I felt the warmth before seeing the blood that spattered the side of my dress.
“Stay with me,” he ordered, his voice void of softness.
I nodded up at him.
Shielding my body with his, he led me through smoke and screams, down a short hallway.
“Anya… ” I whispered.
“It’s fine,” he answered.
Not until we were outside, surrounded by armed soldiers, who were clearly Lobanov men, did I realize what was going on.
This isn’t a random attack.
If it were, they would have grabbed any of the Lobanov brothers or the couple we were gathered to celebrate. But the masked men came for me. They grabbed me.
They aren’t here for them.
They’re here for me.
And that led me to an even more chilling question.
Why?
Chapter Two
Alexei’s POV
I had seen war countless times before—it was, more or less, one of the common denominators in my world. I had seen war at a distance as a child at an age when my mates were playing with wooden soldiers. My father and uncles had shown us glimpses of it before we could even decide if we were ready to see. I had seen war up close many times before my cousin became thePakhanof the Bratva. But seeing Mila’s dress smeared with blood did something to my pulse that years of warfare never had.
The copper tang of blood was a scent I’d known since I was a boy. It wouldn’t be wrong to call it the perfume of the Lobanov legacy and the inevitable backdrop to every deal, dinner, and milestone. I’d seen it in different shades and for different reasons. But never had it elicited such anger in me.
The ballroom was a tomb of shattered crystal and groaning survivors. My men were already on the move, efficient shadows in the haze of gunpowder smoke, checking pulses and delivering mercy where needed. But my eyes were anchored on her. She was huddled against a marble pillar, her hands trembling so violently that the fabric of her dress seemed to hum. Her eyes, which were brown and warm just a moment ago, were wide and swimming with a terror that made my stomach churn with a cold, predatory heat.
The attack had been too clean. Too focused. It wasn’t the spray-and-pray of a desperate street gang. It was a surgical strike.
“Alexei.”
I didn’t turn. I knew it was Dimitri. My right hand man moved through the wreckage toward me, his boots flattening the remains of a five-tier cake.
“The perimeter is secure,” Dimitri said, his voice low and grave. “We found a calling card. On the north exit floor. They didn’t want to leave any doubts.”
I finally looked at him. In his hand, he held a piece of charred wood, but it was what was burned into it that mattered. An inverted serpent. The signature of Enzo Moretti’s crew.
“The Italians. I knew it,” I hissed. We’d had a tentative truce with the Moretti family. Breaking it at a Lobanov engagement party was a total act of war. “Why? Why today?”
Dimitri’s expression was grim. “That’s the thing, Boss. They weren’t aiming for the head of the table. They weren’t looking for you, or your cousins, or even Anya.”
“Clearly,” I remarked.
“Our CCTV shows the shooters had one primary focus.”
He pointed a gloved finger toward Mila, now being tended to by a frantic Anya.
“They were after the girl,” Dimitri said. “They were after Mila Petrov.”
**********
