"Please." The word falls from my lips before I can stop it. "Please, just?—"
"I said shut up!" The man shakes me hard enough to rattle my teeth.
Dmitri's eyes meet mine across the distance. In them, I see something I've never seen before.
Helplessness.
Complete and total helplessness.
The man who controls everything, who manipulates and plans and always stays three steps ahead, can't do anything but stand there and watch.
Because of me.
Because I didn't listen.
Because I left his protection to grab a gun I didn't even use.
And no one is looking at me.
No one but Dmitri, who can't save me.
The man drags me backward through the doorway. My heels catch on the threshold. I stumble, and his grip tightens until my ribs scream.
"Move!"
Cold air hits my face. We're outside now. The alley behind Nexus stretches dark and empty except for a black van idling twenty feet away.
No.
I dig my heels in. Try to twist. His arm is iron around my waist.
"Dmitri!" I scream his name again.
The gun leaves my temple for half a second. Just long enough for me to see the doorway—see Dmitri's face, see him raising his weapon?—
Then the shot cracks through the air.
Not from inside. From behind me.
The man holding me jerks. His grip loosens. Something warm and wet sprays across my bare shoulder.
I don't think. Just move.
I throw myself forward, away from him, toward the door?—
Hands grab me. Different hands. Two men in tactical gear materialize from nowhere, catching my arms before I can reach the entrance.
"No! Let me?—"
They haul me backward. I kick. Claw. My nails rake across one man's face and he curses in a language I don't recognize.
The door slams shut.
Metal scrapes against metal. They're blocking it. Barricading it with something heavy while I fight and scream and?—
"Dmitri! Pietro! Someone?—"
A fist connects with my jaw.
