“He set me free!”
Avgust stared at me like I had lost my mind. “You’re defending the man who used you.”
“He stepped away from everything for me!”
Silence. Even through the distant gunfire.
“What?” Iosif asked coldly.
“He severed ties with Kliment. He dismantled operations against the Chernyks, and he walked away from everything.”
“For you?” Avgust demanded.
“Yes.”
They exchanged a look as doubt flickered on their faces. But it was too late. The stairwell door above us slammed open again, followed by more shouting. I could hear the Romanov men pushing forward, fighting my brother’s soldiers. In that split second, Iosif made a decision.
“I don’t care what he did and didn’t do. We’re extracting. Now.”
They dragged me down the remaining flights and right outside, black SUVs waited for us. The city streets were chaotic with sirens approaching from multiple directions. As they shoved me into the vehicle, I looked up at the broken windows ofthe penthouse above. At the smoke rising. At the place that had stopped feeling like a prison and started feeling like home.
He thought I had betrayed him. The realization hit harder than the gunfire. The SUV doors slammed shut, and the engine roared to life. As we pulled away, the battle still raged behind us. Neither finished nor resolved. And somewhere inside that wreckage, I had just lost the one person I never wanted to lose.
Chapter 22 - Fyodor
The safe house smelled like antiseptic and old wood, and I instantly hated it. It was too quiet and too clean and far too removed from the wreckage I had just walked out of. Although I knew my biggest problem with it was that it was much too removed from Elisse, and being away from her was already making me lose my mind. Viktor forced me into a chair near the narrow kitchen counter while one of the medics worked on my shoulder in silence. The cut above my brow had already been stitched. My ribs were tightly wrapped. There was blood on my knuckles that wasn’t entirely mine.
But I didn’t feel any of it. Not really. Pain required clarity, and my mind was anything but clear. Two days had passed since the attack, and I had still not allowed the paramedics to see me until today, when I knew all my men were treated as well.
“She stood with them,” I said aloud, though no one had asked, but Viktor didn’t respond. “She didn’t move. Not even once.”
“She stepped between you and Iosif when he pointed the gun at you, and she screamed at him to stop,” he corrected quietly.
I shot him a look sharp enough to cut.
“All she did was stand between guns because she hates bloodshed, death, and murder,” he clarified. “It’s not the same as stepping between loyalties and choosing a side. Because when it came to choosing sides, we can see exactly what she chose and where she decided to go in the end.”
I looked away, the memory replaying in my mind mercilessly. All I could think about was Elisse standing there between us, untouched and unbound, barefoot and shiningbrightly in her yellow sundress. I had only gotten it for her last week, and she had told me how much she loved it. But there she had been in that sundress, standing between Iosif and Avgust. It was not as if her brothers hadn’t dragged her out there in chains. They hadn’t restrained her. She had been standing and had walked out on her own two feet. Out of her own will.
And I had asked her if she had called them. She had said no, but everything else about her being there was screaming yes. And when I left, she had gone with them. I don’t think I would ever be able to forget.
The medic taped gauze over my ribs. “You’re done,” he said flatly.
Done. The word rang hollow, and I stood up, ignoring the tight pull in my side.
“What’s the status?” I turned and asked Viktor, who was being bandaged up just the same, but his other hand was hovering over an iPad.
“The penthouse had obviously been compromised,” Viktor said. “But we have extracted most of our men. The casualties are minimal, and the penthouse would require extensive repair. Everyone who was injured has gotten treatment, and most of them are now in recovery in our safe houses around the city.”
“Does Kliment know yet?”
“He knows, and he is furious to the point of killing someone, and to be honest, I think he wants that someone to be you right now. I am sure he will be here soon enough to tell you how he told you so and how you should have never walked away from him and how that is exactly what Elisse and the Chernykhs wanted.”
Of course he would do exactly that. Even I knew him that much. He would see this as confirmation regarding everything he had predicted already. It was proof for him that my “sentimentality” had invited disaster. Proof that stepping away from operations had weakened us. Proof that love was a liability after all. I leaned against the counter, staring at the grain of the wood like it might offer clarity.
“She chose them,” I said again.
No one answered, because no one wanted to agree. But no one could disprove it either. The front door of the safe house opened without warning, and Viktor’s hand went to his weapon instantly. Mine followed out of instinct, but Ilana stepped inside.
