“Let me go!” She brings her leg up, but he dodges the attempt to knee him in the balls. In a swift move of his arms, he turns her around and wraps her up, lifting her off the ground. She screeches, kicking her legs.
Another man appears at the door and freezes as all this is happening, then he sees me on the floor. “Which one?”
“Doesn’t matter,” says Sergei. “We’re taking them both.”
The other man goes for me and I scramble to get away. He grabs me from behind and lifts me up off the ground. Screaming, biting, kicking, we’re both dragged out of her bedroom and toward the back stairs on the other side of this hallway.
“ROMAN!” I scream right before a hand covers my mouth. I scream against it, but they’re holding me fast.
Oh, God. I hope he heard me. I hope he stops this…
26
ROMAN
Ihear her as I grab the gun out of the safe in the study. The sound of fighting got my attention first, then the sound of screaming. It brought me out of the fog of my drinks and the afterglow of sex like an alarm, igniting my fight instinct before I’m even fully aware of it.
But it’s the sound of her voice that sobers me. Ringing like a bell through the halls just outside the study door. I shove a full magazine into the gun and grab two more from the safe and put them in my pockets.
I turn to see Ivan opening the study door. “What the fuck is going on out there?” I ask him. “Where’s Ares?”
“We’re under attack,” he says. “Is that the only gun you have?”
“Of course not.” I turn to go back to the safe to grab him one. “You should know better than to walk around without one.”
“Duly noted.”
As he says that, I catch movement reflected in the glass of the drink caddy. It’s a quick movement, an arm shooting up and pointing toward my back…
I duck and dive, knocking the caddy aside as I take cover behind one of the couches. Above me, gunshots pop. Bullets break through the cushion of the couch over my head.
Before I can process what’s happened, Ivan says, “You might as well come out. Make this easy on yourself.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My brain keeps trying to excuse it. Something came up behind Ivan or…
No. It happened too fast to be anyone but him. I pull my gun out of my belt and roll over, pressing my back against the wall. I cock it. “This is a surprise,” I say. “Out of them all, I would have sworn you’d be the most loyal.”
“You should know better. Bratva are loyal to no one. Not even their own brothers if it serves their cause.”
He’s moving slowly, but I can tell by his voice that he’s almost on top of me. “Seems to me that you’ve lost the plot, Ivan,” I say. The caddy is right next to me. I wedge my free arm behind it as he approaches. “The Bratva has always been about loyalty.”
“That was only ever true when I learned to be Bratva at my father, Pyotr’s, feet. You do remember my father… don’t you? Pyotr Durov?”
My blood turns to ice. It all makes sense now. The mole I was searching for, the one who knew about the meeting and handled all of Kostromo’s books. I don’t know how much of that is in the hands of the Feds, but I do know the most important thing.
He’s Ivanovo. And now, I understand exactly how much danger I’m in.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “After ten long years, vengeance is finally upon?—”
As he finishes the sentence, he steps around the couch, gun drawn. I push the drink caddy hard at the same time. It flies toward him as the gun goes off. Sparks and glass fly as the caddy hits him and the bullet ricochets off the glass.
It only buys me a few seconds, but that’s more than I need. He angrily topples the cart over and as it crashes in a cascade of glass and ice shattering. I aim and fire my gun, hitting him squarely in the chest three times. He grimaces and tries to return fire but stumbles back and falls to the floor instead.
I’m up on my feet and moving over to him as he groans and bleeds out on my floor. His eyes roll to mine as he struggles to lift the gun in his hand.
I have no parting words for him. He spent ten years plotting his revenge only to fail. May he burn for it. I raise the gun, aiming for his temple, and pull the trigger. His head jerks as the bullet tears a hole in the side of his head. His eyes go dead and his body goes limp.
I rush to the door of the study and run down the hall toward the living room. One of the men I had on patrol around the front of the house lies dead on the floor near the stairs, his neck twisted around at an unnatural angle. I step over him and rush up the stairs.
