They don’t move. The smoke is getting thicker now, curling through the ventilation system, and the air tastes like salt and burning plastic. Luka’s thermite charges haven’t detonated yet, but Nerissa already smells wrong.
Pavel’s smile spreads wet and eager across his face. “Vadim wants the girl. Alive. You? He didn’t specify.” His gun shifts, the muzzle drawing a line of death toward the woman wearing my sapphires and the evidence of violence I couldn’t prevent.
Behind me, Anya stiffens. Her hand slides down her thigh, finding the Glock strapped above her knee on the opposite leg from where the USB drive is secured in her garter holster. She shifts her weight forward.
“Last chance,” I say, and my pulse is pounding against my ribs, but my hands are steady because they have to be. “Walk away. Tell Vadim you didn’t see us.”
“Can’t do that, boss.” Nikolai’s finger tightens on the trigger. “He pays better.”
Wrong fucking answer.
My hand is already moving when the world ends.
The yacht doesn’t shudder. It heaves.
The sound is God’s fist hitting steel, a concussive boom that vibrates up through the soles of my shoes and into my teeth and keeps going until my skull is ringing with it. The floor lurches hard to the left, and gravity stops making sense, and somewhere below us, metal screams as structural beams tear themselves apart.
Luka didn’t just blow the auction room. He gutted the ship.
The brothers blink. Half a second of distraction, their eyes dropping to the floor, to the threat they can hear but can’t see.
I don’t look. I’ve been waiting for this.
Two rounds into Nikolai’s chest.
The suppressor turns the shots into heavy coughs, but the impact is absolute, two holes appearing in his tactical vest that bloom red faster than he can process what’s happening. He drops, and he’s dead before he hits the tilting floor, before his brother can do anything except pivot toward the only leverage he has left.
My wife.
“No!” The roar tears out of me.
Pavel fires. Anya fires.
The click of her Glock jamming is the worst sound I’ve ever heard. She racks the slide without hesitating, clears the round, fires again, and this time the shot tears through Pavel’s shoulder in a spray of red. She hit him high, messy and ugly, but he’s running on adrenaline and hate now, and a bullet hole isn’t enough to stop him.
He lunges. His hand snaps a switchblade open. He grabs her wrist and yanks her forward so hard that the silk of her dress tears at the shoulder, and suddenly she’s in front of me instead of behind, and his hand is closing around her throat where the bruises from Dmitri’s fingers are still fresh.
“Anya!”
I launch myself at him, and the knife catches me across the ribs. The pain is a searing line of fire that scrapes bone and steals the breath from my lungs, but I don’t stop because I can’t stop. He’s got his hands on my life. His dirty fucking fingers are pressing into the same bruises my dead cousin left, and all I can see is red.
I grab his wrist and twist until the radius snaps.
The sound is a dry branch breaking, and his scream is high and wet, and his grip goes slack. Anya stumbles backward, gasping. The knife clatters to the floor, and blood is pouring down my side, but I don’t care.
I drive my knee into his stomach. The ribs give way under the impact. I do it again, and again, and I want him broken. I want him to understand what happens when you try to turn her into leverage.
I slam him backward into the wall, plaster cracking behind his skull.
“You marked her.” My voice comes out wrong, an animal growl. “Second man tonight who made that mistake.”
Krov za krov.Blood for blood.
My hand closes around his windpipe. I squeeze. His eyes bulge. He claws at my arm, but I don’t let go. The light goes out. I wait until he’s just meat.
I let him drop.
My hand is shaking when I pull it back, from the sheer feral need to do it again, to find every man on this ship who looked at her wrong and squeeze until they stop moving. The tremor runs up my arm, and I clench my fist until my knuckles go white because I can’t let her see this. I can’t let her know how close I am to losing control completely.
