Without a word he lowers his lips to mine again, and I kiss him. Who knew that just over four weeks ago when a strange man walked into my classroom and ordered me to get into his car that I'd fall so hard for him? But here I am.
Maybe I'm a fool for falling for him. Maybe it's some mental disease I have or a symptom of trauma—God knows there's been enough of that. But I do love Fyodor Gravitch, and as long as he's trying to be a better man, I can’t see myself loving anyone else ever again.
27
FYODOR
Islide out of bed as carefully as I can manage, trying not to wake Noemi who's curled up on her side with her hair spread across the pillow, and I stand there for a minute just watching her sleep in what's left of the candlelight. Most of them have burned down to nothing, just a few still flickering on the dresser and casting soft their soft glow across her face. The rose petals are scattered everywhere, on the sheets and the floor and tangled in her hair, and she looks peaceful and beautiful.
I don't want to leave. I want to crawl back under the covers and wrap myself around her and stay there until the sun comes up and maybe longer than that. But I made a promise to Yuri that Marat would be dead by morning, and it's one promise I can't renege on. If I don't keep my word, I'm nothing.
I pull on my clothes in the dark, as quietly as I can, then lean down and press a kiss to her forehead. She stirs but doesn't wake and settles deeper into the pillow. I want to tell her I love her one more time, but that would mean waking her up and explaining where I'm going and why. It's better to let her sleep for now. Ican tell her when this is all over and we can celebrate together. At least, that's my plan.
I force myself to turn around and walk out the door before I change my mind about all of it.
Lazar and Vasili are waiting in the parking lot when I get outside, leaning against the car and smoking cigarettes like they've got all the time in the world. The sky's still dark but there's a hint of gray on the horizon that tells me dawn isn't far off. We need to move if we're going to catch Marat and his protectors before the shift change.
They straighten up when they see me coming and Lazar tosses his cigarette on the ground and crushes it under his boot.
"Ready?" he asks.
"Let's get this done."
We pile into the car the guys secured for us. My SUV is parked blocks away from here now to hopefully keep Marat's men far away from this place while my family sleeps. Lazar drives while I ride shotgun and Vasili takes the back seat. Nobody talks much on the way over, but I'm not in the mood for conversation anyway.
My head is still back in that motel room with Noemi, remembering the way she looked sleeping in the candlelight and the words we said to each other before we fell asleep. I have to keep pulling myself forward to focus on what we're about to do and not get distracted. It’s the one reason men in my business fail, because they're thinking instead of focusing. And it’s the one reason I'll be killed if I don't watch myself.
The safehouse is in a residential neighborhood on the other side of the city, a two-story place set back from the street with a small yard and a chain-link fence around the perimeter. It looks like any other house on the block. There's nothing special about it that would make anyone think it's state owned and that a witness is being housed in it.
Rurik's intel said there would be four guards, two stationed outside and two more inside, all assigned to keep Marat breathing until he can walk into a courtroom. But we're here to make sure that testimony never happens.
Lazar parks two blocks away from the target and we get out and split up to approach from different angles. I take the front, Lazar circles around to cover the back entrance, Vasili positions himself on the side in case anyone tries to run. It's as simple of a plan as they come and we've done this a dozen times, but my gut keeps clenching like something is wrong. I can't shake the feeling that we're in the wrong place, that I should be back in that bed with the woman I love protecting her and my son.
I move down the street keeping close to the parked cars and staying out of the pools of light from the streetlamps. There's a guard at the front door, young guy with a cigarette in his mouth and a bored expression on his face like he's been sitting there all night with nothing to do. He's not paying attention to anything except the glow on his phone screen, and he doesn't even see me coming until I'm ten feet away and raising my weapon.
By then it's too late. I fire off two suppressed rounds to his chest and he drops, his cigarette rolling across the concrete as he falls and his phone clatters to the ground. I step over his body and press myself against the wall next to the door, listening for any reaction from inside.
But the house stays quiet and I don’t hear any movement behind the door. But I do hear glass breaking somewhere around back, which means Lazar's making his move, so I kick in the front door and go in fast with my weapon up. The entryway is dark and I clear it quickly, sweeping left and right, then move deeper into the house.
My body is a trained machine. I've done things like this enough to be able to keep my heart rate in check and my wits about me. It's almost mechanical the path I follow, ensuring the downstairs is empty, but I pause at the bottom of the steps.
A guy appears at the top of the stairs with a gun in his hand and I drop him before he can get a shot off. Another one comes running from a side room shouting something I don't quite catch and I put two in his chest and keep moving without slowing down. This is the easy part. I don't let myself think about anything except the next corner, the next doorway, the next target that needs to go down.
I find Lazar in the kitchen finishing off a guy who made the mistake of trying to fight back with a knife instead of running. He's got the man pinned to the floor with his boot on his throat, and I crouch down and grab the guy by the hair to lift his head up so I can see his face.
"Where's Marat?"
The man just gurgles, so I nod at Lazar and he eases up enough to let him talk.
"There's no one here by that name," the guy chokes out. "I don't know what you're talking about."
I put a bullet in his head and stand up. I'm not here to waste time torturing men who refuse to play my game. And something feels very wrong.
We've cleared most of the house and there's no sign of Marat anywhere, no witness cowering in a back room, no extra security detail protecting someone important. It's too empty, too easy, and my gut is telling me we've walked into something bad. This doesn't feel like a safehouse. It feels like bait.
"Check the bodies," I tell Lazar as I move to peek out one of the front windows. "Look at their IDs. Something about this doesn't feel right."
He goes back to one of the men I killed and crouches down to pull out his wallet. When he looks at what's inside the wallet, his face goes hard.
