She squares her shoulders. “You don’t own me.”
Anton steps toward her. “I own every breath you take.”
Gunfire explodes from the dark.
The first shot takes out the warehouse light over Anton’s head. Glass bursts down in glittering shards. Men shout. Someone near the far wall drops with a cry, blood spraying across a crate. The whole place detonates into chaos in less than a second.
Dario comes through one side entrance with two soldiers at his back, already firing. Matteo breaches from the opposite wall like a fucking freight train, taking down one guy with a shot to the throat before pivoting and putting a second bullet into another. More of our men pour in behind them.
Every Kozlov soldier spins in a different direction. Half go for cover. The other half go for their weapons too slowly and die for it.
In the confusion, one of the men behind me reaches for his gun, and Dario drops him before I can even open my mouth.
Then he’s at my side.
“Jesus Christ, you look like shit.”
“Missed you too, asshole,” I grind out.
He slashes through the ropes at my wrists. The relief is instant and brutal, blood rushing back into my hands in a hot, stabbing flood that makes me hiss between my teeth.
He shoves a pistol into my grip. “Can you shoot?”
My hands are stiff. My shoulder is a mess. My left eye is swollen shut.
“Fuck, yes.”
Across the warehouse, Nikolai doesn’t run for cover. Doesn’t engage the Andrettis. He goes straight for Natalia, grabbing her by the arm as he yanks her toward him.
Dario cuts the rope at my ankles. “Luca?—”
I’m already moving.
The chair clatters behind me as I shove to my feet. My ribs scream. My knees almost buckle. Doesn’t matter. None of it matters.
“Stupid fucking traitor,” Nikolai snarls in her face, raising his hand.
She twists, trying to tear free, but he backhands her so hard her head snaps to the side. Matteo barrels toward them, but another Russian bastard intercepts him, and the two of them crash into a stack of crates in a spray of splintered wood.
“Natalia!” I roar.
Nikolai’s head whips toward me.
I’m on him before he can react.
He shoves Natalia away and swings. I duck under it and drive my fist into his throat hard enough to send him stumbling backward. The impact jars all the way up my arm. He’s tough. I’ll give him that. Mean bastards usually are. He recovers fast and slams into me with all his weight, and suddenly we’re both going down in a hard sprawl across the concrete.
Pain explodes through my ribs. My vision whites out for half a second. I blink it back.
He drives an elbow into my jaw. I answer with one to his temple. We roll, swearing and grappling and trying to finish this while gunfire cracks through the warehouse around us and men shout over the noise.
I lose track of everything except his hands and mine. The scrape of concrete. The taste of blood. The sound of Natalia shouting something that never quite reaches me through the pounding in my ears.
Nikolai tears free and gets to his feet first, pulling a knife. He’s sloppy with rage, and that makes him dangerous. The first swipe catches my forearm before I can fully twist away. Heat flashes across my skin, sharp and wet, and then the blood comes.
I barely register it.
This isn’t a fight anymore.
