I placed the revolver to his temple, pointing the other gun up, the gunfire only getting worse. “Don’t worry, this always works.”
“In the fucking movies,” he snarled. “You’ve lost your shit, Olivia.”
No, it works everywhere. It had to. I had written this plot out carefully in my head, among a dozen other scenarios. This had to work, it would work. We were either both getting out of here alive or neither of us were.
Alascer could kill all the Russians he wanted, but he wasn’t going to kill Phil. He would never kill Phil.
“Where is Isaak?” I asked carefully. “Where is his brother?”
“In the main building to our right.”
I looked back that way, several men running for that exact building, shouting. I only heard shouting in Russian. “Why does nobody care about us?”
“Because it doesn’t matter if you live or die,” he answered. “You became useless when you stopped giving us information.”
“I gave you The Club,” I said, looking at the back of his head. “That didn’t lead you anywhere?” I hoped to God it didn’t lead them anywhere.
“No,” he said, wincing away from the revolver. “You were beat for that, remember?”
I was beat for a lot of things, it was hard to keep track at thispoint.
His hand flexed when I didn’t respond. “There were a few people there, all dead ends, a couple of Isaak’s men died, but it led nowhere.”
A few…
My eyes widened and, involuntarily, I pressed that gun deeper into his temple. “They fucking killed Jake?” I asked through my teeth. “Did they kill Jake?” I hadn’t thought about it. Jake hadn’t even crossed my mind. Not even once. Was he dead?Was he dead!
“I don’t know,” Phil bit back. “Ease up on the gun, will you?”
“Jake was my friend,” I snarled.
“It’s the game, Liv,” he snapped. “You know that. Isaak wasn’t going to stop until you gave him something. How many times did you die for that information? How many times after that did he kill you for nothing?”
Seven times after that day. He had to stop because it started having side effects. I didn’t know what kind. All I remembered was not thinking for days. When I finally regained full consciousness, that’s when the killings started. That’s when he switched to just the beatings. Just the water hose. Just the—everything else.
A gunshot sounded just to my right, and my gun swiveled to that sound and pulled the trigger on instinct, the high that always came with shooting a gun filling me completely.
The man’s head whipped back, his body following.
Several guns rose towards me—
“Don’t shoot!” I heard a voice snarl.
Another gunshot went off, a sharp pain ripping through my shoulder, Phil flinching when the gun jerked away from his temple.
I snarled through my teeth, and found the culprit, pulling the trigger. My bullet hit him just as another did, slamming into himin two different directions.
“Don’t shoot!” the command came again. A threat this time.
I was panting through my teeth, trying to ignore the sharp pain, the warmth of the blood seeping down my skin. That’s when I realized that I was pinned.
“Olivia!”
I took in the dozens of people around me, all of them wearing suits, but only ten of them were wearing masks, and they had a dog.
A white dog.
My gun swung to the man who had said my name, his mask of smooth black that dripped down his face reflecting in the dim light of the day, that white dog, covered in blood, standing right beside him, ears up, eyes deadly.
