The new lock, courtesy of Sophia’s escape attempt, disengages with a soft click.
Behind us, something heavy slams against the cellar door. Once. Twice. Wood splinters.
“Hurry.” Sophia’s voice is tight with fear, but she’s not panicking. Not yet.
The tunnel beyond is narrow and dark, lit only by emergency lighting that casts everything in sickly yellow. I pull Sophia inside and seal the door behind us. The mechanism is designed to be impenetrable from the outside, reinforced steel hidden behind a facade of old stone.
We run, dodging the traps I was taught to avoid. The tunnel slopes downward, leading away from the mansion toward the safe house three miles away.
My lungs burn, and my shoulder aches where I took a hit during the firefight at the docks. But I don’t slow down.
Sophia keeps pace beside me, her breathing ragged but steady. I glance at her, and something twists in my chest.
She shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be running for her life through underground tunnels because of my enemies.
Because of choices I made long before I ever knew her name.
The tunnel opens into a junction, three passages branching off in different directions. I take the left one, the route I’ve memorized for exactly this scenario.
That’s when I hear it. Footsteps behind us. Fast and getting closer.
“They’re in the tunnel,” Sophia gasps.
Impossible. No one knows about these passages except my most trusted men.
“Keep running,” I tell her. “Don’t look back.”
“Mikhail—”
“Go!”
I spin around, raising my gun. Three figures emerge from the darkness, their weapons trained on me.
I fire first. One goes down, but the other two scatter, taking cover behind support pillars. Bullets ricochet off stone, the sound deafening in the confined space.
I feel Sophia beside me before I see her.
She’s taken position behind a jutting section of wall, her gun raised.
When one of the attackers leans out to shoot, she fires.
The shot goes wide, but it forces him back into cover.
“I told you to run,” I growl.
“And I told you I’m not hiding.” She fires again, this time closer to the mark. “We do this together or not at all.”
There’s no time to argue.
The attackers are advancing, using the pillars for cover.
I count my remaining ammunition.
Eight rounds. Not enough.
One of them makes a mistake, exposing too much of his shoulder.
I take the shot, and he drops with a scream.
