Page 88 of Forced By the Bratva

“Iris, what’re you doing?” Ilya stepped closer, his voice soft but tense.

“He killed my father!” I gripped the gun tightly.

Shock flickered in Ilya’s eyes.

Adrian Vale looked at me like he’d been expecting the interruption. A thin smile touched his mouth.

“There she is,” he said. “Henry’s girl. All grown up and still chasing ghosts.”

“Iris, put the gun down,” Ilya said cautiously. “Let me handle this.”

Vale laughed mockingly. “You’re just like your father. Soft. Emotional.”

“Shut up!” Ilya barked at him, furious.

Vale didn’t listen. “He didn’t have what it took to kill me when he had the chance. Neither do you. Look at your hands. You couldn’t pull that trigger if your life depended on it.”

I opened my mouth to answer.

Ilya snatched the gun from my hand in a flash and cocked the damn thing, then aimed it at Vale.

The man laughed hard. “Oh, you Tarasovs are so predictable, aren’t you?” His expression turned serious in an instant. “Did you honestly think that I didn’t know this was a trap?”

Suddenly, gunfire cut the air apart.

It came from the upper catwalks and the gaps between containers—short, controlled bursts. Nexum had come prepared.

Vale’s men were already in position, waiting for the signal. Tarasov enforcers answered immediately. Muzzle flashes lit the terminal in stuttering white. Someone shouted for cover. A crate near the table splintered.

Ilya reached me just before the second wave of shots found us. His arm locked around my waist, and he dragged me behind a stack of reinforced cargo barriers, shoving me down as rounds sparked off the metal overhead.

His body stayed between me and the open floor.

“Stay low,” he said against my ear. Then he was up again, firing around the edge of the barrier.

The fight turned close and ugly fast. Men moved between containers in short rushes. Ivan’s voice carried from the upper level, directing the security response, cutting off the exits one by one.

I saw Boris take a man down at the far end of the terminal with two clean shots. Yuri laid down covering fire from behind an overturned forklift.

Vale tried to run.

He broke for the loading-dock extraction route the moment the crossfire gave him space. Ilya saw it too.

He left the barrier, cut across the open ground under Ivan’s covering fire, and put down the two men screening Vale’s retreat. One shot. Two.

Then he was on Vale, driving him into the side of a container hard enough that the metal boomed.

Vale came up swinging. They went to the ground. Ilya took a cut across the forearm from a knife that came too fast, then broke Vale’s wrist against the concrete and tore the blade away.

Vale tried to scramble for a side door. Ilya caught him by the collar, hauled him back, and put him on his knees.

I pushed up from the barrier and moved closer, then grabbed a discarded gun from the floor.

The shooting elsewhere in the terminal was already dying down—Tarasov men cleaning up the last of the mercenaries, Ivan calling positions over the radio.

Vale spat blood and looked past Ilya to me.

“Why?” I demanded, aiming the gun at his forehead as though I had what it took to end his life. “Why did you kill him?”