He doesn’t look back at me when he says it. He doesn’t need to. My brother’s betrayal slides into the empty place I made for it in my heart and embeds itself there like a splinter.
Archer did this. Not only to Dominik and his men. To me too.
Popeye chuckles. “We heard there was going to be a big bag of our cash changing hands. Thought we’d come pick up our refund.”
“Of course you did,” Dominik says, and steps a calculated inch to his left, pulling me with him without touching me. “Fire!”
A battle erupts around us with that single word.
It takes my brain a full second to realize the first sound is ours, a clean, disciplined crack from the roofline that drops the biker standing closest to Popeye like someone pulled a plug in his spine. Then the bikers begin to return fire. The world becomes a strobe of muzzle flashes in streams of sunlight.
Dominik moves again. He isn’t just in front of me; he’s on me, a wall where a body should be, hands pushing my shoulders down until my bare knees hit grit. His suit coat becomes a curtain falling around my face as bullets slam into metal somewhere to my right, pinging off the vehicles. It’s a horrible sound that makes my teeth hum.
I can taste fear on my tongue. It’s the flavor of copper, bile, shame. I choke it down and press myself harder into the brokenconcrete, praying with an intensity that makes me angry that Archer is not stupid enough to actually be here. That if he is, he’s smart enough to keep his head down. That if the men shooting die tonight, it’s the ones who deserve it. I vehemently pray to whatever god is listening to not only let me live through this ordeal, but to let Dominik live too…
“Stay down,” Dominik says into my ear, and then his body leaves mine for a half breath. I feel air hit the space where his heat was, and a whimper tries to climb out of my throat. He returns an instant later, and something about the returning tells me he hadn’t gone far, just enough to pull his weapon free from his hip.
“On your left,” Viktor calls out and is immediately answered by gunfire. Petrov says something in Russian over on the right. I can’t resist lifting my head, unable to endure my curiosity a second longer. I need to see what’s happening around me, where the bullets are landing.
I look up just as a biker lunges through the shadows at the mouth of the warehouse. He’s braver than the others, as if either drugs or stupidity are fueling him. He rushes us with a roar. When he raises his weapon, he aims too high.
A Bratva shadow I didn’t see steps out from the left and makes him regret his arrogance. The biker falls and disappears into the shadows.
I try to keep my breathing quiet. I try to make my body smaller. The vest presses against my sternum, and the edges dig into my ribs each time I pull in air. Dominik’s left hand braces the concrete near my head. His right hand is beyond my field of vision, firing at the bikers.
Something changes.
I feel it before I hear it. The sound of the firing shifts, less chance and more measured. I risk a glance sideways andsee three of the bikers pulling back toward the vans, dragging someone between them.
“Archer?” I whisper, because the thought is an unimaginable notion.
“Stay down!” Dominik snaps.
“Smoke!” someone calls, and a bloom of white rolls out from behind one of the vans. It’s thick, chemical, the kind of fumes that makes your eyes water and throat burn. Dominik claps a hand over my mouth and nose and presses my face into his chest.
“Hold on,” he says.
I hold on to him. The smoke thins as quickly as it bloomed, and for five heartbeats I’m sure they’re using it to break our line. Then the vans rev and race backwards, one fishtailing as a tire blows under a Bratva shot. Another biker stumbles into our line of fire and is erased by it. The rest make it around the corner and are swallowed by the city.
Gradually, small sounds return. A man curses and groans, someone else shouts. In the middle of it all, something wet drips along my forearm.
13
Alina
I don’t realizeit’s Dominik’s blood on my arm until he lets me come up for air again.
I push up on my elbows so fast my head spins. He’s still kneeling over me. His jaw is clenched, and the lines around his mouth are tighter than usual.
“Were you hit?” My words tumble out sounding stupid and too small for the moment.
He nods once. “Ribs.”
An unexpected jolt of concern hits me. He’s hurt.
Seeing my eyes go to the spreading stain in the dark fabric of his jacket at his side, he says, “Probably just a graze. I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not comforting.”
