Page 70 of Kidnapped Bride

The silence in the kitchen was heavy as a familiar tension settled between us. She wasn’t my enemy by any means, but it wasn't easy knowing how she felt. The man had almost killed her and would have if she hadn't been startled awake in the middle of the night, and she was still defending him.

"Men like your father don't stop. He'll come back," I told her. "And when he does, he will see that you're with me, openly choosing me. You’ll become his enemy too. Is that what you want?"

Kira shook her head, stepping forward until her thighs pressed on the table. I knew deep down that every child loved their parents more than they could ever admit.

It was how men like him had any family at all.

But she was better than this, and she had me.

She didn't need him anymore, or this strange loyalty that would only hurt her in the long run.

She knew it too, but she stuck to her guns.

"Then deal with him or cripple him. Take everything he has—I don't care." She took a step around the table and her hand found my arm, fingers curling around my bicep as she said, "Just don't be the one who puts him in the ground. Not today… Please."

I looked down at her hand on my arm.

Her knuckles were scraped and her skin was still pink from the burns and she was standing here barefoot and half broken asking me to show mercy to a man who deserved none.

"Kira, I can't promise you that someone won't pull a trigger someday that ends his life. That's the world he chose… It's the world we live in, and?—"

"I know, she said, cutting me off. "As long as it's not you, okay? Because what will I tell our child when he or she grows up and learns her grandfather was murdered?" I watched her eyes well up with tears, but she blinked them back.

I clenched my jaw and heaved a sigh out my nostrils.

Everything in me screamed to finish this. Markin had tried to burn my life to the ground with the woman I loved inside it, and every instinct I had said to put a bullet between his eyes and be done with it.

He was a snake in the grass, a viper waiting to strike when I least expected it.

But when Kira let a single tear streak down her cheek, then swiped it away, I knew I would have to look in those eyes after this was finished.

And more than anything I wanted her to be able to look back at me without anger or pain there.

"You have my word," I said. "We'll take his operation apart piece by piece, but I won't kill him."

Her shoulders drooped and she sighed, leaning into me. She pressed her forehead against my chest, right above the plate carrier, and I cupped the back of her head carefully, avoiding the bump from her concussion. "Now get back in bed before the doc has my ass."

She looked up at me and almost smiled at that comment, but there was so much sadness in her eyes it was like she'd lost her ability to smile for now. "Thank you," she whispered, then pressed a kiss to my cheek and walked out.

I waited until she disappeared down the hallway before I turned back to Yakov and Vlad. Neither of them said a word about what they'd just witnessed. "Let's get out of here before she comes asking us to save a lost puppy too," Yakov grumbled. While I agreed with his sentiment, I couldn’t let myself get wrapped upin the emotion of it. We had a job to do and we had to get it over with.

The port was quiet when we rolled up at a quarter past eleven.

Yakov killed the headlights two blocks out and we coasted into position behind a row of shipping containers stacked three high.

The salty air off the water was cold and cut through the smoke smell still clinging to my hair from last night.

We set up behind the wall of shipping containers and waited for Yakov to finish his recon. He came back about fifteen minutes later, crouching low with his AK slung across his chest, and he was slightly winded.

"Well?" Vlad asked, and I waited for the answer as well. We had ten men on standby, waiting to move in as called. Gregg led those teams set up on the opposite side of the yard, and they'd been given orders to move in when they heard the first shots fired.

"I counted fourteen men. Two black SUVs and a box truck backed up to our storage unit. They've got bolt cutters on the lock but they haven't gotten in yet." He drew a rough layout in the dirt with a stick. "Markin's standing right here, ten feet from the unit door, watching his guys work. He's got men spread out along the access road but they're bunched up here" —he drew an X to mark the spot— "and here. Most of them are facing inward toward the unit, not outward."

"Is he that stupid? Are they all new?" I asked.

"They have to be. Half of them don't even know where to stand." Yakov ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. We'd seen poorly trained militias before. We probably didn't even need Gregg or the other team. I just didn't realize how strapped Markin was for men now.

Vlad checked the slide on his nine millimeter one more time and tucked it back against his thigh. "That's an advantage, but fourteen is still fourteen. Even if they're green, that's a lot of guns."