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I reach for my door handle, and Natalie does the same on her side. “Three… Two… One.” All at once we pour from the vehicles, with Mason taking the lead. Once he kicks in the door, we storm the building. It’s clear from the start they weren’t expecting us, as half-naked women scream and run in all directions, while men dressed in suits scramble for cover. A few of them look like they’re ready to reach for a weapon, but theythink better of it when they see for themselves how many of us there are.
“Heading for the back!” Griffin barks in my ear, while Mason orders the rest of us to split up and search the rooms.
I’m not leaving her side. He can’t expect me to do it. This means sticking close to him since he doesn’t want to leave her on her own, either. Whether that’s to do with keeping her safe or a lack of trust, I’m not sure. I want to believe it’s the former, but there could be a bit of the latter mixed in even now, after they had their heart-to-heart on the plane.
A woman whose outfit is see-through to the point of being useless charges up at us, screaming in Russian. I get the sense she’s the madam around here. We’ve disrupted business and upset her girls. Mason brushes past her like she doesn’t exist, which only leaves her screaming louder than ever as we continue checking the shadowy rooms, searching for a man I had the pleasure of shooting weeks ago. I’ll never forget the sight of his face any more than Natalie ever could. So far, I haven’t seen anyone remotely matching him. Just a bunch of average men whose good time is ruined.
Griffin’s voice rings loud and clear as I’m beginning to question whether our guy got spooked and ran. “Got him. First floor, back room.”
Blonde hair flashes past me. “Wait!” I bark, but I’m talking to myself for all the good it does. Natalie charges back there, paying attention to neither me nor her brother as we both urge her to be cautious. She’s on a mission of her own, and we just happen to be along for the ride.
By the time we reach the end of a long, nearly pitch black hall, she has come to a dead stop in the doorway to the room where Griffin waits. I reach her first, and I hear her short, rapid breaths even over the chaos still brewing behind us. I don’t daretouch her, fear of how she might react. It might be too much, and I can’t do that to her.
“You all right?” I ask instead, careful to keep anything resembling pity out of my voice. She would never accept my pity.
She gives herself a shake before nodding, then steps aside so Mason and I can get a look at the man now on his knees, his arms raised, fingers laced behind his head.
It looks like he’s been living back here, with a bed in one corner and a small TV sitting on top of a microwave. It’s not exactly clean, and it’s not comfortable, but he doesn’t deserve much better. I look around the room, expecting someone to start questioning the man currently sweating bullets as his defiant gaze darts around, sizing us up.
My own gaze falls to his side, where bandages stand out beneath a thin T-shirt. This is the guy I wounded. What a shame I didn’t hit an inch or two to the right.
I realize now Mason has hardly blinked since he came in. He’s too focused on the snarling bastard glaring up at him. “It’s you,” he mutters, his brow furrowed in confusion. “They told me you were dead, Lukas.”
Lukas barks out a laugh. “How kind of you to remember my name. It was the only thing you managed not to take from me. You and your filthy fucking team!” He spits on the floor to punctuate this.
“Mason?” I mutter. This is news to me. Griffin has gone from holding Lukas at gunpoint to looking to Mason for understanding.
“If I only knew you made it out alive, this would all have made sense a lot sooner.” Mason looks shaken. “I would’ve known who to look for.”
Lukas snickers before spitting again, and this time I notice there’s blood mixed in. The welt darkening his cheek tells me Griffin got physical with him. “You murdered my family.”
“I was doing a job. We were all doing a job.”
“As I now do my job!” Lukas screams. His voice is strained, tendons standing out on the side of his neck while his face goes red. “It is my duty to avenge them. To take from you as you have taken from me. I may not have completed my mission, but I made certain you lost what you loved. And you will always know it was your fault.”
He pauses to let his words sink in before adding, “There was nothing you could do to stop it.” His cold laughter is tinged with madness, intense enough to make my skin crawl.
The gunshot that cuts off his laughter comes from Natalie’s Sig. She lowers the gun once he’s hit the ground, his mouth still hanging open, before turning her back on the corpse she created.
She’s a fast shot, but she doesn’t hide her face fast enough for me to miss the grim satisfaction on it. Fuck, I need to hold her.
Mason beats me to it, wrapping an arm around her, the two of them standing in silence. That’s the way it should be.
28
NATALIE
For some reason, I thought after this trip everything else would fall into place, that somehow all my problems would be fixed. Of course, I was wrong. I don’t know what I was even thinking. Yes, there is a tremendous amount of relief that I ended his life. I took out the man who took so much from me, but there is so much else I need to deal with now. Mostly the fallout of my own actions leading up to what happened in Moscow.
I barely remember the flight home. I was still trying to process everything, and I couldn’t handle the way Dallas had been giving me the cold shoulder. He barely talked to me, hardly even looked at me. Is he mad I killed the man who killed my mother or is he still hung up on me leaving? I can’t blame him for the latter. They trusted me, and I left. Just like with Mason, I have to work on building that trust back up. I just hope I can before it’s too late.
For the first time in forever, I’m by myself in the apartment. Griffin went down to the restaurant to grab us some food, and Dallas went to his place after we landed just a few hours ago. I’ve been waiting for him to come back, or at least give me a call, but I guess I’m expecting too much from him. We never made acommitment to each other. So I can’t expect him to act like he’s my boyfriend or something. I don’t even know exactly what he is to me. I know I want him the same way I want Griffin. But what does that actually look like? With everything that has happened, I haven’t thought about it. Haven’t thought about how Dallas and Griffin must be feeling. I’ve been so fucking selfish, and the people surrounding me are having to pay the price.
Walking into my kitchen, I’m heading for the refrigerator to get a cold beer when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Dallas: We need to talk. Can you come to my place?
I read his text and immediately my stomach drops. Something is off. Why does he need to talk to me, and why does it have to be at his place? This is wrong.
