ARTYOM
Ireacted instinctively to the sound.
Someone shouted something I didn’t catch in Russian. A blur passed my peripheral vision. That was all it took to register the threat.
“Get down,” I yelled.
Nina’s blank expression was the only sign that my panicked words to her were in Russian, but it was too late for words to help us.
She was frozen.
I wrapped my arms tighter around her and dived to the ground, cushioning her fall with my body. The ground knocked the air out of my lungs.
But all that matters is that she’s safe, in my arms, even as her expression shifts from outraged to confused to afraid.
More gunshots echo across the ballroom, smashing a chandelierright above us. The crash of breaking glass makes people react. Someone lets out a scream, and then there’s a stampede of people towards the exit.
All I can think about is Nina. She’s here, she’s breathing, she’s looking up at me with her wide amber eyes. She’s okay.
One, two, three shots follow the melee as people rush in mass confusion. Each shot glances off a surface near us, closer and closer to where we’re hidden. None of them find the intended target.
Questions. I have so many questions. To start with, where the fuck are my guards and what am I paying them for if not to stop attacks at fundraising galas?
As I slowly rise to my feet and survey the scene, I realize my cousins’ guards haven’t appeared either. So whoever did this, planned it out enough to neutralize our protection before storming the ballroom.
Nikolai is hauling a man into the center of the room with his hand around his neck. The man wears a mask, and he’s dressed in black leather, his jacket marked with the symbol of a hand holding a broken knife. An old Bratva emblem meaning revenge.
His arms are twisted behind his back at a painful angle as Nikolai marches him into the center of the room.
“Who the fuck are you working for?” he asks in low Russian, spitting his words. Something has enraged him.
He bends low over the masked man to ask another question.
Then, as he shoves the attacker to his knees, I see the silver glint of a blade.
I call out to my cousin, but it’s too late.
The man’s neck gushes with blood, and he collapses forward to the floor.
Another scream goes out from the crowd, but the doctors are too busy gathering around someone else — and too scared of my giant cousin, wielding a silver knife, to respond.
Only then, when the blood loss has obviously killed him, does Nikolai rip the mask back to reveal a face we all know. One of Polina and Denis’s guards.
Anton.
It’s so like Nikolai to kill first, ask questions later.
“Why the fuck did you kill him, cousin?” I call across the room. I run to his side, and then I see what I’d overlooked in my hurry to keep Nina safe.
Her best friend, Lily, is slumped on the floor at the center of the crowd, her pink tulle dress stained with blood.
Medics are working to apply pressure to the bleeding, while someone else has called for an ambulance, but judging by the whiteness of her skin and the blood spreading through the ballroom, it doesn’t look good.
“He shot her. Someone who wasn’t even involved in any of this.” Nikolai spits at me as I approach. “Besides, why am I doing your dirty work for you, Tyoma?”
“Who was he aiming for?” I ask in Russian, pressing a hand to his shoulder to steady him.
Nikolai has seen a lot of shit, but since he came back from a trip to the old land a few years ago, he’s been jumpier than ever. Unpredictable.
