Chapter 31
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
LEO
The drive is tense. Both of us are silent, grappling with the news we’ve just received and the weight of its consequences.
I keep my eyes on the road and my hands on the wheel, racing through the outskirts of Dubrovnik.
It’s supposed to be beautiful here, but this coastal city is ruined for me.
Forever tainted with the ghosts of betrayal.
I glance over at my oldest friend, his Sig poised and ready for action, held taut between his knees.
Like me, his eyes are constantly scanning the mirrors and windows for possible tails.
Just as we approach the house, his ravaged voice breaks the silence.
“What’s really going on with you and Alyona? ”
My jaw clenches, and I grind my back molars together. “I think you know. I think you’ve always known.”
“Fuck,” he bites out under his breath, and the click of the safety catches on his gun before a 9mm is pointed at my head. “Did you hurt her?”
My eyes flick to his, but other than that I don’t move a muscle. “Yes.”
“Khuy.” He calls me a dick and presses the cold metal against my temple. “When? Tell me. What did you do to her?”
If I tell him the truth, maybe he’ll pull the trigger and put me out of my misery. Because the look on Aly’s face when I admitted to playing puppet master with her life, that look was nearly my undoing. “Just do it,” I goad Yulian. “Pull the trigger, because you won’t like what I have to say.”
“Are you fucking serious?” With a thud, his gun crashes down on the dashboard in front of him. “A bullet to your head isn’t good enough. You deserve my hands around your neck!”
I’m not going to argue that; when Yulian finds out the truth – how long it’s been going on for, everything I’ve done to her – he’ll want to extract every ounce of my misery.
“Let’s get her to safety, and then you can pummel my face in or kill me.” My ragged breaths fill up the space between us. “Whatever you see as a fitting punishment.”
“I can’t fucking believe you. I knew something happened between you. Aly always told me to mind my own business. I figured it was a childhood crush that went sour, because I stupidly believed my best friend would never get involved with my sister behind my back. And now this …”
The looks of hate he flicks my way makes my chest burn with shame.
The truth is so much worse. And there is no hiding it any longer.
But there is another truth he also needs to know.
“I love her. Not like a sister. I fucking love her with every fiber of my being.” His nostrils flare as he slowly shakes his head.
“And even though I’ve hurt her, I’ll make it right, I’ll do anything to make it—” My voice falls off as we pull up to the safe house. Or what’s left of it.
“Fucking hell,” Yulian growls. Before the car has even stopped, he jumps out, sprinting towards the charred remains of the structure.
I throw the car in park and dive out as well, only to be stopped by Daniil blocking my path. “They’re not here.” I hear the panic in his voice before I fully understand the words.
“What do you mean? Where are they?”
“The house, it’s empty. Someone blasted their way in.” My heart pounds so loudly I can hear it in my ears, each beat feeling like a hammer against my ribs. I need to see the destruction for myself.
I enter through the huge gaping hole in the back of the house. Explosives were used. If Kira or Aly were in the kitchen at the time of the bomb, fuck me, they’d be …
A beastly sound rips from my chest just as Yulian ascends the stairs from the basement. His face is grim, ashen, he looks like I feel. Ruined. He just shakes his head, indicating they didn’t make it to the basement’s safe room.
“No.” I refuse to believe it. “We need to search this whole house. Every square inch.”
Andrei and Daniil join us in the blown-out kitchen. Andrei is talking on his phone in rapid-fire Russian, Daniil is staring at his phone.
“They were taken,” Daniil assures us. “There’s footage.” He holds up his phone, but I can’t bear to look at it. I don’t know if I should feel relieved that they are still alive or terrified.
Honestly, I feel both.
Yulian punches a wall, and plaster rains down on him. “We were fucking played. Maxim Belov knew we were coming for Horvat. He waited until we were distracted, and like fucking idiots, we played right into his hands.”
Daniil shakes his head. “We had no way of knowing. We did what we had to.”
Yulian’s head snaps up, and they share an intense look. “Back home? Our girls—”
“They’re safe, I promise,” my brother assures him. They are talking about their wives and Andrei’s daughter, safely holed up at the Kozlov estate. “An army of our best men are protecting the home. Drones. Explosives around the perimeter. It’s impenetrable.”
Andrei hangs up the phone and holds up his hand to get our attention. “That was Dima. He thinks he can get us a location on where Belov’s men took them, but with no registered tail number and no official paperwork submitted to the aviation authorities, it’s going to take some time.”
“Thank fuck,” I exhale, even though I don’t feel very thankful, because a man like Maxim Belov has the ways and means to cover his tracks so efficiently that even the best of hackers might not be able to find him.
But I don’t allow my mind to slip down that rabbit hole, because if I do, there’s no coming back.
I holster my gun, and spit on the floor beside me. “We need a plane, stat. As soon as Dima has the answers, we need to be on our way.”
Daniil mutters something about reinforcements, but there’s no time to gather more men, barely time to gather more weapons.
No matter what, we’ll never overpower Belov’s militia.
All we can offer him is us—our loyalty, a cut of our business, the brotherhood in the palm of his hands.
Because whatever Maxim Belov wants, he gets, and for some reason, he wants Alyona.
And that’s the one person I’ll never let him have.
At whatever cost.
At whatever sacrifice.