I moved fast and as quietly as I could through the alley that cut between the two properties before his. I went through the backyard.
“Now how the heck am I going to get in?” I muttered to myself as I stared at the huge monstrosity of a home.
There was a dog door on the back door that I could see led to the kitchen. Glancing down at my curves, I knew that even though it was for a bigger dog, there was no way I was squeezing in.
I snuck up on the back porch to see if maybe the door was unlocked. When I grabbed the handle and turned, it didn’t budge. “Shit.”
It was getting cold, and my fingertips were going numb.
That was when luck shone down from the heavens upon me. The door swung open, and an older woman, muttering in what sounded like Russian, came out, carrying a trash bag. She left the door open as she waddled down the steps and toward the detached four-car garage.
Quickly, I hurried across the painted wood and into the warm kitchen. It was so cold out that the warmth from inside the home made my hands burn.
As I glanced around the kitchen trying to decide where to go next before the woman came back inside, I heard voices coming from down the hall. There were two doors, and I took my chances on the left one. With each step across the polished hardwood, I prayed it wouldn’t squeak.
The first room was a formal dining room with massive windows. I reached the second room just as voices rose.
“You’re weak,” Boris was saying, his voice sharp with disgust. “You chose her over the brotherhood. Over me.”
“I’m weak? Because I chose a woman? It wasn’t a matter of choosing her over anyone. I was still loyal to you. But if you’re forcing me to choose, then yes… I choose her,” Maksim replied.
“Idiot! Nothing and no one comes before the brotherhood. You chose a liability,” Boris snapped. “And now you’ll die for it.”
The gun came up as I looked inside what appeared to be a study with the same massive windows as the first.
Time fractured. I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I stepped into the open doorframe.
“Drop it,” I demanded.
Both men froze.
Maksim turned first. His eyes went wide—not fear. Horror.
“Sofia—no?—”
Boris laughed. “Oh. It’s your little weak link herself.”
He pivoted toward me. That was his mistake.
The gun Archer had pressed into my palm days ago, despite its size, felt heavy and inevitable. I aimed where he’d taught me. Where fear no longer lived, I found the ability to do what needed to be done—I pulled the trigger.
The sound was insanely quiet.
Boris staggered back, shock flashing across his face as he fell into the antique plate glass window. The sound of the glass shattering was louder than the sound my weapon had made.
For a moment, nothing moved. It was as if time was suspended.
Then I rushed to peer through the broken glass.
Boris had landed in the pristine white that carpeted the ground and the bushes. Snow drifted down around him, soft and delicate, catching in his hair as blood bloomed across his pale gray suit coat.
Christmas lights twinkled on, red and green and gold reflecting off the white ground—now dotted with blood. Beautiful. Horrifying. Final.
Silence rushed in to fill the space he’d occupied.
Maksim crossed the floor in seconds, hands on my face, searching me like he was counting bones. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I replied, breath trembling. “I’m fine. But if I hadn’t done what I did, you would have been. And so would I.”
