“Are you—”
“Hello, little Radev bitch. You must be the new wife,” the masked man snarls. Instantly I recognize my mistake, and instantly I know Anton was right. This man is not with mybrother or Josiah. He’s someone else entirely. “I’m going to have some fun with you!”
“Izabel!” I hear Anton shouting my name as the man reaches for me, wrapping his long fingers around my throat and lifting me to my feet. His squeezes so tightly that my head begins to spin, and the world around me starts going black at the edges.
“You’re coming with me,” he snaps, and my mind tries to stop the blurry images from stealing me away as I try and try again to take a breath.
He’s turning with me dangling in his grip, half awake, half suffocated, and unconscious.
“Izabel!” My name again, from Anton’s lips, this time much closer. Right behind us. The man doesn’t move fast enough as he drops me. I fall to the ground again. My legs buckle beneath me, and I’m gasping for air. Above me, two men fight. Grunting, snarling, the wind knocked from someone. The snap of something. The glimmer of a blade.
I’m fighting for consciousness, and slowly it is coming back to me.
“Fuck!” Anton snarls.
I wince as the knife slips into his abdomen right above his hip.
Two gunshots.
The massive man in the black mask falls forward as Anton staggers backward.
I watch him, and he watches the man land face-first on the iced cobblestones.
“Get up!” he says to me, holding out his hand. It’s covered in blood. His blood, which is gushing from the wound on his hip.
“You’re—”
“Get up, more are coming, we need to get out of here!”
Anton staggers forward, and I manage to slip my arm around his waist. I’m barely tall enough for him to rest against, but I do what I can.
We move slower than I imagine he wants to as we make our way around the back of the building, up the side, and finally reach his car.
Thank goodness no one else finds us along the route, but we do hear men shouting when they find their dead colleague in the alleyway.
“You drive,” he huffs, in pain as he practically falls into the passenger seat. “They laced the knife with something. I think they poisoned me,” he groans.
My heart is spinning inside me. “I need to get you to a hospital!” I blurt out.
“No hospital. Take me home. Please tell me you know how to drive stick,” he gasps through rasped and jagged breaths.
“Of course, I know how to drive stick. Did they stab you in the brain or the abdomen,” I snap at him. My adrenaline is so high I don’t know if I’m angry or scared.
“Ha,” is all he can respond as he drifts in and out of consciousness.
“If you die from whatever was on that blade, you can’t blame it on me!” I huff angrily. But he doesn’t respond. He’s barely aware of anything going on around him.
The car revs to life, and I take off at full speed, darting between other cars and earning myself a lot of angry shouts and honked horns of protest.
I could drive away right now. I could drive somewhere and get someone to call my brother. I could escape right this second.
But even as I think it, I know I won’t leave him to die. It’s not in me. It’s not who I am.
“Navigation. Home,” I say loudly to the car's internal system, hoping that it isn’t only programmed to his voice and will also respond to mine. A map jumps onto the screen. I’m already driving way too fast in random directions, trying to make sure I leave the gallery and whoever that was far, far behind us. But I don’t know Detroit. Not in the least. So, I’m very,verylost.
A red line plots my course over the street view on the dashboard. Thank goodness.
“Eighteen minutes. We’ll be home in eighteen minutes.”
