“We can flag down a cab,” Sylvie says over my shoulder.
“Stoy.”
The command comes somewhere from the left. The voice is calm, bored almost.
Two men step out from behind one of the dumpsters.
One of them has a gun. He steps toward us. Sylvie makes a sound, small and strangled. She hadn’t been expecting this. She didn’t know they’d be here.
“Sylvie, run!”
Something hits the side of my head. It’s hard and metallic. The world goes white, then sideways, then black.
When I come to, I’m back on the nightclub floor.
I see the same purple lights, hear the same hum from the refrigerators, feel the same cold, sticky concrete against my cheek.
But the room is different now, fuller. When my vision clears, I count ten men standing along the walls and near the exits, all armed, all watching.
Sylvie is on her knees near the bar, tears streaking down her cheeks. Two men flank her—one with a hand on her shoulder pressing her down, the other with a pistol resting casually against his thigh. Her face is ghostly white, and there’s a cut on her forehead that wasn’t there before.
Kolya stands in front of me.
He’s taken off his coat and rolled his sleeves to the elbow, exposing disgustingly hairy forearms. There’s a gun in his right hand, a compact black pistol that almost looks like a toy. But I know it’s not. He’s turning it over slowly, the way someone might fidget with a pen.
“You know,” he says, “I had the whole evening planned. There were going to be drinks, conversation, good food. I was going to tell you more about your family, things you don’t remember, things that no one else knows, like your mother’s favorite song, your father’s favorite cocktail, or the sound your brother made when he…” He drags a finger along his throat quickly, then laughs. “But you’ve spoiled the mood, my dear Teodora. Running away like that. So very rude.”
He crouches in front of me.
“I had planned to keep you around for a while, you know, have a little fun. Kolya Sokolov, keeping the final Fetisov around as his little pet. Imagine what your parents would say to that. It’s almost poetic, in a way.” He sighs, shaking his head. “But you took the fun out of that, too. How can I relax when I know that you’re a flight risk? Not to mention I’m an old man, and old men have very limited patience.”
“Screw you,” I snarl.
“Charming last words.” He stands. “And make no mistake—thosewillbe your last words.”
He steps back and raises the gun.
“Farewell, Miss Fetisova.”
That’s when the lights go out.
CHAPTER 47
GABRIEL
Twenty minutes earlier…
The van is parked on Braun Avenue, two blocks from the nightclub. Engine off, lights off. Six men are in the back, geared and silent.
Alexei’s team arrived just a few moments ago—four special ops men from his private security firm, headed up by the man himself. They’re the kind of men whose resumes are mostly redacted. They wear black tactical gear with no insignia, no patches, no identifying marks of any kind.
My own men are good, loyal, disciplined, capable. Many are ex-military. But they’re soldiers, not special ops. Alexei’s men are on another level.
My driver, Dante, is at the wheel. He’ll hold the perimeter with two men. No one goes in, no one goes out. Alexei sits across from me, studying blueprints on his tablet. He’d got them thirty minutes ago. I didn’t ask how.
“Alright,” he says. “Three entry points—main entrance, side door, service entrance. Kolya’s office is in the back corridor. The main floor is an open club space. That’s where most of the men will be. Thermal imaging shows eleven male signatures.”
“Ten guards plus Kolya,” I say.
