Page 110 of Feral King

The room erupts in violence.Lee’s men open fire in concentrated bursts. Dobrov starts shooting—not at me, but at the syndicate heads, popping off rounds one by one.

Bodies jerk and fall, chairs topple over. The concrete room becomes an echo chamber of gunfire and shouting.

I turn to Evan, who’s already firing back. He catches one of Lee’s men in the chest. Another takes aim at Evan and fires a burst of shots, hitting him in the chest. Evan falls back against the wall and drops in a heap.

Fuck!

I crouch down and move low, focusing on a discarded rifle belonging to one of the fallen. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Alexander moving, weapon in hand. I turn just in time to see something I never thought I’d see in my life.

My own brother, raising a gun at me.

I dive just as the shot cracks through the air. It hits the concrete wall behind me, dust flying everywhere. I take aim and fire back. But unlike my brother, I’m not shooting to kill. I fire at the space above Alexander, and he dives for cover under the table.

I fireagain, hitting one of the light fixtures above him. It explodes in a shower of sparks that flash brilliantly for an instant before that portion of the room goes dark.

“Alex!”

Still under the table, he regards me with wide eyes, then scurries farther away from me. He rounds the other side and bursts into a full run, rushing toward the side door that Lee entered from.

Dobrov is still standing. He pops in a fresh magazine and keeps firing. The door opens behind me, men that I recognize as Baranov’s bodyguards rush in and open fire. Two more of Lee’s men drop.

Dobrov spots me, grins, and points his gun straight at me.

But he’s not fast enough.

I fire a quick triplet, each round hitting him in the chest.

His pistol drops from his hand, landing on the cement floor with a clatter.

He drops into a nearby chair.

The gunfire ends.

It’s over.

Dobrov looks down at his chest with an expression of mild confusion as red blooms across his white shirt. Then he tips forward, his forehead hitting the table with a heavy thud.

Kostin Dobrov is no longer a problem.

More bodyguards pour into the room. I turn just in time towatch as Lee’s only remaining man slips through the side door, locking it behind him.

I stand and look around.

The room is destroyed, the table splintered and bullet-scarred. Three syndicate heads are on the floor—Federov face-down in a spreading pool of red. Morozov is slumped against the wall with his eyes open and empty, and a third whom I can’t identify is face-down on the floor.

Baranov, Kuznetsov, and Semenov are shaken and bloody but alive.

Alexander is gone, and so is Lee.

“The door,” I say to one of the nearest guards as I nod at the side door. “Open it.”

They rush over, and with a little force and a few kicks, they have it open.

Gone—there’s no one on the other side in the small waiting room.

Rage boils inside me for a moment, but I force it down.I pull out my phone and see that it’s working.It erupts with missed calls and texts from Misha and Lyra.

There’s a text from Misha that catches my eye; it’s fifteen minutes old.