The smile spreads a little further, and then, he steps out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him and leaving the silence to crawl into me even more deeply than it did before.
“Mommy?”
Nina speaks my name softly, clearly not sure if I’m even capable of responding to her right now. My heart swells in my chest, hearing how frightened she is, and I stoop down at once to pull her into my arms.
“It’s going to be just fine, sweetheart,” I promise her, though I’m trying to convince her as much as myself. I’ve no idea what is going to happen. Alexei will come for us, right?
I want to trust that he will get us out of here, but how can I know for sure? At the end of the day, he could be willing to sacrifice the two of us if it means holding on to whatever that man is asking him in return. If it had been Max, it might have been a different story, but us...
I don’t know if we mean enough to him for rescue. I have to pray that we do, of course, for the sake of my daughter, for the sake of myself, for the sake of everything that I hold dear.
“You just close your eyes and rest your head in my lap,” I continue, as I pull off my cardigan and drape it on the ground,ignoring the shiver that rushes through my system as I expose myself.
I don’t care. I would freeze right here on the ground if it meant keeping her warm for just a little while longer.
She does as she’s told, and I plant my hand on her arm, able to feel the shaking that courses through her entire body. She is doing her best to be brave for me, but she’s just a little girl, and this isn’t the kind of thing any little girl should have to be strong in the face of.
I listen to the sound of my breath there in the dark, and wonder how much longer he’s going to make us wait. Because, right now, every second that passes feels like a lifetime.
19
ALEXEI
A cold breezewashes through the still air, the city dead quiet in the early morning light. The large concrete building before us looks like any of the others that studs this street, but there’s something inside, someone beyond those walls, who’s alive when they should already be dead.
And, as far as I’m concerned, Vinski is as good as gone to me. I’m about to crush that fucker on the spot, make him pay for what he did to my family. Max is at home with Marsha right now, as calm as he can be given the situation. He pleaded with me to stay when I checked up on him, but I just kissed him and told him that I needed to make sure Nina was safe. That seemed enough to convince him to let me go, but I could feel his gaze burning into my back the entire time, willing me to turn around and come back.
I hate having to let him down. But this is bigger than us right now. This is about the rest of my family, the rest of his family, even if he doesn’t know it yet. His deep care for Nina is obvious, but I need Cara safe and sound at my side too. I can’t stopturning over the way she looked at me when she begged me to let her leave.
It feels like I’m the reason for all of this, even though Vinski is the bastard who dragged them into this in the first place.
I know she’s going to blame me. And she has every damn right to. I just don’t want to face up to the reality of what it means for something like this to have happened. All this time, I’ve made my home a fortress, impenetrable, and since her arrival, the pieces have slowly been pulling away, revealing themselves.I knew that I was taking a risk when I opened up Max’s life to someone else, but I could never in a million years have imagined that something like this might come from it.
I press my hand against my gun as Ilya climbs out of the car next to me, a few other vehicles pulling into the surrounding streets just out of sight of the building so that we can make our attack. I’m not stupid, and I’m sure that Vinski has planned for the possibility of us making a move like this.
He must be aware that he has brought down a malestrom on his head, and he will be prepared to fight with everything he has to get what he wants from me. But he has underestimated me if he thinks for a second that I’m going to let him walk away from this.
“Throw in the explosives,” I tell Ilya, and he lifts a hand, gesturing for two of my men to approach the bottom of the building, which contains a bar. I’ve had them doing surveillance since we pulled the CCTV footage and tracked the journey of the car to this place, and I know there’s a decent amount of alcohol on the ground floor. One well-placed molotov cocktail, and the entire place is going to go up in flames.
I watch as two of my men move forward, their footsteps the only sound in the empty street. They’re each holding a bottle in their hands, the closest we have to real explosives given that we had to make do with what is kept at the house. I’ve always kept that place as clean and clear from my bullshit as possible, determined not to expose my son to it, and at least I didn’t have anything there that those fuckers could have used against me given the chance.
They light the bottles and toss them through the window. There’s a loud crash, glass shattering on to the street, and I tense.This is it. Here we go. They pull back, and, with a loud whoosh, something inside the building catches fire, flames licking towards the windows at once.
There are yells from inside, and I gesture to the other gathered men for them to make their move; they close in on each side, blocking off the exits as I move towards the front door. I could have had one of them deal with the entrance, but there’s no chance in hell I want to make this any easier for them than we already have.
If Vinski is in there and makes a break for it, then he is going to be met with the end of my fucking gun, no way for him to escape what is waiting for him.
Ilya is at my side as the first of the men stumble out of the burning building. I lift my gun and fire twice, executing them before they even realize what is happening. I can hear yelling and a commotion from one of the other exits, and I guess some of them thought they might avoid what was coming for them if they moved quickly enough. But I’m not about to let up that easy.
I push their bodies aside and lift my scarf to wrap it around my face—not that it’s going to do much to fend off the smoke that’s already filling the room. I need to find Vinski. I know the fucker is in here somewhere, no doubt preening and wondering how long it is going to be before I give him what he wants. He might have expected some kind of attack, but I don’t intend to let him walk out of here alive.
I hear gunshots cut through the air, a crackling inferno behind the bar that is spreading slowly to consume the whole room. I need to find Cara and Nina before it can reach them. I don’t know where they are being held, but I’ll find out, no matter what it takes.
Out of the corner of my eye, in the darkness, I see a figure moving fast. I bolt after them in pursuit, and sure enough, I manage to close the distance between us in a matter of seconds, catching him and pinning him to the wall.
“Let me go!” he yells, and his voice is the same one that came down the line earlier, even if he sounds a whole hell of a lot more panicked now. I tighten my grip on him, narrowing my eyes.
“Shut the fuck up,” I growl. “Where is she? Where’s Cara?”
