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The greasy-haired one on the left sniggers. “Keep her on this side of death so she has time to tell Troian Belyaev everything we did to his precious baby girl.”
A third man leers at me. “With your daddy’s flesh wasting from his body before he’s even dead, your family is finished. Just give up,devochka.”Girl.
I am no girl. I might be young, but I turned eighteen yesterday, and I’m the next in line to lead the Belyaev clan, the most prominent Bratva family in the city. With my father so dangerously ill, I already am running it, in all but name. I am my family, and my family is me.
The man brandishing the baseball bat steps toward me. “I think I’ll break her legs first.”
My whole body tenses. If I can get that bat away from him, or dive for the knife, I might stand a chance. I get ready to dodge his strikes and use all the self-defense and hand-to-hand fighting skills I’ve drilled again and again.
“Bring it on, asshole,” I snarl.
Over the rain pattering on the tin roof, a crunching sound reaches our ears. Heavy footsteps growing louder.
Two of my aggressors glance over their shoulders along the darkened warehouse. Shadows have swallowed everything, but the footsteps are getting louder.
And louder.
So loud that even the man intent on breaking my legs frowns and turns around.
While they’re distracted, I bend down and snatch the knife and shove it into my boot.
The shadows thin about thirty feet from us. A man steps into a shaft of streetlight that falls through a dirty window and stops where he is.
The stranger is huge. Over six-foot-four and wearing black clothes that cling to his muscular frame. I can’t see his face. He’s wearing some kind of tight-fitting face covering that conceals his head and neck. I can make out his jaw and nose beneath the material, but that’s all.
He looks like a walking threat.
What in the fresh hell is this?
Apparently my attackers don’t know who he is either, as one of them calls, “Hey, Batman, this is a private murder party.”
The others laugh in response, but the stranger doesn’t make a sound. I can’t see his eyes, but I can tell from the way his head turns that he’s staring at the men one after another. Sizing them and their weapons up.
He hasn’t looked my way once, and I wonder if he sees me. It’s possible that he’s come here tonight to settle a score with these four men, and I’m caught in the crossfire.
With any luck, I can escape while he’s fighting thesemudaki.Assholes.
But the stranger still doesn’t move, and the tension is killing me. If he wants to attack them, why did he announce his presence like this? Either he’s cocky, or he’s stupid.
One of the men seems to wonder the same thing as he shakes his head and says, “Look at this dummy, just standing there.”
The stranger is outnumbered and outgunned, but he doesn’t move. Seconds tick past. A full minute.
All four men glance at each other in confusion. Two of them even send baffled stares my way, but I don’t know what the hell is going on.
The greasy-haired man scratches his cheek. “Uh, buddy? You seem lost. Why don’t you just fuck off?”
The silent man doesn’t move a muscle. There’s something regal about the way he stands there. He’s built like a warrior, all strength and control, and I have a feeling he doesn’t make a habit of doing what people tell him to do. I get a sudden mental picture of myself on my knees before this unknown man while he strokes his thumb slowly over my lips and murmurs,Good girl.
I shake myself. Where the hell did that thought come from?Zenya, focus on getting the hell out of here.
Greasy-haired guy strolls over to the stranger. “You want to join our group or something? Sorry, but we don’t hire silent idiots.”
The stranger doesn’t respond. Not one flicker of movement.
Greasy-haired man gives a puff of derisive laughter, and he reaches up to wave his fingers in front of the man’s face.
The stranger suddenly grabs his wrist. I hear theschhwickof a switchblade and the stranger plunges the blade between the man’s ribs. The greasy-haired man gives a gurgling cry, and his eyes open wide in shock and pain.
