“Are you all right?” he asks, adjusting his grip on my ass.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Lucca?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you getting hard again already?”
“No. Maybe a little.”
“What iswrongwith you?” I gasp, wanting to laugh but not able to work up the energy.
He lifts his head, giving me the most wicked grin. “Nothing that another round with you can’t cure.” He spins us around, landing on top of me on the bed and I give a little shriek, tightening my legs around him.
Like I’m going to say no.
Lucca…
Our transport to a private landing strip near Zermatt is not on the Turgenev private jet. With forty soldiers and me, Tati, Mariya, Meiying, Lev, Jun, Aleks, Konstantin, and an insane amount of heavy equipment, Alexi commissioned an old Russian military transport aircraft. The ride on the Ilyushin Il-112 is extremely rough, and we learn quickly to stay strapped in.
Tatiana is mechanically assembling and disassembling her sniper rifle, and by the fourth round, I put my hand on her arm. “You should try to rest,amore mio,you’re still recovering from pneumonia.”
“I’m fine,” she said, picking up the rifle stock to begin again.
“Really, I think-” I look up and Alexi is looking over at me. He shakes his head slightly, and I pull my hand away, watching her begin the process again.
He rises to stand next to us, balancing perfectly against the buffeting of the plane. “Lucca, switch seats with me.”
I’m unstrapped and out of my seat before he finishes the sentence and I see Konstantin smother a smile. I’m going to nut-punch him for that. Later.
Alexi and Tatiana’s heads are close together, he’s talking to her quietly. Her hands slow on her assembly but don’t stop as she speaks with him. Whatever he’s asking, she’s agreeing to, her beautiful face set and determined.
Finally, he nods and pats her arm gently, letting her get back to her work.
Chapter Thirty-Three
In which shit gets blown up.
Subtronics - Blow Stuff Up
Tatiana…
Pulling the Barrett M82 out of the case, I put it together quickly, keeping an eye on the compound. I practiced assembling and disassembling it until I was confident I could do it under any conditions. The hardest part is dragging the ammunition up with me. The .50 BMG cartridges are powerful enough to blast through a brick or concrete wall, but they are heavy as hell to drag around. Even Lev is puffing out white clouds of breath into the chilly air by the time we get to the rock outcropping.
The ski lodge in front of me is more like a winter palace, and with some amusement, I see several of the architectural stylings from the hunting lodge of Czar Nicholas, which look incongruous in the snowy mountains of Switzerland.
The enormous stone and concrete wall that surrounds the lodge, however, looks more like something you’d see at a high-security prison, including two guard towers and massive, black iron gates at the entryway. Leonid has cut down most of the majestic, centuries-old trees lining the road leading up to the lodge for a clear line of sight for a potential attack, which is why getting the gates open first is so important to our plan.
While Lev patrols the perimeter around us, I focus on my equipment again. After fitting on the night vision scope, I double-check the thermal filter. It’s working perfectly. The Rostova guards are walking the wall in pairs as Aleks predicted.
We are the second part of Lucca’s plan. The armored drone will deliver the explosion to the back wall, which should send most of the soldiers in that direction. I’ll take out the guards at the front gate and use the explosive rounds to tear open the gate, and then Lucca and Alexi will charge in through the rubble that’s left. While the compound is very well guarded, it’s obvious that Leonid is confident that no one has discovered his location.
Now that I have everything assembled, there’s too much time to think. Lev is silent, eyes narrowed as he roams the rock outcropping. Is Leonid torturing Roman and Ilia? In the video, they had obviously been worked over, but some of the Bratva’s cruelest tricks - taking out eyes or cutting off ears - hadn’t been employed. That video was from nearly twenty hours ago. What’s happened since?
I’d authorized Viktor to release the first series of funds. Fifty million dollars was a blow, but we’d recover. My biggest fear was that Leonid would kill one of my brothers, deciding he didn’t need two hostages.
