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"She's injured out there. They ran us off the road with a damn cargo truck. She was bleeding last I remembered before they dragged her dazed body out of the car window. They hit her 'cause she fought back, they hit her until she stopped moving." The accident came in like a tidal wave, flaring my emotional turmoil again.
"They shouldn't have gotten away. They shouldn't have. If only I'd been faster." Shooting down five men should've been child's play to me, done and gone in the blink of an eye.
Yet, I stumbled. I only got two of the five and clipped another. My body fought me; my fingers trembled and refused to pull the trigger faster. My eyes refused to focus. I couldn't land a clean headshot at such a short distance. I was useless, fucking useless. And Hanna has to suffer because of it all.
"Stepan, you were lucky to even be conscious enough to move let alone shoot. You're only human Stepan, and you're still not completely recovered from your ordeal before." Great, as if I needed a reminder about the fact my body was still in the shit hole from my brush with death. I knew Angel meant well, but I was being a piss poor asshole.
With an angry exhale, I ran a hand down my face and held my jaw. "Did you guys get anything off the two I shot down? And anything on my trackers on Hanna?"
As much as I wanted to charge out there like an angry bull, I'd have no idea which way to even go. I needed to get my head straight, whether I liked it or not. Going out back to shoot wasn't an option either because my body suffered from the impact earlier; I wouldn't be able to handle the recoil of a rifle right now. Plus, I'd just be straining myself and getting a lecture from both Angel and Alexei, so no thanks.
"Still pulling information as we speak. Mercs from what I know so far, but seems like they've worked with Lilian before quite frequently. Trackers on Hanna still aren't live yet, but almost." Bao replied from the couch, his head peeping up from his laptop for a moment. "There's also someone else besides Lilian who's been making huge deposits into these accounts, but Nicole's working on that along with tracing the call log."
"We'll get her back Stepan." Bao's sister, Nicole, assured me with a confident and bright smile. "You've got the two best hackers and techies in the world in your damn living room right now, so chill."
"What does she even want with Hanna?" Okay, that was a loaded question. We'd been royally screwing over her operations by taking out her business fronts and clientele; after the first few brothels burnt down, and word got out about specific clients being hunted down got around, many were more than eager to keep a low profile or dip town altogether.
"Beats me, they're more estranged than me and Lady Qing," Angel replied with a shrug of her shoulders before going back to wrapping up my beat-up arm that Alexei picked at for the past half an hour to get all the glass shards out.
The next hour dragged on forever, my anxiety weighing my heart down with each ticking second. My heart nearly went into shock when Nicole shrieked and jumped up from her spot like she'd won the lottery. "I got her location!"
Bolting over, I snatched the tablet out of her hand and searched the screen with frantic eyes. "Stepan, breathe." I hadn't realized my chest was puffed out with my bated breath, nor the dizziness that settled in my fogged-up head.
I didn't breathe until my eyes settled on the blinking red dot on the screen. Much to my surprise, the location wasn't somewhere remote; it was damn smack center of the city, or at least pretty damn close to the center. Not to my surprise, it was in a part of triad territory, the small part we didn't acquire with the takedown and merge because Lady Qing separated it in time. The territory was up for grabs, but Lilian had kept her footing thus far.
Well, it won't be hers for much longer.
"Give me aerial and live feed," I demanded after giving the tablet back to Nicole.
"Stepan, you're not going anywhere in your state." Nikolai objected, putting a hand against my chest to stop me from walking away.
"Like hell am I going to sit here while my wife is out there in danger. I'm going, and you can't stop me." My eyes scanned everyone in the room, "None of you can stop me. If you try, then you better be prepared to deal with the consequences. I can stand, I can walk, I can see, so I can damn well shoot."
Unless they all wanted to dogpile me so Alexei could sedate me, I wouldn't let any of them get in my way. I won't stop until Lilian Wu took a bullet through her head—my bullet from my gun. She was warned not to mess with me or Hanna, so she deserved all that was coming to her.
"Kolyenka." Angel grabbed Nikolai's wrist and pried him away from me. "If it were me then you'd charge in there even if you were half dead. Best we can do now is have his back, and mitigate."
No one budged an inch as I moved to the arsenal room to pack and prep in a hurry. I didn't care about my body screaming at me to stop and drop; it could do that after I had Hanna safe and sound in my arms. However, one look at my trusty rifle, and I could feel my arms shake and ache with my shoulders.
What if I couldn't pull the pin fast or efficiently enough? What if I couldn't steady myself enough to line a perfect shot? What if I shot Hanna by accident because of a last-minute twitch? Could I handle the blowback enough to keep shooting after two rounds?
The doubts gripped my mind as tightly as my hands did my rifle, and I began to wonder if it'd break. I hadn't even shot it yet I already felt my body react poorly. Ideally, it'd be best to wait, but I wasn't risking that when it came to Hanna. I'd be able to recover physically; I'd be alive at the end of it all. Hanna, who knows what would happen to her if I waited. I wanted her warm body next to me in bed, not hold her cold one in my arms.
Shoving my inhibitions away, I stuff my rifle into the duffle bag after putting it back in its case. I needed to remain strong for both Hanna and myself.
It's do or die, no doubts.
I won't miss.
I can't miss.
Once I'd packed everything, I quickly changed into a set of tactical gear and strapped my handguns and knives to their proper places before returning to the living room with my duffle.
"So, what's the plan?" Arseny asked as he inspected his blade in hand.
"I'm going to find a vantage point and set up, then I want you all to smoke them out of the place into the open. Kill whoever you want, make it damn bloody to send a message, but leave Lilian to me." I might be passive, but by no means was I a saint.
I kept myself tamed for everyone's sake. One kill was all I needed to set myself off. One single drop of blood was all I needed to taste. The snap of the trigger when I'd pull it with the lovely, smokey scent of gunpowder filling the air; the jump to my heart when my bullet would meet its mark. The fucking rush.
