Adrian takes a step closer to her, wincing at the movement. He presses his hand against his side again, and I notice a dark stain seeping through his shirt beneath his jacket. The wound is worse than I thought. He needs a hospital.
“Why should I believe you?” he demands.
“Because I’ve seen what you’re capable of.” Sasha’s voice cracks convincingly. “You’ve already proven you can hurt us. You turned half of Europe against my brothers. My family has spent two weeks hunting you across London, and we’ve accomplished nothing except losing men and burning resources we can’t afford to lose.”
Adrian’s smile spreads slowly across his fevered face. “Go on.”
“I can’t watch you destroy everything my family has built. Everything my father and his father spent their lives creating.” Sasha shakes her head, and a tear slides down her cheek. “I’m not worth that. No one is.”
“So you’re willing to sacrifice yourself to save them,” Adrian sneers. “How noble. How touching. The princess of the Kozlov empire, brought low by her own conscience.”
“I’m willing to do what’s necessary.”
Adrian circles her slowly. Boris’s team should be in position by now. Three minutes out, staged in the buildings across the street and ready to breach on my signal. All I need is the right moment.
“You know what I think?” Adrian stops right in front of Sasha before he adds, “I think this is another trap. Another scheme cooked up by you and your brothers to get close to me. Dmitri probably has fifty men surrounding this building right now, just waiting for you to give them a signal.”
“It’s not a trap.”
“Then why bring Tony?” Adrian gestures toward me without looking away from Sasha. “If you’ve truly accepted my terms, why would you need a bodyguard?”
“Because I didn’t trust your men not to kill me before I reached you. And because Tony convinced me this was the only way to end this. He’s tired of running, Adrian. We both are.”
Adrian considers this for a moment. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, and another cough rattles through his chest. The man is falling apart in front of me, held together by nothing but spite and medication.
“Then prove it.” Adrian reaches out and touches her chin, tilting her face up toward his. “Show me you mean what you say.”
Sasha doesn’t flinch away from his touch. Instead, she takes a shaky breath and asks, “How?”
Adrian’s smile is grotesque on his fevered face. “Kiss me like you mean it, and maybe I’ll believe you’ve finally come to your senses. Maybe I’ll believe the great Sasha Kozlov has finally recognized what she threw away two years ago.”
I force myself to stay still. This is the plan. This is exactly what we wanted. But watching Adrian put his hands on her makes every muscle in my body scream to tear him apart. Years of CIA training barely keeps me rooted in place.
Sasha glances at me, and I give her an almost imperceptible nod. She turns back to Adrian and places her hands on his chest.
“Okay,” she whispers. “If that’s what it takes.”
She leans in and presses her lips to his.
I count to three in my head. Then I reach up and scratch the back of my neck with my left hand.
The signal.
The world explodes.
Flashbangs detonate simultaneously at three different entry points, filling the warehouse with blinding strobes and deafening noise. Smoke canisters follow half a second later, turning the entire space into a gray haze that swallows everything more than ten feet away.
Boris’s men pour through the doors with their weapons up and firing before Adrian’s guards can react. The guards closest to the main entrance drop before they can raise their guns. Others scramble for cover behind abandoned machinery, but Boris’s team has trained for exactly this scenario.
I tackle the nearest guard and drive him into the concrete floor. His head bounces off the surface with a sickening crack, and he goes limp beneath me. I strip his weapon and roll behind a shipping container as bullets whiz past my position.
“Sasha!” I shout into the haze. “Get down!”
The firefight is brutal but brief. Adrian’s coalition has been gutted by the events of the past few weeks, and his remaining guards are outmatched by Boris’s team. Bodies drop one after another as the professionals systematically clear the warehouse. Someone screams near the loading dock. Gunfire echoes off the concrete walls. Then silence.
I rise from cover, scanning the smoke for Sasha. The haze is starting to clear, revealing the aftermath of the breach. Six of Adrian’s guards lie motionless on the concrete. Two more are on their knees with their hands behind their heads as Boris’s men secure them with zip ties.
“Clear!” someone shouts from the far side of the warehouse.
