“You are a pretty one, aren’t you?” he muses, then drops his hand away. “Let’s move. We’ve been here too long already,” he snaps.
The men filter out of the room, dragging me along with them.
My heart sinks lower as they carry me downstairs and out of the front door. My hope is quickly dissolving as they pull me past the bodies of two of Marlen’s guards, lying in a pool of their own blood, face down on the bricks.
I yelp and tear my eyes away.I’m going to die. They are going to torture me for something that Bardil has done.
“Never seen a dead person before?” the boss man laughs.
The two men holding me throw me into the back of the car and sit on either side of me, wedging me in place, unable to escape.
“Take the other car. Go ahead and tell the boss we’re on the way and we’ve got a treat for him,” he barks orders to his other men as he ducks into the driver’s seat.
One other man climbs in beside him, and then he starts the car. They smell like sweat and cigarette smoke.
I’m going to die.
Fear whispers quietly in my mind. My eyes dart everywhere, searching for a way out.
Ahead of me, the security gate leading into the mansion is wide open. They came in stealth, killing silently until they got the front door open. I wish I’d heard them sooner. I wish I’d paid more attention.
The car drives toward the gate, and when it drives through and onto the road outside, I can’t fight the tears streaming down my cheeks.
It’s embarrassing to cry in front of these monsters, but leaving the mansion means that Marlen will have no idea where to find me. He won’t know where to go.
“What the fuck is this?” the boss man shouts, slamming on the brakes as two cars come flying across his lane and block him. The nose of our car smashes into the side of the other car.
“Go around! Reverse!” one of the men next to me shouts.
“Get out of the fucking car and start shooting!” the boss man yells.
One of the men beside me shoves his door open, and as soon as he does, a bullet hits his skull and blood spatters into the car. The metallic taste of iron touches my lips, and I gag in disgust, frantically wiping it off with my sleeve. The man on the other side of me climbs out, staying low, firing toward the attacking cars.
In the chaos, no one is paying attention to me. I slide frantically across the seat, scampering over the dead man’s body, fighting the urge to vomit when my hand squelches into pieces of his brain that are splattered around everywhere and impossible to avoid.
I trip over him and fall onto the tarred road, banging my knees hard.
But I can’t stop worrying about the pain or the fear.
Standing up, I look around, trying to figure out which way to run.
That’s when I see Marlen.
He looks like a madman, angry enough to tear an entire world apart as he fires a shower of bullets onto the men spilling out of the car that was ahead of us. Behind him, Jaroslav and Diomid are coming around the side of their car and join the fight. I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. They’re all working together to save me.
Marlen spins, turning toward our car. His eyes fall onto me, and his face is flooded with relief, but then quickly replaced by fear when the boss man realizes I’ve escaped.
“Stef, run!” Marlen shouts.
“Run, Stefania!” Jaroslav yells at me.
I snap out of my trance, and my feet spring into action. I leap away from the reaching hands of the man who was in charge. He snarls in anger, cocking his gun and taking aim at me. Looking left and right, there is nowhere for me to hide. I start walking backward, lifting my arms in the air, not daring to take my eyes off him or his gun.
Bullets smack into the car next to him, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
He’s focused solely on me.
“Don’t you take another step, sweetheart!” he snarls.
