Page 34

YULIAN

The second the first shot rings out, I drag Mia behind the corner of the bathroom hallway. “Stay down.”

For once, she obeys.

I start running calculations in my brain.

The trajectory of the bullets, everyone else’s positions, the math of life or death.

They’ve all dived for cover, exactly the way we devised: Zhenya and Anton behind the bar on the west wall, holding a rifle each; Kazimir under the pool table to the east side, his gun drawn and ready; and Maksim tucked behind the balustrade with Kallie, high above on the north end of the room, trying to locate the source of the gunfire.

But the south is exposed. They need me there.

I start heading out when Mia catches my wrist. “Wait! Where are you going?!”

“To do my part.”

Her eyes are wide, panicked, filled with tears and terror. It kills me to see her like this, to know I’m the reason she’s scared. Not the bullets, not Desya— me.

“You can’t,” she rasps. “You’ll get shot, you’ll?—”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Neither could you, but you still came.” It’s harsh, uncalled for, but the truth is rarely anything else. “You asked me to trust you. I did. Now, I need you to trust me and let me go.”

She doesn’t want to do that. I can read it on her face—she’d sooner throw herself in the line of fire than let me do this.

But I’m prepared to act whether she likes it or not.

She must see it in my eyes. Slowly, her fingers unfurl. “Come back to me,” she orders.

“I will.” I press a quick kiss to her forehead. I wish it were her lips, but if I did that, then I’d never leave. “Stay here. Don’t come out until it’s safe.”

“Okay,” she croaks.

One last touch. One last graze of fingertips. One last promise.

Then I’m running through a rain of bullets.

My ankle gets grazed immediately. I duck and roll, earning a singed line across my shoulder, but it’s only my suit jacket that’s burned.

This isn’t the work of a single shooter. I can tell by the way the bullets fly, coming in from all sides. Wherever Desya is, he’s keeping his promise right now.

Join me, or die.

Like hell I’ll do either one.

I dart under the pool table and cover Kazimir’s flank. “Report,” I demand.

“Pardon my French, boss, but they’re fucking everywhere.”

“I can see that.”

He grits his teeth, brings down a cloaked shooter somewhere on the beams, high up. “They’re blending with the environment. Literally coming out of the woodwork.”

“They were already here,” I realize. “ Blyat’. We walked straight into a fucking ambush.”

“We need to chase them out!” Kazimir yells over the roar of gunfire. “Send them into Nikita’s arms.”

He doesn’t need to elaborate. Nikita is waiting on the Goldenrod’s rooftop with StarTech’s latest precision rifle: If she couldn’t pick them off on the way in, she’d pick them off on the way out. That was her mission from the start.

But I’m starting to think we’ll all be long dead before then.

“Boss,” Kazimir pants, “I think we’re gonna have to cut off a limb to save the body.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He wants a kill. One of us vory. Soon as he gets that, he’ll be gone.”

I turn to stare at Kazimir. “Out of the fucking question.”

“I’ve already escaped death once.” He says it like he’s listing off items from his latest financial report. Like it’s not his goddamn life on the line. “To be fair, my number already got called back at the office. If it weren’t for you and that poor bastard Rurik, I’d already be six feet under.”

“That’s no excuse to eat a fucking bullet!”

He flashes me a lopsided grin. “Then let’s say I’m putting my trust in our pakhansha. From what I hear, she can stitch a dead man back to life.”

“Kazimir. Don’t be stupid.”

“Sorry. No can do.”

He reloads. I can tell he’s about to spring to his feet, dash into the eye of the storm. This stupid, noble, self-sacrificing idiot.

I don’t let him take one step.

I aim my gun and shoot him in the foot.

“Fuck!” He rolls to the ground, back under cover. “Oh, fuck, fuck?—”

“Stay put,” I growl. “And if you’re lucky, she’ll stitch that up.”

He stares at me with a mix of amazement and hatred. “No offense, boss, but right now, I kinda want to take a shot at you myself.”

“Then I’ll take this off your hands.”

I grab his gun in my free hand, cock them both, and start firing upwards.

The beams. Kazimir was right on that. The second I start aiming up and sideways, bodies start dropping.

“They’re on the ceiling!” I shout. “Aim for the beams!”

It’s not the only place—can’t be—but it’ll have to do for now. The bullets rushing at us from the sides must come from the high windows, behind the black-velvet curtains. While everyone else is following my directives, I start aiming for those.

Glass shatters. Screams echo. More bodies, less gunfire.

We just might get out of this alive.

I’m not even halfway through that thought when I see him.

Desya.

He’s standing now, high on the balustrade, opposite Maksim. But Maks’s shots are too low—he can’t stand without risking drawing Desya’s return fire—and everyone else is focusing on the beams, like I told them to do.

Desya smirks. He aims at me.

I aim at him, too.

This is it. Moment of truth.

Everything slows. All my focus tightens around two things: my trigger finger and Desya’s. His single eye bores into me, daring me to take the shot. He thinks I won’t—that I’m as sentimental as he’s made me out to be.

That mistake will cost him.

My finger twitches. I’m about to pull the trigger, about to wipe the mudak who ruined my life off the face of the earth?—

“DIE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!”

—and Anton’s fucking voice rings out.

Shit.

Desya’s gaze darts. It’d be the perfect chance, but I can’t help the slip in my attention, too.

A rain of bullets leaves Anton’s gun.

All of them lodge in Desya’s bulletproof vest.

This goddamn idiot. He’s exposed now, head poking out of his hiding place, the perfect target. I told them to never abandon their posts, but with Desya parading himself around like that, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to take the easiest shot of their lives.

Except that, of course, it’s a trap.

Desya baited him out. The realization sinks slowly, along with the sick irony of our strategy being used against us. That’s why he’s standing there—he’s been waiting for someone to slip up.

Of course it’d be the resident fucking coward who fell for it.

As if to confirm my theory, a sick grin blooms on Desya’s face. Then his rifle tilts slightly to the right.

Without time to aim properly, I pull the trigger. So does Desya, in perfect sync.

My bullet misses.

His doesn’t.

But it isn’t me it gets. Shockingly, it isn’t Anton, either.

It’s Zhenya.