I raise the barrel a mere few centimeters and fire a round into the wall behind him. The bullet hisses past his cheek by millimeters.
“That’s the only warning you’re going to get,” I say. “Give them to me.”
“How dare you,” he protests. “You are violating every agreement that?—”
“They are under my protection.”
“Your board will turn against you for this.” He counters. “They are Koshkin, the both of them. My property. Pavel will?—”
“Pavel will do nothing.” I growl. “He is as good as dead, and now so are you.”
I fire the second shot into the floor at his feet, and the house comes alive. My men come through every entrance simultaneously – flooding the house with movement. They know exactly what to do.
The two men flanking Nikita step back, making the conscious decision to save their own skin over protecting their employer. Nikita looks around the room as it fills with people calculating his odds.
Then looks at me and makes the wrong decision.
He moves fast for a sixty-one-year-old man — I will give him that —he lunges for me, getting one hand on my wounded shoulder before I fully register that he’s moving, and the pain that produces is momentarily blinding. Instinct drives me forward, grabbing him by the collar with both hands and shoving him against the nearest wall with a force that rattles the framed photographs on either side of him.
The impact forces the air from his lungs.
“I’m not going to ask you again,” I seethe, “where is my wife?”
I put my arm across his airway and apply just enough pressure to make it hard for him to breathe as he mutters, “Your wife?”
“Listen to me carefully, old man. The board,” I say, “watched me take a bullet moments after revealing a traitor this morning and stay standing. They are not going to save you, “Yarinais my concern. Now you are going to tell me where she is, or I am going to take this house apart room by room until I find her, and I promise you I will leave nothing behind for you to rebuild with.”
He considers me for a long moment. Calculating just how serious I am.
“Eastern corridor,” he finally says. “Third door on the left.”
I release him, and he slumps against the wall, then straightens with the lost dignity of a man attempting to regain his composure. I stare at him for a long moment, deciding if I shouldkill him now or later, instinct screaming at me to find her first and deal with him later.
“You will answer for what you did to that child,” I tell him. My feet are already moving toward the hallway.
I move fast, my shoulder making its complaints in earnest now, and I push through the door without hesitation. Relief moving through me when she is there — on the floor, her back against the wall, her knees pulled up tight against her chest, a cut above her eye, and dried blood at the corner of her mouth.
Her eyes find mine the moment I come through the door. I cross the room in three steps, and when she reaches for me, I pull her up and kiss her without a moment of hesitation.
It’s not gentle, not with the careful restraint of a man who has managed his emotions for weeks. No, this kiss holds everything I should have done the last time I had the opportunity to do it. She makes a sound against my mouth as her hands burrow into the collar of my jacket, and she kisses me back with everything she has. Which, as I’ve noted before, is considerable.
Gunfire sounds down the hall, and I pull back just enough to look at her. The cut. The blood. The relief.
“Evie?” she asks.
“David has her,” I tell her. “He’ s bringing her out now.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” I take her face in my hands, and my shoulder protests with the movement. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Nothing serious,” she says. Which I don’t entirely believe. She looks at her hand, then it’s covered in my blood from where she’d rubbed against my shoulder. “Victor, you’re bleeding?—”
“I’ll live,” I say. “Right now, we need to move.”
I take her by the hand and pull her behind me. The house is loud now — chaos as my men clear the rest of the house, meeting only mild resistance. I keep her close, hand in mine, moving toward the west corridor. We are almost to the reception room when a man comes out of the doorway to our left.
I let her go, putting my body between her and the threat. He’s large, armed, and has that expression that says he sees a target. But he hasn’t registered her presence yet, his eyes locked on mine. A gunshot echoes through the small space, and he goes down.
