Page 87 of Sexting the Bratva Beast

Good.

It means that the war isn’t over.

I slip inside the piano room and wait with the door open a crack. I need to scope out what’s going on before I make a move. I won’t put Cartier in danger by acting on impulse, because if protocol has been followed, they will have contained the infiltration, and secured Cartier’s location.

Two men pass the room. Armed guards. Men that Leonid brought in from the Russian operation. I don’t question them. They’re not who I’m looking for.

If I can trust anyone to keep Cartier safe, it’s Ivana.

Whatever her reasons for wanting to leave Russia, she will always put the Ivanovs first.

No one else comes this way. The house is too fucking quiet, and it’s feeding the writhing snakes inside my gut. Nothing about this feels right. The house should never have been compromised in the first place, but now I know that the fuckers had inside help.

The tunnel.

The timing.

The shitshow that my security team is putting on for their benefit.

Just another reminder that there’s only one person I can trust when shit goes down.

My phone vibrates—another error on the part of whoever dumped me in the cells and left me to sleep through the main event. A message from Victoria. She finally found the evidence she was looking for.

I load my pistol and prepare to step outside when a shadow creeps past the doorway.

Yuri-fucking-Asimov.

I wait until he’s out of sight before peeking around the door. He seems to know exactly where he’s going, almost as if he has been here before. Or as if someone leaked a layout of the property before he arrived.

Either way, he isn’t going out the same way he came in. I’ll bury him in the snow and stick a fucking carrot on top so that the wolves know where to find him. But shooting him in the back isn’t the answer.

I linger in the doorway, blending into the shadows when he peers behind him to check that he isn’t being followed.

I watch him navigate his way around the bodies on the floor and slip inside the library.

Then I make my move.

23

CARTIER

Ivana’s eyesare closed when the door opens, shushing across the carpet as if the visitor is trying hard not to disturb us. I never thought it was possible to experience so many overwhelming emotions in such a short space of time and remain lucid. But despite my heart morphing into a battering ram and trying to beat its way out of my rib cage, I follow Yuri Asimov’s return with unprecedented clarity.

I’d hoped that the guards would return with medical assistance for Ivana.

But as that hope fades, survival instinct and the need to protect the woman bleeding out on the floor takes over. She protected me, and now it’s my turn to repay the favor.

Yuri is only here because of me. I’m the common denominator in this scenario. Take me out of the equation, out of Andrej’s life, and Ivana wouldn’t be hurt, and we’d all still be in Chicago going about our lives with ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ playing on repeat inside our heads.

I crawl in front of her, shielding her from his view. My hands are bloody. I’m kneeling in the blood saturating the carpet, but this only strengthens my resolve. Especially when he closes the door behind him and raises the gun to aim it at my chest.

“What do you want?” My voice is surprisingly calm.

Weeks ago, I freaked out about giving a speech in front of the mayor, and now … here I am facing a man with a gun as if he came for a chat that’s a little inconvenient right now.

“I thought I made it clear when we first met, Cartier. I wanted your help. Together, we could have taken down your parents’ killers. We’re family, you and I. We?—”

“I am not your family.”