Clenching my teeth, I stepped aside from Oleg as I sought partial cover. The second we split, we fired at the encroaching men.
Thrust from the too-quiet stillness outside where I’d parked and into the mayhem of chaos and violence, I joined the fray of life-or-death decisions.
Hiding the best I could around a double-stacked unit of pods, I picked off the men as they tried to corner us. Oleg held his own. I didn’t need to check on him to see that he was still with me. The rapid-fire rapport of his gun proved he was in the fight with me.
Out of bullets, I paused to reload. Calling for backup wouldn’t have been a wasted effort, but a man jumped at me, knocking my gun down.
“You’ll regret that, motherfucker,” I growled as I shifted into combat without my firearm.
In combat with my fists and kicks, I held back the attackers. Then with my reloaded gun, I killed others who dared to show themselves. Cocky dumbasses, all of them.
I didn’t slow down. I didn’t think. Oleg and I reacted to the ambush with the lethal power we possessed.
Only once they were all dead did I lower my arm.
“Andre?” Oleg wheezed out a harsh exhale after he called out to me.
I squinted, lifting my head to peer toward my right. I’d thought he’d gone to the left. “Yeah.”
He staggered out of the dust that had billowed up from the gunfire. Stepping over the dead bodies, he cleared his throat and looked me over.
“You all right?”
I shook my head. I’d been hit. The blood on his shirt proved he hadn’t survived unscathed, either. But we were both alive. Both standing and breathing.
“I’m not going to be all right until this bullshit is over,” I growled.
Catching my breath, I vaguely listened to Oleg calling for reinforcements.
While he arranged the details, for more Orlov men to come and handle the clean up, I lowered to my haunches and wrenched off the mask from one of the dead.
Giovanni.
Bitter anger nearly choked me as I released the fabric and let the men drop back to the filthy floor.
I bet all these men in here were Roberto Giovanni’s minions. Every one of them—again. He’d made it no secret that he was determined to topple our drug business.
But who’s giving you the intel, goddammit?
I cringed as I stood, more waves of pain lancing through me under my flesh. I had been hit and I was sore, but the agony of injuries paled in comparison to the searing fury of knowing someone in the family had to have been in on this ambush tonight.
I will find you.
Andnothingwill spare you.
I’d swear on it, no matter what.
2
SOFIA
Moonlight shone through the window as I scrubbed the floor.
Alone in this stretch of the hallway at Andre Orlov’s building, I fell further into the belief that I just wasn’t cut out for this.
I’d started out my first day as the household’s newest maid by following a stalwart, cranky old hag of a house manager, Renee. She must have assumed that I only knew English or Spanish with my alias of Sofia Gonzalez. It was likely the only reason she frequently slipped into Russian, complaining about me with every step of the way as she gave me a tour of Andre Orlov’s residence.
If I wasn’t walking too slowly, she was bitching about how overly strong my deodorant was.
