The moment they stepped through those doors, the shooting would start, and Lilia would have to watch her sister and cousins be executed in front of her. Without a singlethought, I raised my arm and shot Reuben cleanly through the side of his lying head.
Immediately after the shot rang out, almost before the body hit the porch, the sheet metal in front of the barn door exploded outward, and a swarm of Luigi’s men ran out. They must have hidden the extra cars in the barn; there were so many of them. The Petrovs were far outnumbered.
All hell broke loose, and I raced around the back to find another way in to rescue Lilia. Footsteps thundered behind me as someone chased me. I didn’t waste time looking behind me to find out who it was. I was on my own here, with only one objective.
Kicking in the back door, I stormed inside to a cacophony of shouts and gunfire. As I skidded through the kitchen, someone knocked Lilia’s chair over, and she screamed as she hit the floor. Everything seemed to drag into slow motion as I watched another person barely avoid stepping on her head. She was going to get killed. A bullet winged past me, ricocheting off the door frame, but I barely noticed it.
Time stood still, my mind went blank. The only thing that mattered was getting her out of there, to safety. She was mine; no one would ever hurt her.
I shot two of Luigi’s men and had to forgo dropping another because Daniil Petrov moved into the way. My finger twitched at the trigger, but I only swore and dove toward Lilia, struggling to break free of her bonds.
Whipping the hunting knife out of its case, I slashed through the zip ties at her wrists and moved to get her ankles free. There was no time to feel anything about the scrapes on her leg or the deep scratch on her shoulder, let alone the burgeoning bruise on her cheek where that asshole had slapped her.
She stopped screaming as soon as she realized it was me, and I got her on her feet, shielding her with my body as more men streamed in through the door, trying to block in the Petrovs.
“I’m getting you out of here,” I said over the racket, tucking her under my arm and moving toward the back door, gun raised in front of me.
“No,” she shouted, shoving me out of the way with all her might. The push barely budged me, but it was enough to keep the next bullet aimed my way from tearing through the center of my back. Instead, it only grazed my shoulder.
“Lilia,” someone yelled.
I whipped around to find that her cousin Rurik had been the one to shoot at me. He aimed again, but one of Luigi’s men jumped forward and knocked the gun out of his hand. “Hey, boss,” he said to me, full of bloodlust as he raised his own gun to Rurik’s head. “When did you show up?”
I shot him through the wrist, the gun falling to the floor with a clatter. The next was a kill shot, and then I roundhouse kicked Lilia’s stunned cousin before he could reach for another gun. It looked like the Petrovs were going to come out ahead, with only a couple of Luigi’s men still hanging in there. Luigi himself was nowhere to be seen, not that I had any free time to look very far.
I picked Lilia up, tossed her over my shoulder, and hauled ass for the back door. I didn’t stop running until I reached my car, glad I had parked further down the road. I hardly noticed she was pounding on my back and screaming at me; the sound of my own heartbeat was so loud in my ears. Blood trickled down my arm where the bullet grazed me, and her hair was streaked with it when I tossed her in the backseat.
“What are you doing?” she yelled.
“Saving you,” I said, jumping into the driver’s seat and slamming the car into gear.
She whacked me on the shoulder, then flew back against the seat as the car leapt forward. With a grunt, she rolled into the space between the seats.
“Damn it, Lilia, are you all right?” I reached behind me to help her up into the front, but she swatted away my hand.
“No, I’m not all right. If you’re trying to save me, why not leave me with my family?”
Did she really just ask me that? I glared at her in the rearview mirror, jerking my eyes back to the winding road.
“If you cared about me, you would just …” she trailed off, curling up in the corner of the backseat and woefully stretching the seatbelt across herself. She winced when it brushed against her injured shoulder, but continued staring at me, waiting for answers.
“I’m not letting you go, Lilia,” I said. My voice came out broken, tired. Defeated, even though I had won. She was still mine, and her family had done me the favor of getting rid of a good number of people I wanted gone. Maybe even Luigi. And not a single one of the Petrovs had died in the process.
In fact, one of them owed me for that. Hadn’t Lilia seen me save Rurik’s life?
I slowly replayed the instance back in my mind. The bullet he aimed at me went wild and then—wait a minute. It didn’t go wild at all. Lilia shoved me out of the way. She saved me when her cousin had the perfect shot to wipe me off the face of the earth. She could have had her way out right there. And yet,she risked putting herself in the path of the bullet by trying to push me out of the way.
So why was she still so hell-bent on leaving me?
Chapter 37 - Lilia
When Reuben first dragged me away from the motel where I thought I had told Masha to find me, I was merely confused. I couldn’t say I had ever liked the guy, but I had trusted that he wanted to align himself with my family. Now he thought he was going to pull off some kind of double cross?
Did he really think he stood a chance? I didn’t bother telling him I could spout a litany of safe words and assurances. There was no way they weren’t sending at least three people after me, probably more. I actually felt a glimmer of pity for Reuben until we pulled up at a dilapidated farmhouse, and we were greeted by a horde of people from the Collective.
I recognized the man who arranged the auction at once, and spent a satisfying moment recalling Gavril smashing him in the face, but it didn’t take long for that to dissolve. Within seconds of being shoved inside the house, I was tied to a chair.
For a while, it was as if time didn’t exist. I overheard their plans for my sister and cousins when they showed up, and how they’d be in a state of confusion when the attacks started back home. My fury and screamed threats only amused them, and got me smacked a couple of times.
