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DIMITRY

SK Compound, Myanmar

“ H ow many more girls are coming?” Luke’s low voice comes through my earpiece. “We have three minutes.”

We took the guard towers half an hour ago. The guard changes in three minutes, at which point they’ll know we’re here.

“Last dorm cleared,” I mutter into my comms. “Thirty incoming. Over there,” I whisper to the terrified group of inmates creeping out of the dormitory. “Hurry,” I add, twirling my finger to indicate the need for speed.

Clutching their meager possessions, the girls sprint across the yard behind the programmer who’s helping get them to the fence. Alexei is waiting behind it. It’s the job of his crew to get the escapees safely across the border, where Zinaida Melikov has a team waiting for them.

As soon as they’re out, Paddy will blow the dormitories, which should occupy the security forces while we go to the auction room.

Should. But first, we need to know who we’re looking for.

Roman shoots me a cautionary look and points to his watch.

I know , I think furiously. I fucking know.

“Mak.” I try to keep my voice low. “Tell me you know which man in that fucking room is him.”

The minute the dead guards in the towers are discovered, all hell will break loose.

And every minute Abby is in that room is one too fucking many.

I know I agreed to this.

I also know that if it goes tits up, I won’t ever forgive myself.

“We’ve got a number.” Mak’s voice comes calmly through the comms. “Eleven.”

Mentally I run through the table layout in the auction room. Number eleven is in the corner.

“Got it,” I say. “Moving into position now.” Roman and I head toward the auction room, hugging the shadows and concrete walls. “Tell Pavel to drop the hammer as soon as he can.”

There’s a momentary pause.

Then Mak’s voice crackles into life again. “Hammer dropped.”

Here we go.

I touch my earpiece. “Go time, boys.”

“Copy that.” Luke’s response is quiet and calm.

“Fág seo” comes Paddy’s voice immediately after his. Prick sounds ridiculously happy, so I assume that Fág seo is Gaelic for let’s fuck shit up.

“ Da .” Alexei’s Russian rasps down the radio.

“Bryce?” I murmur.

“On it” comes the stolid response. I breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s Bryce I’ve been the most worried about, since he’s the most visible of us all.

He came to the compound earlier with Rodrigo and the Cardenas men.

They’re supposedly drinking in one of the bars adjoining the hotel where the auction is being held.

In reality, Bryce has spent the past several hours wiring whatever parts of the compound Paddy hasn’t been able to reach.

We just have to hope he hasn’t been spotted.

The place will blow the moment we’re done.

I switch channels to the auction link, which we agreed we wouldn’t use until Pavel and Leon were finished. “Pavel. Talk to me.”

Nothing.

Roman glances at me with raised eyebrows. I give a brief shake of my head.

He tenses, but doesn’t comment.

He doesn’t need to.

We’ve been here many times. Though never quite like this.

I switch back. “Mak. Have you got comms in the room?”

There’s a slight pause, then Mak’s voice comes through, unruffled as ever. “It’s all under control, Dimitry. You and Roman need to get to that auction room.”

I frown. I’m starting to get a really bad fucking feeling.

“I’ve got no ears in the room,” I snap. “Put Leon on. I need to know what’s happening.”

“That might be difficult.” Mak’s voice is light. “Leon isn’t with me.”

What the fuck?

I stare at Roman. “Leon’s gone,” I say blankly.

His face contorts into fury. “I fucking knew that bastard was planning something.”

In the distance, I hear a shot. Then more. Coming from the direction of the auction room.

“Whatever treasonous fuckery this is, Mak, I don’t have time for it.” I glance around, trying to gauge where we’re at .

“No treason, Dimitry.” Mak sounds positively delighted. “Just a fortunate convergence of priorities. Do trust me. And I advise you to think before pulling triggers in haste.”

There’s a sudden, deafening explosion behind us, in the dormitories.

I stare at Roman, my mind racing and the urge to murder Leon surging through me. But that will need to come later.

“Leon’s gone rogue,” I say into my comms. “We’re likely going in hot.”

“Yeah” comes Luke’s rather dry response, as I hear gunfire in the background. “Copy that .”

Roman and I race across the compound, keeping low to the ground.

There’s not much point hugging shadows anymore.

All hell is breaking loose, in every direction.

Guests in evening wear erupt out of the sliding glass doors at the front of the hotel, screaming as they run toward the helicopter hangar at the rear.

We let them go. The billionaire guests at the auction aren’t my concern.

But whatever has made them run screaming is another thing entirely. The hotel was supposed to be the last point of contact. The operation was strategically planned to isolate everything before Jacey even knew what was happening.

I shoot Roman a look. “FUBAR,” I say. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

He nods. “No shit.”

“Abby.” My voice cracks. “I’m going in.”

Roman nods again. “Let’s go, brother.”

A group of guards spot us from behind and yell out as they start shooting.

Bullets crash into the fountain out front of the hotel as we race around it.

We don’t stop, just keep firing behind us as we run through the broken glass, toward the foyer.

“No grenades,” I yell as I see Roman reach for one. “I don’t know where she is. ”

He nods and throws the grenade behind him instead of through the doors. I pick off the rest of the men following us as we crash into the foyer. To my surprise, the hotel reception area is already littered with dead bodies.

Someone has already made a mess here.

A group of women in evening wear are still inside. It takes me a minute to notice the guns in their hands and to realize it’s the women themselves who are the someone who made that mess.

“Don’t shoot.” The woman who speaks is tall, well muscled, and extremely grim-looking. “We’re Zinaida Melikov’s team.”

“What the fuck,” I say blankly.

“They brought Leon in” comes a new voice. “Along with Juan Cardenas—and us.”

I turn slowly, not certain I’m hearing right until I actually see Pete Chalmers standing there in the flesh. With him, of all the unlikely fuckers in the world, is Turbo, Luke’s bikie friend from Australia.

“What the actual fuck,” I say again.

“We’ll explain later.” Pete’s voice is terse. He nods at double wooden doors to our left. “Abby’s in there. Your mate Leon, too. Don’t shoot him. He’s on our side.”

Roman turns and begins shooting at a new pack of guards chasing us. I pick off two of them and look at Zinaida’s team. “Can you hold these fuckers off?”

“Done.” The woman nods at her team, and they move off.

I glare at Pete and Turbo. “Stay well behind me. Nobody fires until I say so, you got it?”

They nod. Pete’s face is grim as death, but Turbo looks like it’s the best party he’s had in years.

I press against the wall next to the doors, and Roman flattens himself on the other side. I hold up three fingers, then count them down.

When the last one drops, I kick the doors open, and we burst into the room. It’s so dim it takes me a moment to distinguish anything at all.

Then Abby’s pale, frozen face swims into view. A man holding a gun is standing behind her.

A fucking dead man.

“Drop it, motherfucker.” I aim at his head, my finger already tightening on the trigger. I don’t want to risk shooting in this light with Abby so close, but I’ll fucking do it if I have to.

“That’s not him, Dimitry.” Leon’s voice is colder than I’ve ever heard it. His back is to us, his gun trained on someone I can’t see.

And I still don’t trust him.

“Abby.” I keep my gun leveled at the man behind her. “Stand up and walk over to me.”

“Dimitry.” Her voice is so thin it’s barely there. “We’re fine.” She nods toward the corner, and the man seated there slowly swims into view. “That’s him ,” she whispers. “That’s Jacey.”

Keeping my gun trained on the man behind Abby, I allow my eyes to adjust to the light and get my first real look at the man we came here to kill.

And then I almost drop my gun altogether.

That face.

A face burned so deeply into my memory that sometimes even now I think I see it in the shadows on the pavement.

My stomach churns, adrenaline and ancient terror racing through my veins as if I’m stuck at an intersection between the dark alley of my past and the highway of my future.

It can’t be.

I fight an instinctive urge to take shelter, to hide myself from the eyes of the man in the chair.

But he isn’t looking at me anyway. He’s staring at Leon, who is pointing a gun at him.

“Dangerous friends you’ve been making, Leon,” the man says. “Zinaida Melikov. Juan Cardenas. And now Roman Stevanovsky. It would seem you’ve lost some of those high principles of yours, my old friend.”

That voice.

Cold, flat, and utterly devoid of humanity.

A voice that still haunts my dreams. That I sometimes think has chased me down every path I’ve chosen, whispering in my mind like the fucking torturer he was. I want to speak, but words are stuck in my throat, along with my breath.

“You might say we found common ground.” Leon’s voice is taut, low, and infinitely dangerous.

And somehow, it breaks the spell. I inhale in a hard, painful rush. “You,” I manage, my voice barely a croak.

“Have we met?” The man in the chair frowns, peering into the darkness toward me. “I rarely forget a face.”

I step forward as if I’m sleepwalking. My limbs are oddly weak, my feet clumsy on the ground.

I feel like I’m six years old again.

Roman casts me a wary look. “Abby,” he growls. “Come to me. Now.”

I’m aware of Abby and the other girls moving off the couch, toward Roman.

Good. They’ll be safe now. Roman will take care of them.

My thoughts are disjointed, unhinged. I feel death hovering in the room, barely seconds away.

“Dimitry,” Leon says in a low voice. “You need to leave. Please—”

“Dimitry?” The man in the chair frowns, then leans forward, studying me.

I don’t answer, just keep walking toward him. I’m not entirely sure I can speak.

“It can’t be.” Something flares in the man’s eyes, there and then gone. “Surely not. ”

His eyes flicker to Leon, then back to me. “Well,” he says softly. “This really is quite the game.”

“You always did like games.” My voice seems to come from a very long distance as I draw to a halt next to Leon. “Didn’t you—Yakov?”