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“Ostanovit’!” I command in Russian as I place myself between Andrian’s men and Casey.
Glancing down at Andrian’s prone body, I know there’s no way he’s surviving a clean shot to the head. Casey has miraculous aim.
My men have also raised their guns, but they’re not entirely convinced where to aim. Casey would be the natural target except Tao is acting as her human shield.
This is a fucking mess.
Once Lukashenko, Andrian’s superior, learns of Andrian’s death, the Bratva is going to go after Casey. So I can’t let Lukashenko know. I’ve got to get rid of the witnesses.
My gaze meets Andy’s. I expect him to know what I’m thinking.
“Matters of the heart?” he replies in our native language.
I snort. It’s too crazy for me to contemplate at the moment. But Andy’s rarely wrong.
“Andrian was a brother to me,” I say solemnly in Russian to his men. The only emotion I truly have the wherewithal to acknowledge over the death of my lifelong friend is shock. I don’t have the time and capacity to do anything more with Casey’s life in danger. “Without him, I probably wouldn’t be standing here today. Allow me to take care of this.”
I take an AR from Antonne and walk toward Casey. I see her brow furrow in confusion as she moves to hide fully behind Tao, who doesn’t know if he should move out of the way or not.
“Step aside,” I say in Russian, even though Tao doesn’t speak the language.
From the corners of my eyes, I see that Andrian’s men have lowered their guard. Spinning around, I empty the whole magazine. It takes less than a minute to down all of them. Andy walks over to inspect the carnage. Seeing one still moving, he fires his pistol into the guy’s head.
Handing Antonne back his AR, I walk over to Callaghan, who’s curled in a fetal position with his arms over his head.
Crouching down, I tell him, “You owe me big, Liam.”
“I swear it wasn’t my idea to double cross you!” he says. “I wouldn’t risk my daughter’s life like that.”
“Then why did you bring Brady in the first place?”
“He said he cared about Casey and wanted to help make sure she was okay.”
“Which is why he left her in the Bay to drown.”
Callaghan looks over at Casey, still half dressed, her hair frozen wet. He lowers his gaze.
“As the head of your organization, the buck stops with you,” I continue. “And here’s what’s going to happen next: first, you’re going to help me get the SVATR laptop back from Brady. Then you and your son are going to go back to the East Coast, and you’re never going to set foot in California again. Last but not least, you owe me your life. Trust me when I say I very much want to kill you right now. But I’m going to let you live. In your place, I’m going to take hers.”
He looks up at me in alarm. “What?”
“Casey’s not yours anymore. She’s mine. Just remember that if you even think about failing one of my directives.”
Standing up, I head over to the boat to see if Casey’s okay. But between the cold and the loss of blood from getting shot, I feel faint. I stumble and fall to the sand. The last thing I see before passing out is Casey running toward me.
Chapter thirty
Casey
Acloudhadpassedin front of the moon, so I couldn’t make out the expression on Kai’s face as he walked toward me, holding some kind of semiautomatic rifle. For a split second, I thought I was as good as dead, whatever desire he had had to save me, was wiped out when his friend Andrian hit the beach with a bullet in his head. A bullet I had put there. I’m not even sure if I had intended to kill him. All I know is I wanted to stop him from hurting my dad.
But then the cloud moved, and my gaze met Kai’s. He wasn’t going to kill me. I didn’t expect him to turn around and use the gun on Andrian’s men, however. The man I later learned was named Tao remained standing in front of me, shielding me from seeing most of it, though I did glimpse blood spraying through the air. What I mainly saw afterwards was Kai slumping to the ground. I couldn’t help him, however, because I stumbled myself. It felt hard to think straight, and my body was still shivering.
I don’t remember much of what happened after that. The coat and towels wrapping me were stripped away. A hard and naked body - I think Tao’s - embraced me. Eventually, I was transferred to a different boat, one with heating. I heard the man who must be Kai’s second in command issue orders for the bodies on the beach. I lost all consciousness after that.
“I feel fine,” I protest from my hospital bed to a man named Andy.
“I told you that Kai is doing well,” he replies. “I’m not lying.”
