Page 116 of Twisted Proposal

Some men swore rage made them more effective. I said it made men stupid. If I let my rage overcome me, then I would focus on a single target while another came at me from the side. No, I didn't need fiery rage. I needed cold, still, calm.

With my heart beating steadily, I grabbed another gun from the bedroom and put another magazine of rounds in the pocket of my sweatpants. They'd be looking for me, and it wasn't going to take them long to make it to this room. I'd be damned if I was going to let them get that close to Viktoria.

I stalked out of the bedroom, not bothering to duck for cover before I needed it. They ruined any chance for stealth, so they knew I was coming.

Ready or not, here I come, fuckers.

I was halfway down the hall when a man in a black ski mask turned the corner and I placed a bullet between his eyes.

Two more followed, and I dropped them just as quickly.

There were shouts. Someone must have realized I was fighting back. The loud crack of my GSh-18 semi-automatic pistol was not the same hollowpop popof the semi-automatic rifles they had chosen.

I knelt down next to one of the bodies and examined their weapon. A cheap rifle that could be bought at any American discount chain. Theirs would use almost an entire clip of spray and pray to take down a single person. My rounds would pierce their armor in a single shot if I ever bothered with a body shot.

Ripping the mask off, the assailant's appearance confirmed my suspicions.

The assailant was a boy, no older than twenty-three, with symbols of the local gang tattooed on his neck.

This was Solovyov's doing, but he wasn't using his own men.

He had hired these men as cannon fodder. He wasn't trying to kill us. There was no way these men were going to win, and he didn't mean for them to.

He was trying to distract us…fuck.

Shaking my head, I covered the man's face again. I felt bad for them. I really did. They had all signed their own death warrants, and for nothing. Solovyov wasn't the kind of man who even had the decency to make sure the people these men left behind got their pay.

My sympathies went out to them, but it changed nothing. They had broken into my home and put my woman in danger. They could not be allowed to live.

The shouts got closer. There were at least two men running this way, maybe more. I got up and pressed myself to the wall and waited. Letting them come to me was the easiest way. They were untrained and had cheap weapons, but I was still outnumbered.

"He has to be back this way. I heard he was seen with a new bitch, I want first when we run a train on that?—"

He turned the corner and I put a bullet in his throat before he could finish his sentence.

It only took this one cocky shit for any sympathy I had for these men to die. He fell to the floor, his hands going to his throat to stop the spray of blood with every breath he failed to take.

Another man ran up behind him and completely froze. The untrained moron stopped and stared, watching like he didn't understand how his friend was shot.

Fuck, maybe I was doing the gene pool a favor. I shot that one in the chest, one bullet clean in the heart, an instant death, an honorable one. Not that he deserved it.

I waited a beat and when I didn't hear more footsteps running after them, I stepped around the corner out of my cover, kicking the guns away from the one I was leaving to bleed out. The mouthy one was still gasping for breath, so I bent down, pulling the mask off his face so I could look into his eyes.

"Soldiers, even ones who don't belong in the war, get an honorable death. Assholes who talk shit and threaten to rape my woman get to bleed out slow, and suffer."

There was genuine fear in his eyes as I locked down all of my emotion again and continued on my path.

There were several men in the foyer, all dead. Two of my men and four of Solovyov's cannon fodder. Once this was over, our dead would be tended to, his would be disposed of.

The front door was still closed, locked even. They hadn't come through there. That left only two options. The back door from the patio was one, but unless they took a rowboat or something to cross the lake, that was unlikely. They must have come in through the tunnels.

Shit.

There were several tunnels, and each had multiple winding paths. Solovyov wouldn't have wanted to leave it to chance. He would have hired enough men to follow them all, payment upon completion of the job, of course. As if any of them were going to live.

Still, it meant this home wasn't the only one breached. I was on my own. I checked the magazine again. This one had another thirteen shots. Then one more magazine, so that was thirty-one, plus the other gun. I had forty-nine shots, that had to be enough.

A loud crash sounded in the dining room. Pressing myself against the wall, I crept to the swinging double door and pushed it open just a crack. There were five of them I could see. Two of them were throwing the porcelain plates, smashing them to shards against the wall and floor. Completely ransacking the place.