Chapter 41
Gavriil
“Incoming vehicles! They’re less than ten minutes out!”
A high-pitched ringing fills my ears, swallowing the gaps between my men’s shouts as I head downstairs in my Kevlar vest. Two handguns sit in shoulder holsters, a smoke grenade in my jacket pocket, switchblades hidden where only I know to reach.
Physically, I’m equipped for war, but the reality of it all slams into me like a Mack truck. My head is still threatening to spin.
Dominik and Alina only left a few hours ago. Hopefully it was enough time that no scouts saw them. They all got their phones back. I could call to check on them, but I don’t. I told Dominik I wouldn’t interfere again.
I force myself into motion, shoving every emotion behind a wall and slamming it shut.
“Station men in the meeting room for an ambush and to protect our gear! Get moving!”
Adrenaline hums under my skin as I pause at the bottom of the steps, running through the plan my lieutenants and I set in place.
We don’t know enough about our enemies and their tactics to plan every step, but we have options and plan Bs at our disposal.
We just need to react quickly and communicate with each other.
I adjust the earpiece on my right ear that’s connected to the portable radio in my jacket pocket. If we can somehow organize ourselves among chaos, we might actually have a chance at winning this thing.
“Three trucks heading down the private road toward us. They’re commercial moving trucks,” one of my scouts reports.
“They’re either carrying a lot of weapons or a lot of people,” I say, watching the foyer clear out as everyone hunkers down in the connected rooms and in their doorways.
“Or both,” Matvei says through the radio. “We don’t see anything in the sky yet.”
We assumed they would send in a few spy drones but so far, they haven’t done any recon that we know of. Hopefully that means they’re overly confident.
Matvei is one of my snipers up on the roof. Aside from the traps we set around the perimeter, he and the other two men stationed up there are our first line of defense.
“They’re coming,” I reply before heading back upstairs where another group of my men are stationed.
We’re spread throughout every floor, and we’ll hit them in waves.
“Incoming! Incoming!” the snipers announce.
I reach the lounge and look out of the window just as the three trucks plow down the gate. As it crashes down, explosions rock the house, the chandelier above me shuddering violently.
“What the fuck,” I mutter under my breath as I rush to another window that faces another side of the property.
Holes have been blown through the fence surrounding the property, and I can see shadows streaking across the yard toward the house. Gunshots go off as the snipers pick some off, but there are too many targets for only three men.
A few step onto the small mines planted in the grass and are blown sky high, pieces of them raining down across my yard. Heads snap back and bodies crumble as the snipers continue setting to work, barely thinning out the crowd surging ahead.
“There’re too many!”
“The trucks aren’t slowing down!”
“What the fuck are they doing?”
“Get out of the way!”
The first moving truck slams through the front door, making the entire house shudder. Gunfire rings out from the foyer, and I’m out of the lounge in a second, rushing to the top of the staircase.
“Pakhan, you should stay out of the way!” one of my guards calls out to me.
I ignore him and head down to the halfway point of the staircase, my eyes falling upon utter chaos.
The moving truck is in the goddamn foyer, its front nearly touching the staircase. The glass of the front windshield has bullet holes in it, and I can already see that the driver sustained a headshot from one of my faster acting men.
“They’re jumping out the back of the truck!”
My chest tightens as I see more enemies spill out of the truck once the door is rolled up. I can’t even tell who is who. The Irish, the Armenians, and the other unknown group meld together into one lethal force.
My men fire from the doorways and the staircase, bullets raining down. But there are so fucking many of them, and they fire back with the same intensity, making my men crumble to the ground or fall over the banister of the stairs and hit the floor below.
I fire at the head of a man rushing up the staircase toward me. I swivel to the left, my hand steady as I aim and fire again.
One man drops. Then another.
I’ve just started firing my second gun when a bullet pierces the wall just above my head, making me duck. Shouts of pain and fury from both sides echo in my ears, and the gunfire is so loud that it makes my head pulse.
“The other trucks are unloading in the back! They’re storming the back of the house!” one of my men reports over the radio.
My blood runs cold as I hear more commotion throughout the house coming from the other side.
This entire house is a battlefield.
“We need men from the second floor to get down to the first floor. Men in the prison, stay where you are,” I order in Russian before slamming my foot against the chest of an enemy racing up the stairs toward me with a knife in his hand.
He flies backward and hits the ground at the foot of the stairs, the back of his head striking the hard floor with a sickening crack.
I hear footsteps behind me as four of my men join me on the stairs, firing downward as the swarm tries to fight their way upstairs.
They trip and fall over each other on the bottom part of the stairs, crawling over bodies to try to gain ground. One of them grabs my leg and pulls, making me lose my balance and fall onto my back. The edge of the stairs jabs my spine sharp enough to knock the breath out of me.
“Pakhan!”
I lift my gun and fire at the dark-haired man who has a death grip on my ankle. My gun clicks. Empty.
He grins and starts to crawl up the stairs toward me, his finger moving to the trigger of his handgun.
But I’m faster.
I rip my switchblade free and slash it across his throat.
He chokes and sputters, blood spurting out of the gash in his neck, covering my clothes.
I kick him off me into another man running up the stairs, sending them both rolling all the way down to the ground floor.
Simeon reaches me and grabs my hand, hauling me to my feet. “Are you okay, sir?”
I nod before looking down at the foyer. The sons of bitches have breached the rooms attached to the foyer. The fight at the back of the house hasn’t spilled to the front yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
“Upstairs! Go!” I shout at my men who are standing on the stairs above.
There are too many. We’ll die on these stairs if we don’t get moving.
We all turn and run up to the second floor. Just as we reach the top, Simeon lurches forward and hits the ground, taking a bullet in his spine.
A curse breaks from me as I kneel next to him, grabbing his arm to try to help him to his feet. If I can just get him out of the open.
“Come on,” I tell him.
“I can’t,” Simeon sputters out, blood flecking his lips. His arms tremble as he tries to lift himself off the floor, but his legs don’t move an inch. “I—”
Before he can finish his sentence, I hear a gunshot, and his blood sprays across my face, warm and shocking. I release him and stumble back.
Someone grabs me and drags me forward, guiding me down the hallway and into a room on the left.
Fuck.
“Deploy a smoke grenade! Blind the fucks,” I grit out, fury rising in my chest that I don’t want to quell.
“Deploying smoke!” Eduard shouts in Russian to warn our men to take cover before pulling the pin and tossing it down the hallway toward the top of the staircase. “Smoke has been deployed on the stairs, and you will get shot if you come up here.”
I reload my guns, breathing through the pain ringing through my back.
“We should fall back to the end of the hallway,” Eduard suggests.
I nod to him before stepping out into the hallway and making my way down it as I hear men stumbling up the stairs. As I pass by my bedroom, I pause and peer through the open door, my eyes lingering on the empty cage.
Alina.
Being away from her leaves a hollow in my chest that won’t close.
“Sir! They’re coming!”
I snap out of my thoughts and duck into the room across the hallway just in time as enemies rush through the smoke.
Bullets whistle down the hallway toward them, shouts and groans ringing out from the thick smoke, followed by thuds as bodies drop.
I lean out of the room and fire at any shadow that I can see through the smoke, my heart pounding quickly as more and more keep coming, breaking through the smoke and launching themselves at the closest doorways, tackling my men or firing at them.
One of them slams Valentin against the door, but he doesn’t get to do anything else before I bury a bullet in the back of his head.
Valentin shoves him away and punches another in the face, close combat breaking out up and down the hallway.
“Sir, stay inside the room! It’s not safe out there!” someone says.
I brush him off and launch myself at a red-haired enemy, taking us both down to the ground. My fist strikes his jaw multiple times, my adrenaline dulling the pain. Sheer fury drives me at this point.
Not survival. Not strategy. Just rage.
Just the anger that this is happening. That this separated me from the woman who broke past my defenses.
I’m going to take as many of these bastards as I can down with me.
“Arev Garakian has been spotted on the stairs. He’s lethal so keep your eyes open!” someone reports.
That sick fuck is in my goddamn house. No doubt he’s come to try and take me out himself.
I jam the blade of my knife into the red-haired man’s throat, watching him claw at it for a few seconds before the light fades from his eyes. I start to wrap my fingers around the hilt, but pain explodes through my head, making me topple over.
Blood seeps through my fingers from a cut on my scalp as I roll onto my back, looking up into the crazed eyes of the man I was just warned about.
“Gavriil Morozov,” he says with a thick Armenian accent. He rips my own knife out of the man’s throat and spins it around in his hand, a sick grin crossing his face that makes me feel nothing but dread. “I was hoping I’d be the one to kill you.”