps and voices are exceptionally close to the office now and I’m afraid I’m going to have to shoot them if they try to come in here. They halt at a door across the hall, pulling it open with a squeak.
“Which one? Both of them scare the shit out of me,” the man confesses. “Plus, all those guard dogs.”
I am guessing he means Leo, Sean, and maybe even Nate—which I will never tell him because his ego would be through the roof and I don’t think he needs that.
“The boss. Vanessa. If Mary’s not at home, I am almost certain she’s there.”
“I’ll make a call.”
“Do,” the woman says, and shuts the door she’d just opened. A closet, if I had to guess. “Now, Logan. Have you ever tried waterboarding?”
I would laugh at how outrageously and casually evil the question sounds if I didn’t think it had lethal intent formyhusband.
They shuffle back down the hallway to the metal door they came from, and once it closes behind them, I let out a shaky exhale, Sasha doing the same.
“Was that?” He sounds distressed.
“It was her,” I confirm, certain.
“But she—” Sasha trails off, then shakes his head. “Fuck.”
I stop myself from saying something insensitive.
Elise isdeadis what she is.
I don’t care how many times she’s made delicious meals for us, or laughed over the kitchen island, Elise will die for this.
The thought makes me sadder than I’d like to admit, a loss I don’t typically feel alongside these determined feelings of rage and vengeance.
It’s betrayal. Something akin to what I felt when we found out about Cillian. But he was family. Elise, well, she and I weren’t as close as she and Sasha and Maxim, but I had fondness built in the penthouse over weeks of Thursdays and Sundays.
“Come on,” I tell him. I’m ready to stride right back where we came from, only to be startled to a halt at the resounding pop of a gun near me.
I duck and look around, eyes landing at the end of the hall where Elise stands holding a pistol up, a half smile on her face. Her eyes are wide and elated, that bright blonde princess hair braided over her shoulder.
I lift my own gun to shoot, but she screams, “I’ll kill him!” and I freeze. I’m not sure who she means, but my mind stutters on the thought of her killing Maxim.
She nods to my left and I glance in the direction of her pointed gun. Sasha is there on the ground, groaning in a growing puddle of his blood. My stomach drops at the sight, and I want to go to him, but Elise might kill me or him or both of us if I do.
“I’ll shoot him in the head, Mary. I really will.”
I want to call her bluff, say she isn’t that good of a shot, she’ll miss and I can get her down first. The door opens behind her before I can, bright light flooding the space as another man holds a gun in our direction. I could take out one of them, I know it, but then they might shoot Sasha and even if I can’t see where the bullet landed, his lack of fight on the ground tells me another shotwouldkill him.
“Drop it, Mary,” Elise calls, her voice sharp when she says my name.
Sasha coughs next to me.
“Shoot her,” he says in a pained voice. I can’t let him die, I will not, so I turn on the safety and let the gun drop to the floor. I like Sasha too much—another person I didn’t mean to care for—and even the thought of Maxim hurting like I did when Vanessa was taken is enough to make the decision without hesitating.
“Kick it behind you,” the man commands in the same heavy Russian accent as before. I do as he says, using the toe of my boot to kick the gun behind me.
Elise gives a sweet smile. “He’s going to cuff you, but if you give him trouble, Iwillshoot Alexei. Do not test me.”
I nod, knowing I could best the Nate-sized man in fifteen fights, but not sure how to do so without first getting Sasha killed.
“Don’t listen, Mary,” he says through labored breaths. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you, little fucker,” I bite through gritted teeth.
