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My father freezes, his face curling in anger as he slowly wipes the spit from his face. I can see Finn ready to do it again, but I shake my head silently. If we have any real chance of leaving here alive, we need to digress. Rian growls harshly before smashing his fist into Finn’s mouth, a resounding crack radiates through the room. Finn doesn’t make a sound, keeping his head tilted away. The man I once looked up to peers over at me with cold eyes. His find mine before he turns and walks out the door, letting it slam behind him. Finn hangs his head forward, ragged breaths stumbling from his mouth. I wait a few moments to make sure we were truly left alone.
“You okay?” I turn my attention back to Finn, watching his shoulder shake from anger. I can hear him mumbling curses under his breath before lifting his cut up face to return my gaze.
“Me?” He hums, gazing over my torso. “I think you’re asking the wrong person here. Areyouokay? You’re the one bleeding,” he continues to inspect the damage, his expression wincing with each area he looks at.
“I’m fine, but we need to get out of here.” I look up at the shackles on my wrists where they’re hanging above my head. I’ve already started to lose feeling in my fingertips from lack of blood flow. “There has to be some way to get out of these.” I gently pull on them, unlike the other times where I attempted to rip them from the wall.
Inspecting them further, I sigh and hang my head in dejection. The only way out is with the key, and I know my father isn’t going to leave that openly accessible.
“She will be okay, they will all be okay,” Finn’s voice fills the silence. I don’t know who he is trying to convince, myself or him.
“If I die it will destroy her, Finn.” The dread is heavy in my voice as I take the weight of the situation. “She’s barely hanging on by a thread right now as it is. If I die…”
“Then I guess we better come up with a plan,” he mumbles, leaning his head back against the wall and shutting his eyes.
Chapter twenty-four
Natalia
Two Hours Remaining
“Anotheremptyone,”Igrit as we walk out of the fifth Belov warehouse, my legs shaking from fatigue. “We still have 2 warehouses and two safehouses to search. Where the fuck could they possibly be!” I look over at my brother who is standing beside me surveying the bodies that lay at our feet. All of these men were loyalists to Rian and his mission, which was unfortunate because some of them were once my men.
“There has to be some men still loyal to our family,” Dmitri utters, kicking the dead corpse of one of Rian’s men. I can hear the clear point of irritation in his tone, similar to the one in mine, excluding the tiredness. “Have you talked to Eric at all? He’s been a loyalist to us for a long time. Maybe he knows of some?” He suggests, trudging to the car with me. I grip his elbow to keep myself upright, pushing forward.
“I haven’t. I don’t want to draw attention to him if Rian hasn’t figured out that he’s on our side. He might know of other loyalists, but I don’t want to risk the only confirmed one if we can avoid it.” Letting go of him, I walk over to the passenger side and throw Dmitri the keys. He looks at me with a brow raised in annoyance. “I’m exhausted. You’ve had more sleep than I have, so don’t be complaining.”
Rolling his eyes, he gets in the driver’s seat with little complaint, starting the car. “Where to now?”
“Let’s start going through the O’Connor warehouses again. There’s one about fifteen minutes away from here, I think we can hit that before calling in the troops.” I look at the map I pulled from my glove compartment earlier. I draw an X on the current warehouse, looking at all the other X’s in red.
Directing him down the back roads, an uneasy feeling settles in the pit of my stomach as we grow closer to the warehouse. I survey our surroundings, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. “Something isn’t right.” I voice, mere seconds go by before the back glass splinters.
“Fuck!” Dmitri curses as he swerves to the right, a bullet whizzing past his door. “Where the fuck is that coming from?”
“I don’t know, just keep driving!” I turn around in my seat trying to see through the busted window, but the spiderweb cracks make it hard to see anything. Leaning back, I go to turn back around as the shooter gets another shot in. The bullet grazes my arm, and I slump down into the seat.
“Shit!” I place my hand over the wound and sit forward, using the hand on my injured arm to feel around under the seat.
“Are you okay?” Dmitri’s voice takes on the worried brother tone, his eyes coming off the road for a few moments.
“What the fuck are you doing? Eyes on the road!” I hiss, squishing myself further down the seat.
A few seconds later I feel the hard plastic, finally pulling the first aid kit out from under the seat. I unclasp it with one hand while keeping pressure on the wound with the other. “I’m fine. Just get us out of here.” I grit as I pull the gauze out of the bag. Flinching slightly as another bullet ricochets off the car, I make quick work wrapping my arm, making sure I get it tight enough to slow the bleeding until I get to better equipment. Thank fuck it was my non-dominate arm, or wrapping it would have been a hell of a lot harder, especially with Dmitri’s erratic driving. Once the bandage is on, I toss the box into the floor.
Finally stable, I shove my legs under myself, propping up higher on the seat.
“What the fuck do you thinkyouare doing?” He yells over the whistling of the back window.
“I’m ending this shit,” I yell, grabbing the gun from my waist band. Opening my window, I situate myself to be able to lean and shoot.
“Shut the window,” Dmitri yells, wind whipping past us as he screeches around a corner.
“Shut up and let me handle this.” The vehicle trailing us follows suit, getting closer with each second.
“Natalia,” he shouts in warning, his voice rising with irritation and worry. I don’t respond. Instead, I wait for the car to get closer and closer. When they look like they’re about to fender bender with us, I lean out of the window. Sending shot after shot, I watch their windshield shatter with my bullets. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop them.
“Shit,” I scream, watching the man from their passenger side lean out too. “Go left, now!” Dmitri yanks the steering wheel of the car, tipping up onto two tires as we drift to the next road. My body half leans out the window with the jerk of the car, Dmitri grabbing my hoodie to keep me from flying out. The car behind us opens fire but barely misses with our sudden turn. Dmitri continues flying, maneuvering the backroads with ease.
