Page 91 of Sexting the Bratva Beast

“Cartier.”

Andrej reaches out for me, and my brain is too slow, too heavy with unshed tears to realize that I’ve played straight into my uncle’s hands. I’ve unwittingly provided him with the distraction, the chink in Andrej’s armor that he was looking for.

He lunges for his discarded gun, rolling across the floor while Andrej is looking at me.

A muffled sound like a whoosh of air, too close, causes my heart to leap towards my mouth.

Yuri Asimov sprawls onto his back like a beetle, bloody fingers clawing at his chest.

It takes another moment for me to process that Andrej is still on his feet.He’s still alive. Then Ivana’s gun lands beside me with a dull thud.

My eyes meet hers briefly, and I understand. She finished what she’d started.

Then her eyelids drift shut, and her chest isn’t moving, and my tears are mingling with the blood on her face.

24

ANDREJ

“Ivana!”

Cartier leans forward, her ear close to Ivana’s mouth.

I’ve seen people dying before. I’ve seen fatal chest wounds, enough blood to fill a fucking stream pumping out of a person’s body, and I know that she isn’t going to survive this.

“No, no, no.”

Cartier’s hands hover over Ivana’s heart. They’re slick with blood. I can taste it, the thick iron tang, can smell it in the air.

“Stay with me, Ivana.” She starts pumping, both hands on the woman’s bloody chest. Counting, sitting back, pinching Ivana’s nose and breathing into her mouth.

I want to tell her that she’s wasting her time, but that isn’t what she wants to hear. Cartier can’t walk away without trying to save her.

So, instead I drop to my knees beside them and hold Ivana’s slick hand.

I heard the conversation, enough to know that Ivana betrayed my family. She betrayed me. She betrayed the woman I love.

“Do something, Andrej. We need to get her to the hospital.”

Cartier’s eyes are dark, hollow. There are blood smears across her face. And when she looks at me, there’s no recognition, only the panic that keeps her pumping, resting, sharing her oxygen. She doesn’t care that Ivana sold her out to a killer. Ivana repaid that debt when she fired the last bullet, and Cartier only sees a dying woman in need of a miracle.

We’ll never get Ivana to the hospital in time, but I don’t say this either.

I find my phone, get a message to one of our contacts in the city, knowing that it will reach the members of my security team that are still alive after Yuri Asimov’s invasion.

Within moments, the door opens, and two guards appear, guns raised. They take in the scene, the women on the floor, the gasping body of the man who got what was coming to him.

“Boss?”

Their eyes scan my wounds. Assessing. Planning their next moves. Figuring out timeframes.

“She’s alive!” Cartier speaks before I can give orders.

Her eyes are gleaming again. The relief surrounding her is a tangible thing. I want to hug her tightly and never let her go, but Ivana’s condition is too fragile.

“She’s breathing, Andrej. She’s still alive.”

Ivana is motionless. Her skin is bloodless, tinged with that look of someone clinging to life by a fragile thread. Whatever Cartierused as a compress is unrecognizable, a sopping bloody rag. But Ivana isn’t giving up.