I check my weapon one last time. It’s fully loaded, two extra magazines, my other gun in reserve with extra ammo for it as well. My hunting knife strapped to my thigh.
"Twenty seconds."
I think about Mara. About the way she looked at me before I left, that disappointment in her eyes. How I pushed her away when she asked me to trust her, to let her in.
I might never get the chance to tell her I'm sorry. That I’m willing to try, if it means I can have her.
That she’s the only woman I’ve ever loved.
"Ten seconds. All ready?"
"East is ready," Kazimir's voice crackles through the comm.
"West is ready," Alexei confirms.
"On my mark," I say. "Three... two... one..."
The explosion is deafening, the steel door blowing inward in a shower of sparks and twisted metal. We're moving before the smoke clears, weapons up, as we charge in and sweep the space.
Sergei has men waiting, but as we tear through them, I have a feeling they were always meant to be meat—just cannon fodder to make us feel like we’re accomplishing something before we get to the main event that he has planned for us. The interior of the warehouse is largely empty once we get through the first line of men approaching us, and as we search the structure, we eventually come to a large room in the center.
I can see figures ahead—Sergei's men, at least a dozen of them, positioned around a cleared area.
In that area, each tied to a chair, are Mara and Svetlana.
My heart stops.
Mara's alive. She's hurt—I can see blood on her wrists, bruises on her face and a furious expression wreathing it—but she's alive and conscious. As we storm in, her eyes snap to me and widen. She’s enraged, I can tell, and I wonder what happened before we got here.
Sergei stands behind them, a gun in his hand, smiling like he's already won.
"Ilya Sorokov!" he calls out, his voice echoing in the vast space. "A little later than I expected, actually. I was beginning to think you didn't care."
I move forward slowly, my weapon trained on him, my men fanning out behind me. My focus is entirely on the scene in front of me. Mara’s gaze is still fixed on me, her hands clenching and unclenching into fists. Svetlana looks terrified but defiant, blood leaking from a cut on her lower lip, her complexion ashen. And Sergei behind them, clearly thinking he’s orchestrated the perfect trap.
"Let them go," I snarl, my voice carrying across the space. "This is between you and me."
"Oh, but that's where you're wrong." Sergei presses his gun against Mara's head, and I feel something crack inside my chest. "This is about so much more than territory or power. This is about showing everyone that the great Ilya Sorokov is just a man. A man with weaknesses. A man who can be broken."
My jaw clenches. "You've made your point. Now let them go."
"Not yet." Sergei's smile widens. "First, you're going to make a choice. You can save one of them—just one. Your fiancée, the woman you promised you’d marry? Or your current obsession, the one who made you forget your responsibilities?"
The warehouse has gone quiet except for the distant sounds of fighting from the other entrances. Sergei's men have their weapons trained on us, and we have ours trained on them. A standoff, perfectly balanced on the edge of violence.
"Choose, Ilya," Sergei says. "Show everyone what you really value. Show them your weakness. The other one dies slowly, proof that no one is invincible, especially when they don’t respect their betters."
I look at Mara, and she looks back at me, her gaze steady and clear despite the pain she must be in and the fear she must be feeling.
And then she speaks, her voice shockingly calm despite the gun pressed to her head.
"You'd better find a way to save us both," she says—not to Sergei but to me. "Svetlana might have been difficult, but I’m not getting out of this at the cost of another woman's life."
I stare at her, momentarily shocked. Not because she's defying Sergei's plan, but because in this moment, with death and the promise of more pain inches away, she's thinking about someone else. I’d let anyone on this earth die to save her, but she’s far better than I am.
The kind of woman who makes me want to be a better man.
"Mara—" I start, but she cuts me off.
