“We had to come back,” Alina tells me with a mixture of relief and fear in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have sent us away in the first place.”
The jolt of shock in my chest warms and sinks deeper into something that I refuse to name. Not right now. Not when our survival isn’t guaranteed and I’m vulnerable like this.
Instead, I let myself feelfuriousbecause that’s easier to handle and more helpful in battle. Our enemies have slain countless men, nearly destroyed my estate, and almost killed memultiple times. If they see Dominik and Alina, I have no doubt that they’ll shoot them and kill them on the spot.
“Pyotr said that our scouts saw enemy vehicles scouring our territory. Did they find you?” I ask Dominik and Alina before looking past them at Matvei. “Have you heard from Pyotr? I lost sight of him on the second floor.”
Matvei frowns and shakes his head. “I haven’t heard from him. I haven’t heard much talk at all over the radio. Our men are either hiding, unable to talk, or…dead.”
This is a nightmare come to life.
“They found the farmhouse,” Dominik tells me as he slowly makes his way over to us. “They didn’t find us inside, though. They did a quick check of the property and left.”
Guilt stirs within me. My hand falls to the small of Alina’s back as she presses against my side and tries to wipe away some of the blood splattered across my face. “I thought you would be safe there...”
Dominik shakes his head at me. “I know. I don’t blame you.”
“How did you get back here?”
“We ran through the woods,” Alina admits.
“Are you insane?” I ask Dominik.
“Our options were limited. We had to move on foot. What do you think would’ve happened if we’d been seen on the road?” Dominik asks me, his face steady and grim.
Nothing good.
It’s impossible to separate Alina from risky situations any longer, but it seems like she’s handling herself well. She isn’t a trembling ball of fear right now, even as we hear faint thuds in the distance from gunshots and explosions.
“At least you made it here in one piece,” I state, straightening my posture despite my body threatening to crumble.
Exhaustion weighs down my very bones, but the fact that they risked themselves to come back gives me enough motivation to stand tall. I need to for them.
“What’s happening besides you’re losing? We haven’t heard much over the radio,” Dominik questions me, determination laced in his voice.
He’s strong, rested, and ready to go. So are Renat, Viktor, and Petrov standing off to the side, unlike the rest of us down here.
I don’t miss the labored breathing and groans of pain that I hear throughout the bunker.
“They took the gates down,” I tell him. “They drove large trucks onto the property and sent one right through the front door. They were hauling men inside the back, and they came pouring out. We couldn’t hold them on the first floor, so the fighting moved to the second floor.”
Alina remains tense against my side as she listens, worry shining in her eyes.
“Enemies kept running onto the property during all of this, and snipers picked off what they could on the roof. On the second floor, we took down who we could as they came up, but someone threw a grenade and made the hallway catch on fire,” I tell them, replaying through the horror that happened in my halls.
“We saw the fire from the road,” Dominik says. “We thought you were still in there.”
I shake my head. “I moved to the back hallway on the second floor with Pyotr to help some people pinned down. Then we all got out.”
“Where did all this blood come from?” Alina asks as she pinches my blood-soaked sleeve between her fingertips.
I feel Dominik’s heavy, waiting stare on me. I don’t want either of them to know how close I came to dying multiple times.
I could be dead in the hallway right now. Shot to death. Strangled to death. Stabbed to death. Burned to death.
But somehow, I’m here with my brother and my…I don’t know what to refer to her as anymore.
“It’s not all mine,” I assure Alina. “I killed the Armenian leader.”
