AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The man’s heavy footsteps seem to echo around the hall as he thunders purposefully towards Katya’s door. I can hear the girls inside giggling all of the way from her. I’m not going to allow this man to ruin their evening and I will bedamnedif I let anything happen to Katya.
I can’t lose my position in the family, after all.
I tell myself that’s the only reason I am moving so swiftly.
The door opens, and Katya is standing there. She is illuminated by the warm lighting of her apartment and accompanied by the jovial sounds of conversation coming from her friends. But then, she freezes.
The bastard pulls a gun on her. He’s just going to slaughter her right then and there in front of all of her friends. I act without thinking. My body takes over and my gun is aimed at the man in the mask with expert marksmanship. Even with the silencer on my gun, the shot is loud as I blow that bastard away.
It all happens so fast that the man only seems to sway. His blood splatters all over Katya’s face and the door half closed behind her. The now dead man sinks to his knees and teeters backward. The force with which his knees hit the carpet is somehow impossibly loud. It’s only interrupted by the scream that then leaves Katya’s perfect lips.
I didn’t mean to have her go into shock. I didn’tmeanto make it worse, but the alternative was her being the one with her brains decorating the wall beside her door and I sure as fuck wasn’t going to allow that to happen. I did the only thing that I could think of… and now I’m going to have to think of a way to get myself out of this.
The sane thing would be to run.
Thesmartthing would be to get the hell out of here before Alexei and his men can descend upon this place with all of their weapons and I get taken as a prisoner of war.
Which is exactly what I would be.
Katya might not know my family well enough to have recognized me but her brother certainly will.
I have no explanation for saving her life other than wanting to keep my position. It is not as if she does not have an axe hanging above her head regardless. I’m supposed to be the one to kill her. Even if I had allowed this man to shoot her in her unreasonably pretty face, I could have still killed him for it. I would have been able to take the credit for the kill with my father… but I can’t.
I’m likely going to regret every bit of this - but I’m already tucking the gun into the back of my black pants and moving toward Katya.
“Are you all right?” I ask above her screaming, worry knitting my brows. “Is everybody all right?” I school my features into little more than the concerned citizen that I am going to have to pretend to be.
Katya’s screaming cuts off so suddenly I almost think that she’s choked on her own air but her wide eyes are frantically searching my face.
“You…? How…? What…?” She stammers and I worry for a moment that she’s going into shock.
“It’s all right now, Katya… I’ve got you. Don’t worry.”
“How the hell…? What… he…” Katya grabs onto the fabric of my shirt and pulls me close and points to the dead man on the floor. “How did you… where is…?”
As if in answer to the question she did not even get to properly ask me, a body comes seemingly out of nowhere at all and barrels into me. I can’t help but slide sideways as my shoulder and hip check into the wall painfully. I grit my teeth and let my lips twist into an arrogant grin as I come face to face with my clan’s enemy.
“Alexei, long time no see.” I grit through clenched teeth. I don’t try to fight him or shove away from the wall. He’s likely just as armed as I am and no doubt thinks that I have been the one to personally kill all of his men. Any move to defend myself right now is a sure way to get myself executed.
“Luca… what the fuck are you doing in my territory?” He breathes, fire and damnation burn brightly in his eyes as he fists the front of my shirt tighter.
“What? Alexei, you know him?” Katya flounders. I can hear her friends attempting to shove past her into the hallway to see what the hell is going on but she seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping them confined into the living room. “What are you doing here anyway? Who the fuck is that guy!”
One of Alexei’s men yanks the black balaclava off of the man’s face and Katya gasps. I know that it’s not because of the gaping wound in his face, but rather something else. She’s looking at him almost like she knows him, like he’s familiar to her. But that’s impossible… isn’t it?
I crane my neck to see over Alexei’s shoulder and realize that the man on the ground is very familiar to me as well.
A shuffle and Alexei’s gun is pressed into my forehead. The cold metal bites into my skin and I know that he won’t hesitate for a second to blow me away.
Alexei’s words are pure venom as he speaks. “I expect that you have some explaining to do, Senno, and you need to do it right the fuck now.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KATYA
Idon’t know where to look.
The man who was perhaps the best sex of my entire life just shot my ex in the face before he could shoot me. I’m wearing my ex-boyfriend’s blood all over me and somehow my brother is intimately acquainted with my one-night stand.
