33. Lev
LEV
“Stop.”
The Bratva soldier behind me froze at the same second I did. My body was locked tight in tension. My muscles felt charged. My nerves were frayed. My stomach was knotted from that whole-body sensation of it being go-time.
But at the whispered word from Mila over the comms unit, I stayed put.
Mid-step. Mid-breath. Mid-thought.
Together, the soldier and I waited, poised for another clue.
She’d gone down that other hallway, clued into the prospect that she could be onto something, probably so damn determined with tunnel vision to get as much intel as she could.
Maybe it was a high, sneaking in like this and stealing information.
I could get on board with that. It felt fucking good to know I was the king in this court, the ruler over all the variables that could pop up.
But I didn’t know if she was okay. I couldn’t tell if she was in danger and was telling me to stop to come back and help her.
The soldier and I stared each other down in the reflection of a framed piece of art.
Waiting.
And waiting.
I licked my lips, desperate to ask her why I needed to stop. What was going on. And if she needed help or—
“He’s not there,” she whispered.
Wherever she was in the house, she was still under the pressure to hide.
I furrowed my brow, still not moving.
“Not here,” Eli reported from the other building, also speaking quietly.
We hadn’t planned to check in. It was supposed to be a rush in here, sneak up on that fucker while he slept, and blow his brains out. One, two, three and leave.
Already, there were too many deviations. Mila wasn’t with me, scoping out and serving as a lookout. She was on the floor below us. And now the target wasn’t where he was supposed to be?
I resisted that familiar aggravation that I felt whenever things spiraled out of my control.
Every mission could get botched with the unexpected.
But I wanted tonight to go smoothly, dammit.
I needed it to. Because as soon as this was over and we regrouped to find Gregori after taking out his lieutenant, I intended to clarify some critical facts with Mila.
Like how I loved her.
How I needed her to want to be with me and not only stay because she thought she had to.
“He’s not there. On the move,” she whispered.
Footsteps sounded behind us, and I braced myself to spin and shoot him. The soldier reacted, placing his feet silently so he could turn and protect me on this corner of the stairwell.
Closer and closer, more steps.
Then a run.
“Four!” Mila whisper-shouted it, her voice louder with the urgency as she kept as quiet as possible.
I spun, gun at the ready, according to which room she’d directed me to focus on. According to the blueprints, all the rooms on the second and third floors had connector doors. If he was on the run, dashing through the building, there were too many open passageways to account for.
Fuck.
I hadn’t imagined he would be up and mobile. That was what we’d planned for since the spies had marked down his routine, which was almost like clockwork at this location for the last week.
He was supposed to be in bed, the room two doors down on my left.
Clearly, he wasn’t.
He was on the move and potentially armed.
I made eye contact with the soldier and mouthed at him to go find Mila and cover for her. That taser wouldn’t save her life if our target was armed. If guards showed up in here.
He eased away from me, following my orders.
“Two.”
Mila kept reporting in, her voice quiet and barely there. She had to be moving behind us and tracking our location on the app that showed where we were. But to know where to tell us to go, she had to be within sight of Yusef.
The thought of her stalking the target, of following him, was more dangerous.
Instead of freaking out about her risking herself, though, I was reminded of how stealthy she could be. She was so short and petite, easily slipping into shadowy corners. She was fast and agile on her feet, like a cat in the night.
When she didn’t check in for what felt like a long minute but was probably only several seconds, I swallowed and tried not to panic all over again.
Mila.
Where?
Where are you? Where do I go? What—
The shuffle of feet behind me was the only alert that I had before ducking and spinning into a kick to take the newcomer down.
It wasn’t Mila. The footsteps were from someone heavier.
A guard rushed up behind me, gun out. Apparently, an alarm had been triggered to alert the patrolling man to come this way.
Or maybe it was his unlucky night to happen to go on this circuit through the house.
Too deft and too strong for him to resist me or throw me off, I curled around after kicking at his knee. He fell, his mouth opened to cry out or yell, but again, I was faster. I broke his fall so his body wouldn’t make a sound. Before I released him, I set my hands on his neck and snapped it.
One push in of my hands and he was dead.
A silent kill.
The Bratva soldier ran up the steps quietly, gun up, and made eye contact with me as I lowered the body to the floor.
“Four,” Mila reported, referencing the room behind us now.
Her voice was still hushed, but I didn’t miss the urgency in it to go now. I stepped over the dead body and rushed as silently as I could into the room she said to go into.
It was an anteroom to an office. And unlike the rest of this floor, it was occupied.
Yusef spun, raising a gun at my head, but I was faster. Three pops of my gun made a bloody massacre of his face. Just in case, I dropped my aim and fired twice at his chest too.
This wasn’t about making a specific statement. I only needed the glory of a Volkov Bratva member killing Gregori’s highly-ranked official. It would send a message, and that was all we needed to happen as far as this corpse went.
He dropped to the floor, thudding down. I didn’t advance to break his fall. He crashed down, and I stared at his back as he rolled to a final stillness.
A soldier ran in behind me, his gun still up.
Then Mila ran in.
“You got him.”
I nodded, facing her. “What happened?”
“I went into that meeting room and realized that he’d been on the computer there recently. Or that someone had been.” She scanned the room, not minding the dead body as she trespassed. “And that meant someone was on the move up here.”
“What about upstairs?” I asked.
She shook her head, but it ended with a shrug. “I don’t know.”
I tipped my head at the guard with the silent expectation that he’d clear that floor too. If Yusef Antonov hadn’t been where we thought he’d be, it was only safe and smart to assume that others might be changing up their routines too.
He ran out to secure the building. But Mila didn’t look to be in any rush to leave.
“Did it feel good?” she asked, walking into the bigger office space that this smaller connecting room was.
“Did what feel good?”
“Killing him,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me.
I huffed out a wry laugh. “It’s not a matter of whether it feels good or bad. It was a hit. A job. And now it’s done.”
She frowned as she entered the bigger office and scoped it out. “I thought it would feel… good. That it would appease you to strike back and kill someone he relies on.”
“It will feel better to kill him,” I replied, meaning every syllable.
I would never miss Gregori and I would never want him to live.
He deserved only pain and misery. “What are you doing?” I asked, listening in for any sign of others coming.
The other Bratva men we’d come with sounded like they had everything under control from their ends.
“Looking for these documents…” She furrowed her brow. “There was a list of them lying out in that meeting room downstairs, and they sound important.”
A man shouted downstairs, and the pfft of a gun with a silencer followed.
I raised my gun and took up a position at the door. “Hurry.”
She did. She didn’t need to wait for my order for that. Rummaging through the papers and rifling all over the desk, she made a mess of searching for whatever looked important.
More commotion down below.
I stopped watching Mila, instead focusing on keeping coverage around the doorframe but staying sharp and alert for anyone coming. “Hurry,” I repeated sternly, even though I knew she heard me the first time.
“I just need to find a drive or something or…” She let out a frustrated noise, and the clatter of something falling off the desk reached my ears. “It looks too important to pass up on. Like correspondence with someone who has a governmental email address or…”
“Hurry!”
Worried that she was taking too long, I tried to stay in control of all that I could. Ushering her out of here and making sure she was covered from a hit was what I could control. But letting her linger, all to get something off this desk?
Her life mattered more.
So did mine.
Obtaining intel was a critical part of this operation. We had to know as much as we could about Yusef Antonov’s former plans. Anything that Gregori delegated him to do could be an opening for us to attack or foil their plans.
Balancing the needs of getting information and keeping us alive ate away at my frayed nerves. On the comms unit, the soldiers checked in. Reporting that they were under fire and where the guards were rushing in from, we maintained a cohesive unit in the enemy territory.
But at any second, if more than one target rushed up the stairs and cornered me and Mila in here, I would need to make the executive decision to tell her to leave. To run with me.
“I know there’s got to be something vital here…” Her voice was stressed, anxious with the urgency of the disaster unfolding down below.
Impatient to whisk her away, like I had twice before and managed to save her, I volleyed my gaze back and forth between her and the door.
“Hurry…” I warned, tightening my grip on the gun, bracing myself with a bend in my knee.
At any second, I’d need to sprint out of this situation.
And I wasn’t leaving without her.
I couldn’t leave her to chance, either.
“Hurry!” I barked as my pulse quickened even more.
The idea of losing her was too horrid to comprehend.