Katya stumbled in behind him, hair half-loose, knives slick with someone else’s blood, breathing hard. The moment she saw us, her shoulders dropped, just a fraction, relief creating a pathway for the tension to leave her spine.
The sight of her punched the breath straight out of my chest.
“Andrei,” I said with a rare note of gratitude.
“Family reunion later,” Andrei replied, wiping blood off his cheek with the back of his hand. “We’re not out yet.”
Katya’s gaze found mine.
Her chest rose up and then dropped down, like she’d been holding her breath since the moment we were separated. For one second—one heartbeat—the world narrowed to just the two of us.
Then her eyes hardened, breaking whatever pull that moment had.
“We need to move,” she said, stepping closer. “They know you’re loose, Viktor.”
“They tried to grenade me,” I answered. “It was very rude.”
Andrei looked at me sharply. “Did they touch you?”
“If by touch you mean ‘tried to redecorate my cell with my organs,’ then yes.”
His jaw flexed.
Roman slapped Andrei’s shoulder. “I see you brought backup.”
“She wanted to come with me,” Andrei said.
Katya glared. “If I wasn’t by your side, you would have tripped that alarm.”
“I would have noticed it in time,” he shot back.
“Children,” Lev muttered. “We’re not safe yet.”
Dmitri gestured suddenly. “We need to move.”
We did.
The eight of us—three Markovs, Kara and Katya, Andrei and me—cut through the corridor like lethal ghosts.
CHAPTER 13
Dubai, present day
Katya
The servers were three floors up and two wings over, buried behind layers of reinforced walls and biometric locks that Revenant believed made them untouchable. That belief was their first mistake. Their second was letting me see the building schematics before they built the place when I still worked for them. I’d memorized them in less than a half hour. In times like these, having a photographic memory came in handy.
I moved at point with Andrei, the two of us taking the lead down the long corridor as the others covered our flanks. Somewhere above us, the commander was barking orders and trying to put a neat little box around something he didn’t understand.
Which was us.
“Left up here,” I said, breath steady despite the adrenaline burning through me. “This main trunk feeds into the core of thebuilding. The server room is behind two security doors down that way.”
My boots slipped slightly on a streak of something dark on the floor—blood, not mine, not ours—and Andrei’s hand shot out to steady me without even looking, fingers snaring my elbow, grip firm and brief.
“You good?” he asked, eyes sharp.
“I’m fine.” I pulled free. “Let’s keep moving.”
