Adrian barks out a laugh, sending spittle every direction, before he asks, “You think I care about how it ends? I stopped caringabout my own survival the moment she destroyed everything I built. All I wanted was for her to feel the same devastation I felt. To watch her lose everything the way I lost everything.”
He drags me another step backward. Four feet from the door now. Maybe three.
“You want to know something funny?” Adrian’s tone turns conversational, almost casual, despite the gun pressed to my skull. “Ivan was feeding me information for months. Your family’s own accountant, selling you out for pennies on the dollar. That’s how I knew about every move you made. Every security protocol. Every weakness in your organization.”
Ivan. The confirmation shouldn’t surprise me after everything we’ve learned, but hearing Adrian say it out loud still makes my stomach turn. A man my brothers trusted with their finances, welcomed into their inner circle, and he betrayed them for money.
“He was too easy to buy,” Adrian muses. “One conversation about his gambling debts, and he was ready to hand over anything I wanted. Bank records. Security schedules. The names of everyone your brothers considered an ally. He even told me about Boris’s tactical preferences and which safe houses your family uses in emergencies.”
I brush my fingers against the shard of glass tucked into my sleeve. I picked it up from the floor after the flashbangs shattered the windows, just before Adrian grabbed me. It’s not much of a weapon. Maybe three inches long, jagged on one edge, already slick with blood from where it cut my palm when I grabbed it. But it’s all I have.
“I was going to be a king,” Adrian whispers. “I was going to unite every family your brothers ever wronged and build something that would last for generations. An empire that would make the Kozlovs look like street thugs. And you destroyed it. Just like you destroyed everything else I tried to create.”
We’re almost at the door now. Another few steps and he’ll have me outside, away from Tony and Boris and any chance of rescue. I don’t know what’s waiting on the other side of that door. A car. A helicopter. Another warehouse full of men loyal to Adrian’s money. Whatever it is, I know I can’t let him take me through it.
One chance. That’s all I get. One moment of surprise before he pulls the trigger.
I meet Tony’s eyes one more time. I try to tell him with my gaze what I’m about to do. Whether he understands or not, I can’t wait any longer.
I drop my weight and let my body go completely limp.
The sudden dead weight catches Adrian off guard. He staggers, and his arm loosens around my throat as he tries to keep us both upright. His balance is already compromised from the infected wound, from the fever eating away at his strength. He pulls the gun away from my temple for just a fraction of a second as he struggles to adjust his grip.
I let the glass slide down from my sleeve and close my hand around it. The shard bites against my skin as I drive it backward into his thigh with every ounce of strength I have.
Adrian screams. The sound is raw and animalistic, torn from somewhere deep in his chest. The gun clatters to the concrete as both his hands fly to his leg. Blood spurts between his fingerswhere the glass is still embedded in his flesh, bright red against his expensive trousers.
I throw myself sideways and hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me. My shoulder takes the brunt of the impact, and pain shoots down my arm. But I’m clear. I’m out of the line of fire.
Tony’s shot comes before I finish rolling. One round center mass. The report echoes off the warehouse walls like thunder. Adrian jerks backward, and his mouth opens in a silent O of surprise. His hands leave his wounded leg and flatten against his chest, as if he can somehow hold the blood inside.
The second shot follows within seconds. Adrian crumples like a puppet with cut strings. He hits the concrete face-first and doesn’t move. A pool of crimson begins spreading beneath his body, creeping across the gray floor.
For a long moment, the warehouse is silent except for the ringing in my ears.
Then everything happens at once.
Boris’s men lunge forward to secure Adrian’s body. Two of them kick away the fallen gun while a third checks for a pulse and shakes his head. Tony sprints toward me, shouting my name. Somewhere behind me, I hear Dmitri’s voice barking orders.
Tony reaches me first. He drops to his knees beside me and runs his hands over my arms, my shoulders, and my face, checking for injuries. Checking that I’m real and whole and breathing.
His voice breaks on my name. “Sasha, are you hurt? Did he hurt you? Talk to me.”
“I’m fine.” I grab his wrists to stop his frantic examination. “Tony, I’m okay. It’s over.”
He hauls me against his chest and holds me so tight I can barely breathe. I don’t complain. I wrap my arms around him and let myself shake, let the adrenaline and terror finally work their way through my system. He smells like gunpowder and sweat and something uniquely him, and I bury my face against his neck and breathe him in.
Dmitri appears above us, and his face is pale beneath his usual stern composure. “Sasha.”
My voice is muffled against Tony’s shoulder as I repeat, “I’m okay. Really. Just some bruises. Maybe a few cuts from the glass.”
I pull back from Tony just enough to show them my palm, which is still bleeding sluggishly from where I grabbed the shard.
“Resourceful as ever,” my eldest brother comments with pride.
Alexei is right behind him. “Is Belmont dead?”
“Very,” Boris confirms from somewhere behind me. “Two rounds to the chest. He’s not getting up again.”
