6. Eva
Eva
M y peripheral vision catches the flash of Nik’s movement, and every instinct I’ve honed over decades of survival screams betrayal. The old wound tears open—Dominika Kusek walking away from the Consortium, telling me I was selfish, choosing love over everything.
Is this how it ends? Struck down by a deserter?
Rage and disbelief and sheer arrogance keep me standing stock still as her body hurtles toward mine?—
But Nik isn’t attacking me.
In the split second after my mind first suggests betrayal, I see the true threat: a shadow emerging from behind a stack of rusted oil drums, blade gleaming in the sickly overhead light.
The attacker moves fast, steel aimed directly at the space between my ribs where my heart beats its terrified rhythm.
Nik intercepts.
The world slows as her body collides with mine, pushing me aside. The blade that should have found my heart instead slides into her side.
Her face twists in pain, and a gasp escapes her even as she fits her gun underneath the attacker’s chin and fires. He falls dead, but Nik is stumbling too, reaching for the wall.
Dominika Kusek just threw herself between death and me without hesitation.
“Fuck,” she hisses, her hand pressing against the wound in her side. Her knees buckle, and I lunge forward to catch her before she hits the concrete.
Behind us, chaos erupts, muzzle flashes strobing against the warehouse walls.
Three more Gattos pour from the shadows, and I brace Nik against the wall behind a metal cupboard for shelter, my hands pressing over hers to stem the bleeding.
She’s trying to stay upright, trying to maintain her grip on her weapon, but I can see the strength leaking out of her.
“How bad?” I demand, though I can already see the answer written in the pallor of her skin.
“I’ve had worse,” she manages with bravado, but the mess on my own hands belies her words.
The shooting has stopped. Hadria jogs over. “Stomach wound,” she pronounces. “Bad news. And if the blade was dirty...” She doesn’t finish the sentence.
I know stomach wounds can be among the worst ways to die. Slow, agonizing.
We need to get Nik out of here.
Leon’s voice booms as he and Sunny return from their reconnaissance. “What the hell happened? Is Eva—” He stops when he sees Nik slumped against the wall, my hands crimson.
“Ambush,” I report tersely. “Nik took a blade meant for me.”
Sunny appears at Leon’s shoulder. “Jesus, Kusek. Were you trying to be a hero or just stupid?”
“Little of both,” Nik whispers, then winces as she tries and fails to pull herself away from the wall, the movement pulling at her wound.
“You need to return to the entrance and get to the triage area Scarlett set up,” Hadria tells her.
“I don’t take orders from you, Imperioli,” Nik says weakly.
“Oh, yes you do,” Hadria says. “Because I am not going to explain to Brie Colombo that I let her fool of a lover fight on with a wound like that.”
“I’m fine,” Nik insists, struggling to stand straight now.
“You’re clearly not,” I tell her. “You’re done.”
“So now I’m useless?” she snaps.
“Useless?” I lean in until Nik has to look at me. “You were never that.” Her eyes flash. She hates the softness in my tone. She’ll hate me more in a second. “Leon.” I glance at him, and he reads my face, knows what to do.
He steps inside her space with the weight of the mountain he is. “Mikolaj would be proud,” Leon rumbles. “He’d be proud of you, girl, but he’d want you alive to serve your new Family.” He tilts his head, that tiny respectful nod he gives his warriors. “You did good, Kusek.”
Something in Nik flickers. She blinks, jaw working, then spits red onto concrete. “Fine,” she grinds out. “I guess Brie would kill you all if I died.”
I call over my two Consortium bodyguards. “Nik Kusek is a personal friend. You will return with her to the vehicles and protect her at all costs. If you fail me, I will end you myself.”
“Understood,” they say with a grin, as though I’m joking.
“Thank you,” I murmur to Nik, as I help her sling her arm around one of my men’s shoulders. “That was?—”
“Save it,” she says. “Tell me when we see each other again.” I nod, then she catches my wrist with blood-slick fingers. “Give them hell,” she whispers. “And make sure you come back with your girl.”
Your girl . The words hit deeper than they should. Robin isn’t mine—not the way she should be, and not after everything I’ve put her through. But hearing Nik say it only makes me more determined.
“I will,” I tell her, and mean it with every fiber of my being.
I watch my guards support Nik as they make their way back the way we came. Guilt twists in me even after they’ve disappeared. All this time, I’ve carried resentment toward her for leaving. But standing here with her blood still warm on my hands, I realize how petty that grudge truly was.
She chose love over loyalty to an organization. She chose Brie over the Consortium.
And yet she also chose my life over her own safety.
Maybe she understands something about love that I’m only beginning to grasp.
“We move fast, weapons free,” Hadria announces. “They know we’re here now. No point in stealth.” The remaining team—Leon, Hadria, Sunny—try to form up around me again, but I sidestep them.
“No,” I say firmly. “It’s every man and woman for themselves from now on. No one tries to protect me. We focus on the mission.”
“You cannot stop me from protecting you,” Leon says placidly as he reloads his handgun. “Unless you wish to speak the words?” he adds with a raised eyebrow, speaking in our own tongue.
I know exactly what he means, of course. Leon made an unbreakable oath to me many years ago, and the only way it can be undone is for me to speak an ancient phrase absolving him of his duty.
“Except you,” I say with exasperation. I look to Hadria and Sunny. “You two, your focus should be on the mission. Not me.”
“Sweet,” Sunny says with a shrug.
“Fine,” Hadria agrees. “Now let’s move.”
We push deeper into the labyrinth. Gunfire echoes from multiple directions now, and I can hear shouts in Italian, English, Russian—our forces are making headway.
But the Gattos are mobilizing, too, which means we’re running out of time.
Every second we spend fighting our way through their defenses is another second Robin is in danger.
The next cluster of armed men guards what looks like a reinforced door—heavy steel with multiple locks, the kind of barrier that says important things are stored behind it. Six men this time, arranged in a defensive semicircle with automatic weapons and body armor I recognize as a competitor’s.
Sunny grins. “My kind of party,” she murmurs.
“I will go first,” Leon says decisively, and before anyone can contradict him, he’s moving. His first shot takes out one of the men immediately, forcing the rest to scatter for cover. But there’s nowhere to run in the confined space, and Leon doesn’t give them time to regroup.
The firefight is brutal and brief. Sunny backs up Leon with almost inhuman speed, but Hadria motions me back. “Let them work,” she says, almost casually.
When the shooting stops, six more Gattos lie dead. Leon moves to shoot out the lock of the container they were guarding, and pulls open the doors.
“Mother of God,” he whispers.
For a moment, I am disappointed.
And then horrified.
Robin isn’t here. But inside, huddled against the far wall, are women and children, their eyes wide with terror or dulled with despair. Some barely look old enough for high school. Others clutch babies to their chests.
The sight ignites something primal in my chest. These bastards.
These fucking animals .
“Sunny,” Hadria says, already moving into the container to survey the group. “Radio for Syndicate backup.”
Sunny nods grimly, and I mount the step into the container along with Hadria.
“How many?” I ask, the words sticking in my throat.
“Twenty or so,” she says, her voice clipped. Sunny, having called for backup, climbs in as well.
“We’re here to help you,” she says in English, and then repeats it in Spanish, Portuguese, French. I add the phrase in all the languages I know, just in case, just so I feel like I’ve helped in some small way.
Because knowing about the Gattos trafficking operation and seeing it for myself are two different things.
I pull Hadria aside for a moment. “You and Sunny need to stay here with them,” I tell her.
She glances at Sunny. “Santiago can handle herself,” she says after a pause. “We still haven’t found Robin.”
“You cannot leave these people here with only one person to protect them,” I point out.
“Then we’ll wait until backup gets here.”
“There’s no time. The Gattos know we’re here, and they will move Robin if they think we’re getting close.”
Hadria looks at me, trying to read my face. “You think you and your mountain-sized man can find her before then?”
“You got us this far. And now you need to protect these innocents. Leon and I will continue on.”
Hadria glances once more at the huddled masses against the back wall. “I’ll send a few people as backup your way once they arrive,” she says, turning back. She holds out a hand. “Good luck.”
I take her hand. “And to you.” I beckon to Leon. “Come on,” I tell him. “It’s just you and me now.”
I know at once when we find the room Robin is being kept in, because standing outside it are four guards—and the Gatto Boss.
“This is it,” Leon murmurs. “Gatto himself?—”
“Is mine,” I say coldly. “But I want him to know it’s me.”
“Then let me go first,” Leon says. When I give the nod, he charges forward.
My massive bodyguard moves with grace for such a large man, making sure to sledge the Gatto Boss with his giant fist before turning to deal with the others.
Gatto goes down, and I find a target of my own—a weasel-faced man with soulless eyes who stares at me too with a strange, wild expression on his face.
Too late, he raises his gun with a strangled laugh, but my shot finds him between the eyes before his arm is halfway up.