Page 113 of Scarlet Vows

I don’t wait. I load my gun and return inside the remnants of the club. I figure we have maybe five minutes before backup arrives.

I open the door to the club. Bodies litter the ground. I shoot one man who’s still alive, and I grab another, shaking him awake, not caring that his leg is only half attached.

“Where is Simonov?”

“You Belov filth. You think he’d come to this?” the Simonov man spits. “You’re meant to be dead.”

I shoot him and drop the corpse, not even caring that I’m fucking killing the injured.

He’s right. Simonov and his senior men aren’t here.

Someone set us up. Set me up.

I help Denis up. He got shot in the leg and arm, but he can hobble.

“Not a word, okay?” I don’t wait for Denis’s answer.

I start checking the men and collect weapons as I go.

Denis does the same, and we both drag out those who are injured and dying. Our injured and dying, including Santo’s men, though they’re few and far between. The van’s still there.

I make a call to Pavel. “I need medical care for a bunch of injured men and maybe backup. A way out. There’s van outside?—”

“I’m betting it’s a trap,” Pavel says. “I’ll have a man look when we arrive in a minute?—”

“Leave it. I’ve got a van a block away?—”

“I’m on it.” He hangs up.

Denis and I work quickly. The van pulls up, my van and one of Demyan’s men gets out.

“They’re coming,” the man says, “we need to go.”

I start to load the dead and injured into the back of the van. The enemy’s cars approaching are getting louder.

“Ilya, he’s right. We have to go.” Denis grabs my arm with his good hand as a car speeds up from a side street, the other cars almost on us.

“I can’t leave them.” I take another man. And someone helps me get him in the back.

Those who can, help, but there are more.

Pavel gets out of his car, takes one look around him. “They’ll all be dead if you wait. This isn’t an armored vehicle. Follow me.”

He’s fucking right and I’ve no option but to do as he suggests. We close the back of the van, and I turn the key in the ignition.

Denis collapses into the seat next to me, gun at the ready, and I drive off as slow as I dare, lights off, following Pavel.

The van’s going to get attention from the enemy and?—

“Holy shit,” Denis says and starts swearing in Russian.

Two streets down, there’s a bank of SUVs and Yegorov men with weapons pointed past us.

While the men with weapons set up a wider perimeter, we work to unload the injured men and reload them into the SUVs. Some are badly shot, and I know some are dying and won’t make it.

When we finish, I get in one SUV with Pavel, and Denis insists on coming too.

“The hospital is ready for us. You want to explain?” Pavel asks.