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Marco hadn’t been wrong. There was so much information that was just out of reach.
My heavy boots thumped against the floor as I checked room after room praying that I would find Sasha alive.
There was one more door at the very end of the hallway, and something in my stomach told me that she was in that room. I shifted my gun training it on the room before I reached out and twisted the knob. The door gives, and the second it swings open, I see Sasha tied to a chair.
“Thank fuck,” I muttered.
I didn’t drop the gun as I rushed towards her. She was shaking her head, her eyes wide, as I came up to her. Her face was swollen. It was clear that she’d been hurt, and I vowed to make sure that whoever harmed her experienced a deeply painful death.
“I’m here,” I told her.
The room was surprisingly empty. They probably hadn’t thought that Sasha was too much of a threat tied up and scared. I reached to my belt buckle where I kept my knife. I slipped the blaze under the zip ties holding Sasha to the chair and smiled as they released her with a satisfied snap.
“What are you doing here?” she breathed out the moment she was able to get the gag out of her mouth. Her small hands were pressed against my chest. “You can’t be here.”
I shook my head and grabbed her wrists forcing her out of the chair. “Let’s go,” I told her. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that this was a trap. I wasn’t completely stupid.
Sasha pulled her arm away, which I hadn’t expected. “Wait! You have to listen to me. There’s more to this than you know.”
I was about to drag Sasha out of the room by her hair if I had to. The gunfire outside had practically ceased, and I knew we were running out of time.
“You should have listened to her,” a voice called. I turned around at the sound of a gun cocking and saw Nikolai Petrov standing there with a gun pointed at me.
“Didn’t I kill you already?” I asked. I wasn’t surprised to see him standing before me. I had done much more digging than I’d told anyone. Nikolai and Katarina thought they were so slick, but in reality they’d left breadcrumbs everywhere.
“Nikolai, just let us go,” Sasha begged. “Please.”
I could hear the pain in her voice, and my heart went out to her. I knew that I was going to have to kill her brother. Nikolai wasn’t letting me out of here alive.
“I can’t, Sasha,” Nikolai said.
“Don’t let Mama’s desire for power ruin you,” she said. I was trying to keep her behind me, but she was slowly inching closer and closer, so that she was between the two of us.
“He ruined my life,” Nikolai breathed. “He took everything from me.”
Sasha was now between the two of us.
“I’m not going to let you kill my husband,” Sasha said. Her hands were raised, and I felt my heart starting to thump against my ribs as I looked Nikolai in the eye. Whatever had happened years ago, had warped his sense of reason. His mother had helped. He wasn’t thinking clearly, and until I was dead, he wasn’t going to stop.
“Damn it, Sasha!” he yelled. He was waving the gun around. “Don’t make me do this.”
“Do what?”
He leveled the gun straight at her head. “Don’t make me kill you,” he said.
“It’s me you want, right,” I said, trying to draw Nikolai’s attention away from Sasha. I was worried that any sudden movements would spook him, which was the very last thing that I wanted.
“What are you doing?” Sasha asked, turning to me. Her blue eyes were wide and scared.
I ignored her. “You can have what you want,” I told him. “If you let Sasha go.”
His hand was shaking.
“You don’t want to kill your sister,” I reminded him. “You don’t.”
“You ruined everything!” he breathed out. “I was a good man once.”
I nodded. “Yea,” I said. “Me too.”
I stepped forward, so that I was level with Sasha. Nikolai’s eyes looked back and forth between the two of us. He didn’t know who to train the gun on, and his erratic behavior was making me more and more nervous.
“Look at me, Nikolai,” I ordered. “I’m the one who shot you that night. I started the fire. I wanted you to pay for what your father did to my family, and if I had to do it again, I would.”
The anger in Nikolai solidified, and I knew even before he pulled the trigger that he was going to kill me. I took solace in the fact that Marco and Sasha were going to be okay.
Those were the last thoughts I had before the gun went off.
