Chapter 26 - Mikhail
The door gives under my shoulder after holding up quite a fight.
Beside me, Zara freezes as she takes in what the room reveals.
The two figures sit restrained together, bound at their wrists and ankles. The single overhead fixture is the only light shone upon them.
Arman stumbles to his feet despite the restraints, positioning himself in front of his wife in a knee jerk motion, before he even knows it’s his daughter and her husband.
Samira, behind him, perks up woozily in her chair, and her eyes—dark, sharp, and exactly like her daughter's—land on me the moment I come through the door.
She drinks her fill of Zara, then of me.
“We need to move,” I announce, crossing to Arman first. He’s the closest, standing. With my knife, I swipe at the binding at his wrists, and it gives in two cuts, then the ankle restraints. Samira is next, and Zara helps me as well, snapping out of her daze.
“Zara!” Samira exclaims weakly, wrapping her daughter in her shaking arms, the way she should have done when her eyes first landed on her daughter after all these years.
“Mom, you’re fine, right? Dad? How did they—” Zara hiccups, her shoulders shaking.
Arman also joins in, embracing his girls, but he closes his eyes only for a moment, nodding when he looks back at me.
Just a moment, he seems to convey.
“Let’s go, girls,” Arman croaks, tapping his wife’s forearm.
“The compound is being ravaged,” I assert. “We are going out the way we came in. You stay between us at all times; you move when we move, you stop when we stop. Can you both walk?”
Arman and Samira look like they’ve aged twice as fast since I last saw them but they both nod with the same determination I see regularly in Zara’s eyes.
“Yes,” he says, self-pity absent from his tone. This is where Zara's resilience came from.
“Good,” she says. “Then stay close.”
There’s noise of shuffling feet and a scuffle from the corridor before I reach the door. The syndicate has pushed its personnel, from the perimeter, inside.
The trap must have been designed with exactly this plan: flood the courtyard with their men to neutralize the entry team, then move into the building to catch us red-handed.
It makes sense, which is even more irritating that I didn’t predict it.
The door creaks as I push it open slightly to peek out.
There are two guards moving toward us from the eastern end, almost on us already.
Zara slams the door open right as my hand on my gun tightens, and her elbow strikes against the nearer man's jaw sharply. The man’s body thuds into the wall.
The second man comes down when I put two bullets between his eyes, not one second wasted.
Zara’s eyes are bright and alive, running on adrenaline, looking like she’s done something that she did not know she was capable of.
“You've been practicing,” I murmur appreciatively.
“I've had motivation,” she chirps, winking at me again.
Behind us, Arman watches his daughter with a complicated mixture of both grief and pride, but we don’t have time to dwell on that.
Luckily, there’s no other casualties, and we slip outside as smoothly as we came in.
The courtyard is a different situation than the one we left only a few minutes ago.
Nikolai's secondary team has pressed in from the southern position, exactly as directed, and the syndicate personnel who were occupying the compound's inner perimeter are now being choked from two directions, no longer at an advantage.
My four-person entry team has held the outbuilding position and is pushing forward as the secondary pressure gives them room.
It’s still far from over. Nothing is over before it actually is, and that’s the only rule of combat.
Zara's parents follow us like shadows, far more efficient at it than Zara was, through the courtyard.
Arman and Samira are in the center, Zara on Samira's left with her hand on her mother's arm, me running the exterior of the formation as her eyes dart around to record and predict every single movement in the compound.
Only thirty meters left.
Our feet pad against the ground, just thirty meters between us and the northeastern exit when—
A figure steps out of the southern doorway.
By the lack of tactical gear and face covering, I know he is not one of the masked operatives. He’s completely relaxed, not one weapon in his hands. In his mid-fifties, his build is still lean, speaking of decades spent in war and combat.
Dahmer O'Connor.
The Irish syndicate leader.
He tilts his head in contempt and disappointment as I quickly shield Zara and her parents behind me.
“Korovin,” he announces.
“O’Connor. Step aside,” I tell him.
“I have been planning this operation for eight months. Your right hand is gone. Your entry team is compromised. And the people behind you—” his eyes move to Arman and Samira like they are inconvenient obstacles rather than people, “—are ours by right of a debt that predates anything you have a claim over.”
“The debt,” I thunder, “is cleared.”
Just as quickly as his gun comes out from his jacket, I leap at him and Zara and her parents take cover. His face twists into a snarl, and I see the emblem of our tactical gear shining in the dark like a beacon behind O’Connor.
Joshua comes at O’Connor from behind, and I from the front. The gun flies from his hand right as Joshua’s sneak attack comes at the back of his knees. The widely-feared Irish mob lies at my feet, the man behind it all writhing under my hold on the ground.
And it only took me six seconds.
“Secure him,” I bark at Joshua, and he does.
“You fucking cunt, this isn’t—”
I bring my foot down on O’Connor’s throat as he writhes, Joshua’s hold around his neck tight enough to make his eyes bulge.
“You’re done, O’Connor. Quit your yapping,” I growl, putting all my weight into the boot.
Only when the rest of the team arrives and restrains him properly do I turn around to look at my wife.
Zara shines beneath the artificial lights like a beacon, her dark eyes glittering like orbs of mystery as her hair flutters around her, having come loose because of all the action.
Even with mystery in them, there is clear affection and worship her eyes that I haven’t seen the depth of like I am now.
She looks like I have brought someone back from the dead for her.
In a second I’m breathing her air, absorbing her warmth greedily as I press my forehead against hers.
“You’re okay?” she asks breathlessly.
“All clear,” I murmur.
She exhales, all the weight of the past months finally falling off her shoulders.
“Let's go home,” she whispers.
Our cars are waiting at the northeastern service road, exactly where Nikolai positioned them.
It takes only ninety seconds for everyone to retreat. Nikolai meets us at the second car, unable to hide the satisfied twinkle in his eyes.
His gaze falls to Arman and Samira, analytical and careful, and then he looks at me.
We got them out.
Zara finds her seat between her parents, unlike the way she sat between them when we were returning from the airport terminal before everything fell apart. Her hand is in her mother's and her shoulder rubs against her father's, immediate and real.
Arman murmurs something low to her in the darkness. I don't hear the words, but I don't try to. Whatever they are talking about belongs to the three of them, and I am present without pressing, which I’m learning is not a bad thing to be.
“Mikhail,” Samira calls out to me. “You brought her here. Thank you,” she says quietly.
“She brought herself,” I smile. “I just kept up.”
Under the passing lights, Samira's face warms up. She nods once, and her smile mirrors mine, small but genuine.
Then Zara meets my eyes.
The look she gives me is not one I’ve seen before. It’s not the journalist's look, not the investigator's, not the fierce and combative look of the woman who has been at me since the alley in Dubai.
Something much quieter than all of those, hiding itself so cleverly, finally revealing itself.
Something that looks a lot like love.
The Athens night moves past the windows in its amber lights and dark shadows. The compound is behind us, and her parents are finally safe in here with us.
O’Connor is in Nikolai's custody.
There is nothing left to be done, because I am at last sitting across from the woman who has both been the object of all my desires and the bane of my existence.
She turns back to her mother.
I look out the window.
I have spent my entire adult life building walls, only for the last several months to see the walls completely fall apart, all thanks to the woman sitting right with me.