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“You’re Vasilisa Marshall. Damien is your shield.”
I took a slow, deep breath, forcing myself to calm, to stay steady when the deadbolt on the outside of the door slammed back, followed by the rattle of a chain.
“You better be fucking ready, slut,” Artur barked through the door. I jumped to my feet, fear deluging my blood in ice. “We’re taking you to Finch.”
Taking me to him? “I thought he was coming here,” I said, locking my body against a flinch at the snap of the final lock.
Breathe, breathe, you’re a Marshall.
“Change of plans,” Artur snapped, wrenching open the door. “Not that I owe you an ex—”
I shot him.
The recoil sent me back a step, vibrations rattling up my arms. A laugh of disbelief burst from me, a staccato bubble of sound. I did it. I really shot him.
Blood swelled from Artur’s chest, spreading through the white shirt he wore, and another laugh drifted from my lips.
“Fucking—bitch!” Artur screamed.
The voices downstairs fell silent. Either at his raised voice or because of the gunshot.
I sucked in sharp, shuddering breaths, a laugh edging each one. I was losing control, my bravery fleeing. There were God knows how many people downstairs, and I might have a gun but I was outnumbered and I was a bad shot.
I’d been aiming for Artur’s head.
My brother lumbered towards me, a deep, throaty sound of pain cutting the silence.
“Back up,” I warned, my voice thready. “I mean it, Artur.”
“I didn’t check you for a weapon,” he hissed, breathing hard as he slammed a hand over his bleeding chest, “and that’s my fault for not realising how brainwashed the Saint has you.”
He didn’t brainwash me. Hesawme, and gave me the tools and strength to be who I was deep down.
That reminder made my spine straighten. I swallowed the knot of panic in my throat and inhaled a steadying breath.
Artur’s nostrils flared. Boots hit the steps from downstairs, quickly ascending. “Give me the gun, Vasilisa.”
The cold in my veins spread further when two muscular men in tactical black uniforms stepped into the doorway.
“What the fuck?” one demanded—a tanned man in his thirties with cropped hair. “Where did she get the gun?”
Artur threw him a snarl, his upper lip curled back. “She must have had it on her.”
“You got sloppy,” the other man said, this one older with the bearing of a veteran. “Finch won’t be happy with that.”
I swung the gun towards him at that name, dread crawling through me, twisting my stomach into a coil of sickness. I squeezed the trigger the way Damien taught me, stumbling at the force of the recoil. My breathing devolved into ragged gasps again when the man’s expression changed from derision at Artur to rage at the hole I’d blown through his stomach. Warning made me shiver, made flight instincts beat at me like angry fists.
“Put the gun down, Vasya,” Artur ordered, flicking a hard stare at the younger soldier when the older one slid to the floor with a grunt, blood pouring fast from his stomach.
“Back. Off,” I warned, my voice hard and strong unlike my messy inner composure.
I realised the look Artur gave the man had been a silent command when he drew a blocky black gun, far bigger than mine. He trained it on me without hesitation.
I froze. Panic made my eyes burn, my lungsscreamingfor air. I didn’t lower my gun. Couldn’t. I was a statue. Terror made my knees knock together, drew a small, breathless sound from my throat.
He was going to kill me, and I was frozen so badly I couldn’t shoot him before he fired his gun.
“Finch wants her undamaged,” he told Artur like a reminder he’d repeated often. “He said—”
