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If it were just Pavel and myself, I wouldn’t worry. We’re trained for this, prepared to go into battle at a moment’s notice. But Chloe and Slava are here too, as are my sister and Lyudmila. It’s the thought of them in danger that chills my bones and fills my gut with acid.

I’ll tear Alexei Leonov apart with my bare teeth before I let him take my son from me. And if he harms a single hair on Chloe or Alina’s head, I will eviscerate each member of his family.

With effort, I rein in my rage and open my laptop to pull up the drone footage and the feeds from the perimeter cameras. What matters now is assessing the situation. Where are our attackers coming from? What are their numbers? My chest tightens as I think of Arkash and our other guards, many of them my friends, good men with families back home. How many of them have already been killed? How many wounded?

No matter what, I have to know.

I grab my laptop off the floor and flip it open.

The screen is dark and silent, unresponsive when I try to manually power it on.

Fuck. The fall must’ve damaged it.

I grab my phone instead—and feel my blood ice over.

It’s the same story. The device is dead, the screen black no matter what I do to it.

I whirl around and hit the light switch on the wall.

It works.

My mind works furiously, leaping from one possibility to another. Could they have sent out some sort of EMP, frying our electronics? Is that why Pavel couldn’t get in touch with the guards? Because their devices have also been disabled? But then what about Pavel’s phone? Wouldn’t he have noticed that it’s dead?

Unless it wasn’t at the time.

If the EMP was hyper-targeted, it might’ve hit our guards on the perimeter of the compound first, then struck the house.

I have no idea how Alexei could’ve gotten his paws on such an advanced weapon, but I do know one thing: Konstantin, paranoid techie that he is, thought an EMP attack wasn’t completely out of the question. That’s why our backup generator is analog and resides inside a Faraday cage deep underground, and why our key power lines are underground as well, hardened with metal casings.

The fuckers would’ve loved to cut our power, I’m sure, but they’ve had to settle for taking out our drones and cameras.

A distant rat-tat-tat of gunfire reaches my ears.

Thank fuck.

The guards must still be alive and doing their jobs.

I toss my dead phone aside and yank on a bulletproof vest, then strap on several guns and loop a dozen rounds of ammo over my shoulder. I also grab two functioning radios from the armory—like the metal-lined box with the generator, the hidden room is a Faraday cage.

By the time I’m done, Pavel bursts into my office, armed to the teeth as well. “The phones and radios, they’re—”

“Dead, I know. Here.” I thrust the second radio device into his hands. “Let’s go. It’s time the Leonovs learned who they’re fucking with.”

50

Chloe

“Stop it, Chloe,” Alina snaps, and I realize I’ve resumed tapping my foot—a physical manifestation of my anxiety that inexplicably annoys her. In general, she’s more on edge than I’ve ever seen her, her own movements jerky and her spine so tense it’s a wonder she can turn her neck.

“Sorry about that.” I shift Slava so he’s sitting more comfortably on my lap. “I’m just worried for them.”

I’m holding the child as much to calm myself as to comfort him. In fact, out of the four of us, Slava is the least anxious—probably because he doesn’t understand the magnitude of the threat we’re facing. Lyudmila told him we’re here as part of a security drill, and though I’m sure he’s picking up on the adults’ tension, he hasn’t questioned the explanation.

I wish I could be calm as well, but I’m not. My chest is agonizingly tight, my insides churning like they’re on a high-speed cycle in a washer. I’m acutely, terrifyingly aware of the fact that Nikolai is out there, facing down an unknown number of enemies—who may or may not be the Leonovs.

For all we know, Bransford has sent a whole army of assassins after me. It could very well be my fault we’re in danger.

I catch my breathing speeding up again, and I force myself to inhale deeper to avoid hyperventilating. The safe room—a place I had no idea existed until Pavel tossed me in here—is carved into the mountain under the garage, and is large enough to be considered a studio apartment, complete with a king-sized bed, two futons, a fully stocked mini-kitchen, a small bathroom, and enough supplies in the pantry to survive a nuclear winter. Theoretically, there’s plenty of oxygen here, but I keep feeling like we’re running out of air, like the walls are inching closer to me with each passing second.