Chapter Forty-One
In which the world is brutal light and sound. And hair-pulling.
Liria…
I'm being dragged down the hallway towards the master bedroom, screaming, and kicking at Bujar when the world explodes.
The light is blinding, an unbearable blue white flash that shorts out my vision.
At the same time, it feels like someone is boxing both my ears and my head rocks back and forth from the impact of a deafening bang loud enough to crack the windows.
I stagger drunkenly and the gunman next to me cries out, falling over.
I immediately trip over him, landing hard on the floor and crawling like a blind slug, my arms and legs not quite listening to me.
Another bright flash and a violent, percussive burst of sound.
I go deaf and blind at the same time.
The man I'm crawling over isn't moving, maybe he got shot. I didn't hear it over the ringing in my ears. Sweeping my hands across the floor, I try to find his gun. I think he dropped it when he fell.
My shoulder hits the wall on the other side of the hall as I crawl right into it and it burns, but I scrabble along a little further and make it into one of the bedrooms. I try to get up to shut the door, but my knees crumble, and I fall to the floor again.
The blue-white light is still ringing my corneas, and I can only see fuzzy bits of the room.
I think I'm heading in the direction of the bathroom. Maybe I can lock myself in there.
Gunfire. That, I can hear.
There's my Alexsey. I knew he would come.
I'm useless. Still crawling like a slug across the bedroom floor, trying to find a place to hide and keep out of the way.
The gunfire is an endless staccato pattern echoing relentlessly through my skull.
I can hear Bujar's horrible voice bellowing orders and then other voices, shouting in Russian.
One of them I sure is Alexsey and if I could just fucking see I could run to him.
My vision clears a bit and I move faster, heading for the bathroom door when a hand slams down on the top of my head and nearly rips my hair out.
"There you fucking are!" Bujar roars. He hauls me upright and I shriek, my hands gripping his wrist, trying to get his fingers out of my hair.
He puts his gun against my neck. The muzzle is hot from being fired and it burns.
"I've already shot two of your Russians.
Let's see how many more I can take out before we leave.
" Yanking me out of the room, he laughs as I stumble down the hall.
He's steadier than I am, but he probably has more experience with whatever just happened.
Another round of gunfire crackles and this time, I can hear well enough to recognize the meaty thud of bodies dropping to the floor.
Oh God, where's Danyl? They disarmed him, did they shoot him, is he still alive? And poor Matvey, bleeding and unconscious. How many people have to die for me? Bobby and Mikal are still lying by the couch, Mikal's eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.
We're halfway down the stairs, my hip keeps bashing against the iron railing and I choke back a sob, so fucking furious that I let him catch me.
"Morozov!" Bujar shouts, "Tell your men to stop shooting." I look back, two more men step in behind us. They still have their guns, unfortunately. I think those are the only ones left of Bujar's people. "I'm happy to shoot my sweet little captive into chunks of meat."
Squinting hard, I can see him, my beautiful husband. Alexsey is behind us, standing in the hallway near the master bedroom, his gun still smoking in his fist.
"If you hurt her, you can't imagine the suffering I'm going to put you through," Alexsey says. His voice is odd, cold and toneless, almost mechanical. I've never seen him like this before, his eyes are flat and narrowed, almost inhuman.
Bujar hauls me down a couple more steps and I stumble awkwardly, gritting my teeth. It feels like he's ripped out half my scalp. "All this hair," he says, smiling, his teeth like barbed wire. "I had fantasies about wrapping it around my cock while I skull fucked her."
I gag violently, slapping my hand to my mouth. We're down the steps now, I can see Roman and two of his men to the left, by my piano. He gives me a tight smile and a nod. I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean, but I can feel his strength.
"I wonder if she'll be as tight as she was when I fucked her that summer," Bujar shouts. "How old were you? Sixteen, so ripe."
Alexsey doesn't react. I shake my head as much as Bujar's sweaty fist in my hair will allow it, gaze locked on my husband's.
"It seems I won't get a chance to find out now," Bujar pretends to pout. "But we are walking out that front door, you will open it for us and we will get in the car. You will not shoot or I will fill her full of so many holes, there won't be enough left to put in the casket."
There's a slight movement behind Alexsey, it's Roan.
He puts his finger to his lips. Everyone is silent for a minute, everyone downstairs standing in puddles of cooling blood, and stepping over corpses.
The Morozov soldiers look up at Alexsey questioningly, and he says, "Open the door and let them out.
" Turning to Bujar he says, "You will stop one block away and release her.
I still have a hundred ways to find you before you get out of the country, if you don't."
My heart sinks into my knees. I don't think this is going to work. Why would Bujar release a handy hostage?
I'm going to be getting into a van with three men with guns and one of them is him. Mindlessly, I try to pull away from him, ignoring the burning in my scalp.
Giving my head a shake, he snarls, "Stop the theatrics, you little bitch.
Just keep walking." We're steps away from the front door.
I can see the sun shining across the entryway, lighting up the unconscious body of Danyl.
His arms and legs are splayed out awkwardly, I think I see the rise and fall of his chest. I look behind me, wanting to look at Alexsey one last time before I go, he's disappeared.
I'm trying to stifle the sob that's building, my eyes are swimming with tears because he's pulling me toward that van and I know I'll never see Alexsey again.
Bujar gestures at one of the men with his hand holding the gun. "You drive."
My world goes upside down again as something lands on Bujar and I'm thrown to the ground too, scraping my cheek bloody. Two gunshots ring out behind me.
"You hurt my wife, you motherfucker." It's Alexsey. He looks at me briefly, "Move away, love." He straddles Bujar, bashing his face to pieces with metronomic efficiency. First, with his right hand and then his prosthetic left and then right. Bujar's blood spreads across the brick sidewalk.
Roan limps over to me, taking me by the shoulders and pulling me away.
The other two men are face down on the sidewalk, bullet holes in both.
"Maybe you shouldn't look right now," he says.
His usually placid voice is shaken, but he gives me a smile.
"I wouldn't want it to affect your delicate sensibilities," he says.
"Since you pregnant ladies seem to vomit a great deal. "
I give him a half sob, half laugh for his effort.
The punches continue, wet-sounding, like tenderized meat. Bujar is calling for something, but with his ruined mouth, it's impossible to know. I think he's crying, though. The steady cadence of the blows continues and then, it's quiet.
Alexsey stands up. There is nothing left of Bujar. What used to be his head is an unrecognizable paste. There are fragments of bone and other things I don't want to categorize smeared over the sidewalk. Alexsey blinks slowly, and then he races for me.
"I'm sorry, Lyubimaya, my beloved, I'm sorry," he says, wrapping his arms around me and lifting me off the ground. "I should've been here. I should've been here sooner."
"You keep saying that," I sob, "but you're always here and you always save me." I bury my face in his neck.
"I love you," he says a ragged whisper. "I love you. I'm so sorry you were almost taken."
I can hear sirens getting closer, so not all of Alexsey's neighbors must be aware that he's Bratva and they should mind their own business.
My hands are patting Alexsey frantically, his shoulders and chest, his face. "Are you okay? Are you shot anywhere?"
"I'm fine, Lyubimaya," he smiles.
Roan, on the other hand. His face is a technicolor nightmare of reds and blues and purples; his lip is split. One of his eyes is swollen so badly that I'm not sure how he's seeing out of it.
"Oh, my god, Roan! What happened to you?
" I make fluttering motions around him without actually touching him because I don't know what else is damaged.
"Did one of these bastards get to you?" For some reason, his glance goes to Alexsey, whose eyes narrow.
A man who looks like shit shouldn't be so smug, but Roan smiles.
Even though that must really be hurting his cracked lip.
"I'll explain later, dear. Not to worry. "
Shakily turning in a circle, I try to figure it out. "What did you do?" I ask, "How did you get on top of them like that?"
"We jumped out the second story windows," Alexsey says. I look up at the open windows, they're more like three stories up, certainly higher up than normal ones.
"You jumped out of the windows," I say faintly. "What if you'd missed? What if you broke your neck or they saw you and shot you?"
Alexsey swings me up in his arms, carrying me back into the loft. "But they didn't. I love you."
"I love you," I rest my forehead against his. "So much. Do you think that's all the people who want to kill me? Do you think we're done?"
"Oh, we're fucking done," Alexsey growls.
As Roan passes by us, he points to his face and says, "She's going to hold this against you for years. No one holds a grudge like Liria."
"What does that mean?" I ask.