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“I don’t think we’re going to make it back up the way we came down,” I murmur. Glancing back at Alina, I scan down her dress-clad body and finish on her fancy heels before meeting her eyes. “Unless you happen to be unusually good at climbing.”
I quirk my lips in a sideways grin, trying to put her at ease, but Alina seems too upset to register the attempt to tease her.
Shaking her head, she sniffles. “I can hike, but even if I were dressed for it, I don’t think I could climb that.”
I nod. “We’ll have to take a longer route, but we can find our way back to the road another way. That might be safer, anyway,” I state, casting my eyes up to the now-silent road as I wonder if someone’s taken my revenge away and killed the man I'd vowed to end.
Alina hisses, for a fleeting moment making me wonder if she can hear my thoughts. My head jerks in her direction to see her reaching up to her temple, pressing a palm to her wound as if noticing it for the first time. She flinches, quickly drawing her hand away to look at her bloody palm. “Ow,” she observes in shock.
“You look like you hit your head pretty hard. I stopped the worst of the bleeding, but it would be better if we clean that once I can get some light.” Turning my attention back to the demolished car, I creep back toward it under the cover of darkness and slip through Alina’s open door.
There’s not much in the way of survival supplies, but I do find a small, travel-sized first-aid kit, a flashlight, and a gun in the glove compartment. Next, I search the driver’s pockets in hopes of finding a phone. But before I can get very far, Alina’s anxious voice issues through the door behind me.
“Mishka, get out of there,” she insists. “The hood’s on fire.”
Glancing toward the front of the upside-down wreck, I can see the flickering glow I was far more worried about when Alina was still unconscious and strapped into the car. Still, best not to press my luck.
“Go, go, go,” I urge, quickly withdrawing from the back seat as the small fire builds into an inferno.
We rush toward the tree line once more, and just as we make it into the shadows of the forest, our car releases a thunderous boom. The hood launches the car several feet in the air as something explodes within.
Alina gasps, turning away from the sudden burst of heat. Without thinking, I step forward, wrapping my arms around her shoulders as I shield her from debris.
A moment later, smoke and flames billow from the car. Crackling fire licks at the car’s windows and eats the upholstered seats. For a moment, Alina looks on in horror, her face pale as shock seems to overcome her.
“Come on. We need to go,” I murmur, urging her away from the grisly wreckage.
Though she can’t seem to tear her eyes from the scene, Alina allows me to steer her farther away.
When the wreckage is finally out of sight, she stops glancing back over her shoulder, stumbling on the uneven footing. I keep our path close to the edge of the ravine, following the road from below in the hope that, eventually, we’ll find a place to scale the incline. In the dark, it’s nearly impossible to say how far we’ll need to go.
But my father raised me to be prepared for a situation like this, and despite the lack of supplies, I’m confident I can get us back home. Keeping one eye on the sky, I confirm regularly that we’re headed in a westerly direction. Though the road winds above us, I follow as straight a path as I dare without letting the black asphalt ribbon that ties us to civilization from my sight.
Behind me, Alina sniffles silently. Her steady footsteps tell me she hasn’t hurt her legs, at least. And while I’m trying not to hover over her or show how deeply concerned I am, I keep one ear out to make sure she doesn’t fall or prove to be more badly injured than I could see.
What I really want to do is check that gash on her temple. But I don’t want to stop until we’re far enough from the Escalade that I’m certain no one will come looking to finish us off. Because if they do, I’ll be outnumbered and outgunned, and I have no clue who these aggressors were.
We might have a common cause, but I would rather not have to face them, and protect Alina, after the tumble we just took. They could easily have a much more sinister ambition, and if I die right now, I suspect the Bratva princess I’m guiding will have a far less likely chance of surviving.
11
ALINA
What started as a bad day has gotten infinitely worse, and now I find myself traipsing through the woods in the black of night with a raging headache that might be a concussion or just the remains of my poor decision-making yesterday.
At least Mishka seems to have found a flashlight in the car, and he turns it on after we’ve walked a good fifteen minutes in pitch-dark. But though he illuminates the way, I’m already struggling with the footing.
Wearing high heels that sink into the cool, damp earth every time I step too hard and a fancy dress that offers little warmth in the brisk evening, I’m following a man whom I barely know and can’t decide whether I hate or have a massive crush on him.
I’m definitely attracted to him. That’s for sure.
But I can’t shake the growing certainty that he genuinely dislikes me.
And for the life of me, I can’t fathom why.
He walks several paces ahead of me, his shoulders set with a grim determination that makes me wonder if he thinks we might die out here tonight.
Still, I can’t stop coming back to the question of why he doesn’t want me.
