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“We’re here,” Misha, my driver says. The door opens to my right, and I step out to face a waiting Anton. He looks nervous.
“What the hell happened?” I bark at my second in command. “How the hell did she escape you?”
“Sasha was in the car with her while I ran your mother and sister up to their condo,” he tells me. I turn my glare on Sasha who looks down at his feet in shame. “Sasha says she called for someone to wait and then took off before he could even get out of the car.”
“Who was she calling to?”
Anton shrugs. “I don’t know,” he answers. “I’m having all of the security camera data in the area downloaded to the main hub for Jakub to go through.”
Holding back the urge to punch someone, I pull out my phone and follow the digital trail to my escaped fiancée with Anton, Sasha, and a few of my extra men on my heels.
It takes me through a children’s clothing store and out into a back alley. Nothing. I look around the area and assess everything around me. Where would she go?
“Vanya?” I call out, attempting to keep the venom from my voice. “Vanya, where are you?”
Something, like the sound of sniffling, reaches my ears but I can’t tell where it’s coming from.
“Vanya, you need to—”
“Watch out!” someone cries, not one of my men. I grunt as a sudden force knocks into, sending me sprawling to the ground. Brick shatters on the wall behind me, spraying pieces everywhere. A moment later, one of my men goes down.
“Sniper!” Anton hollers as he ducks behind one of the large garbage containers with Sasha. My remaining men take shelter behind the steel alley door. I shield Vanya with my body as bullet after bullet hits around us. Vanya and I are out in the open, sitting ducks, but since a bullet hasn’t torn through either of us, we must be outside of the sniper’s view.
He’s shooting blindly.
Holding Vanya tight to my body, I case the area. The alley is situated between one large building and a smaller one that is several stories shorter. There are two possible buildings the sniper can be held up in, but since I’m rolling with the theory that he can’t see me or Vanya, since we are both bullet free, it only leaves one building.
“Anton,” I shout. “Krasnyy tri.Yuzhnoye zdaniye.”
“Podtverzhdennyy.”
I hold Vanya tighter to me. Her entire body is trembling, and I can hear her sobbing quietly into my neck, her hot tears rolling against my skin and down my back.
“YA ponyal tebya,Solnyshka,” I whisper in her ear. “I’ve got you.” Her small hands grip tightly to my shirt as she burrows closer to me. I hold the back of her head in one hand and rub soothing lines up and down her back with the other as we wait for the all-clear.
“We’ve got him, boss,” Anton calls as he steps out from behind the safety of the garbage container. He’s got his phone to his ear and is barking directions to the men. “Misha is taking him to the warehouse. He’ll be there when you’re ready.”
“Come on,malen’kaya I’vitsa,” I urge Vanya up, keeping a hand on her the entire time. “So brave.” She clings to me as we stand and make our way back to our SUV. Misha has gone ahead with the Red Three team to secure the sniper, but for the first time in years, my focus isn’t on work.
It’s on the woman clinging to my side as if her life depends on it.
Twenty-Five
Everything is underwater.
The world around me is out of focus and hazy as I cling to Adrian like he’s the last life raft on the Titanic. I’m aware of him talking, but his words are nothing more than the ‘wah, wah, wah’ of Charlie Brown’s parents. It’s senseless. Meaningless.
Death has come around for me again.
This time is closer than the time before.
The bullet was inches from my face. A little to the left and it would have exploded my face. Was it the hitman from before? Or a new enemy sent to destroy me? The bullet had come out of nowhere the moment I stepped into the alley. I’d needed air and I couldn’t face going back to an angry Sasha and Anton.
Adrian leads me into the mansion, but I barely take any of it in. He’s holding me but his focus is on the other end of the phone he holds to his ear. “Find out who the fuck he is. I want everything. Fingerprints. Hair fibers. I want to know when he fucking eats, sleeps, and shits. Find it now.”
My fiancé is angry. Nothing new, but this time the anger isn’t directed at me or the circumstances around my continued existence. It’s at the man who dared try and shoot me. Rage simmers off him in giant tidal waves. The staff has disappeared from sight, not that I blame them.
This is the Adrian the Devil. Lucifer in a three-piece suit. He’s the monster that haunts your dream. The boogeyman. The great shadow.
