Page 121 of Before Broken Vows

I pop up and start returning fire in one direction, but I have to duck back down fast as fire comes at me from another.

The bullets come faster and faster. I can't move.

Across the estate, I see Dimitri's team pushed forward, returning fire, but they can't get to us and we can't get to them.

I pop up again and see it. A fucking machine gun is hailing bullets at us.

"We have to take him out," I yell to my men.

The machine gun keeps firing, its rapid shots eating away at what we're hiding behind. Soon I'll be wide open. I glance behind me and see another one of my men drop, blood spraying from his neck. He's gone before he hits the ground.

Another one of my men scrambles toward me, keeping his head low. He doesn't make it. A hail of bullets catches him in the back, lifting him off his feet and slamming him face-first onto the floor. Blood pools beneath him, spreading like spilled wine across the white stone.

I slam a fresh magazine into my gun. Bile rises in my throat, not from the violence but from the realization that Cosmo knew we were coming.

"Fall back!" I order the three men still with me.

We retreat deeper into the foyer, taking cover behind a massive stone staircase. The machine gun continues to spit bullets, chipping away at our cover.

"Where the fuck did they get a mounted machine gun?" Andreas, one of my most experienced soldiers, asks in shock.

I shake my head. This isn't street-level security. This is military-grade weaponry. For a government minister to have this kind of firepower, it confirms everything I suspected about Cosmo's connections.

"No sign of Dimitri's team now," another of my men reports, peering around the edge of the staircase.

"We're fucked if we can't take out that gun," I say.

The bullets stop, and with so much noise from the slew of bullets suddenly ending, it's almost deathly quiet.

I know I'm so close to ending this—that now's the time.

"Cover me!" I shout, and my men open fire, forcing the gunner to duck.

I roll to the ground and see the two men scrambling to reload the machine gun. I pull my other gun out and fire both simultaneously. The man on the left stumbles back and falls. The other desperately tries to finish loading the gun. I see him slam the clip and swing the barrel in my direction. I fire two moretimes. The machine gun shoots into the ground and the man falls back.

I keep running and, once I can visually see them on the ground, I fire two more times into each of them, making sure they'll never move again.

Before I can even turn around, my men are running toward me, guns raised.

"Anyone see Dimitri?" I ask, checking the magazine on my gun.

"I just saw him pushing toward the main house," another man answers.

"Then that's where we go."

I motion for them to follow, stepping over the bodies of Cosmo's guards. We get to the main door and see it's kicked open. I hear screams.

I enter, gun raised, ready to pull the trigger when I see Dimitri and his men, having just taken out a few more guards.

"Easy, brother," Dimitri says, blood splattered across his face. Not his own.

"This was supposed to be straightforward," I say, wiping blood from my brow. "Not a fucking war zone."

Dimitri nods. "Something's off."

We turn to see one of our teams that took the perimeter come in.

"All clear outside. A lot more men than we thought," one of them says.