Chapter 26 #2
Nikolai glances at the circle of guns around him, eyes darting—calculating. He’s cornered, and he knows it. In a flash, he lunges for Bella, dragging her in front of him, his arm tight around her shoulders, his gun pressing against her temple.
She gasps, hands flying to his arm.
“Don’t!” I bark, every muscle going tight.
Now every weapon on the tarmac shifts a fraction. Irina’s men adjust their aim. Irina herself watches, gun still pointed in my direction, eyes bright.
“You want to know why?” Nikolai spits, breath hot against Bella’s hair. “Fine. Here. Have your answers.”
He starts backing up, dragging her with him, using her as a shield between us.
“I found out in Russia,” he says, eyes locked on mine.
“That last deal you went to close? The one you thought just…fell apart? It wasn’t bad luck.
My sources told me Irina was already working around you.
Plotting against you. She was going to burn you—burn all of us—to get what she wanted.
That’s all we ever were, you know. Pieces to be played.
I just wanted to cut my losses and run.”
His grip on Bella tightens. She winces, but he doesn’t stop.
“I ran into Kirov in a club one night,” Nikolai goes on. “Drunk, loud, full of himself. Idiot didn’t even realize what he was saying. Bragging about how he was carrying something that would make even Irina kneel if she stepped out of line. Said he had all her dirt in his pocket.”
Irina’s expression flickers, just a fraction.
“That’s when I knew I had to get my hands on whatever he had,” he says.
Bella struggles in his grip. I take a step forward; he digs the barrel into her skin.
“Don’t,” he snaps. “You shoot, you hit her first.”
“Let her go,” I say, keeping my voice low, my aim steady.
His eyes flick to Irina, then back to me. “I couldn’t get close to Kirov alone. Not without spooking him. But I knew someone who could.”
“Elena,” Bella whispers.
“Smart girl,” Nikolai sneers. “She worked that route. Knew the crews, the security. I paid her. I pulled strings. I told her exactly what to look for. At the club, she put on a dress and a smile, sat in his lap, poured him drinks, and he spilled everything. How he carried the drive, where he kept it on him, which flights he was taking.”
His voice turns harder. “Once I knew that, all I needed was to get you on the same plane.”
My stomach drops.
“I couldn’t touch your bookings directly,” he says, “but I could pass the right requests along. A little pressure here, a favor there. Your charter disappears. Suddenly there’s a commercial option.
You think it’s bad weather. And imagine my luck when I found out who you had on the plane with you.
The ghost who you have been chasing for the last four years, drawing like a mad man.
She distracted you long enough for me to kill Kirov. ”
He shifts his grip on Bella and she chokes against his arm. My finger tightens on the trigger. I can’t get a clean shot without risking her.
Bella’s eyes go wide. Tears spill over, but she doesn’t look away from me.
“Kirov was never walking off that plane,” Nikolai says. “He orders a drink, Elena sneaks the poison on board, but I deliver it. Switch his drinks when he’s being handsy with her in the toilet.” He chuckles almost to himself. “What a fool.”
“But something went wrong,” Bella says hoarsely.
“Yeah,” Nikolai snarls. “Your daughter. She wouldn’t let go of that bunny. Not for anything. You let her carry my payday in her arms like a chew toy.”
He exhales hard, fury breaking through the calm. “I couldn’t grab it in that mess without drawing eyes. And then Irina’s people are sniffing around. Your people. Everyone wants to know who killed their precious Kirov, where the drive went.”
“So you waited,” I say, feeling sick. “All this time. At my side.”
“What better place?” he says. “I watch you tear yourself up wondering who set you up, and I get a front row seat. When Lily finally gets sick, I think, good. IVs. Doctors. Sedatives. She’ll sleep. You’re distracted. I can get the bunny, cut it open, take what’s mine, and vanish.”
“So you helped Elena take Bella from the hospital,” I say.
“The kid I could deal with, but this bitch was a loose end. She could remember things later, and besides, I wanted to hurt her to get back at you. Watch you go insane.” He sneers at me.
And it suddenly feels like I’ve woken up from a long dream.
How did I never see this? How could I never see his true face?
“Elena gets you out of the bathroom, I’m waiting outside. Wheelchair, back exit, car ready. We find the bunny, we find the drive, we disappear before anyone’s the wiser.”
He shifts, rage boiling over. “Except your girl got lucky. She had a knife. She cut me. Screwed everything up. I had to pull back.”
Bella winces as his arm tightens again, his gun digging in.
“I did it because I knew what that drive was worth,” Nikolai finishes, voice low and vicious. “More than Irina would ever pay. More than you’d ever give me. It was my way out. My life. My future. And you”—he nods at me, eyes burning—“were too blind to see any of it.”
I take another half-step closer, gun steady, heart pounding. “Let her go, Nikolai. It’s over.”
“Is it?” he taunts. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re the one who’s about to lose everything.”
He starts edging back, dragging Bella with him, using her body to cover his. One wrong move and he puts a bullet in her head before any of us can blink.
“Put the gun down,” I say. “Walk away, and maybe—”
“Maybe what?” he snaps. “You’ll forgive me? Take me back? You’re pathetic, Alek. You always were.”
He takes another step.
The shot cracks the air before I can fire.
Nikolai stiffens. For a heartbeat he just stands there, eyes wide, then blood blooms across his chest. The gun slips from his fingers. His arm falls from around Bella and she stumbles free, gasping, dropping to her knees.
Nikolai hits the ground hard.
I spin.
Irina stands a few meters away, arm still extended, gun smoking, face calm like she just swatted a fly.
“You were always an emotional fool,” she says, her voice flat. “You were going to let him get away.”
I stare at her, mind blank, adrenaline still screaming through my veins.
He was my brother in all but blood. He betrayed me. He held a gun to the woman I love. He was about to disappear with everything.
Bella stumbles across the tarmac, eyes huge, breathing ragged, and throws herself against me. I catch her automatically, gun finally lowering as her arms go around my neck. She’s shaking so hard it jostles my ribs.
“I’m okay,” I murmur, not sure if I’m saying it for her or for myself. I wrap one arm around her waist and pull her in tight. For one sick, bright second, I saw her brains on the concrete. That image is going to sit in my skull for a long time.
I don’t let her go.
Around us, Irina’s men still have their guns raised, but no one fires. Nikolai’s body is a dark shape on the ground, a spreading stain around him.
Irina’s voice cuts through the wind. “Where is the drive?”
I keep my arm around Bella and look at her. She looks back, eyes wet, cheeks streaked. I could lie. Pretend I don’t know. Push this another day.
I’m done.
“It should be in the car we drove over,” I say. “Nikolai didn’t have any time to hide it.”
Irina flicks two fingers at her men. They peel off toward the SUV we arrived in, open the back door, and start searching.
I glance down at Bella. “Where is Lily?” My voice comes out urgent.
“With Selene,” she says, breath still shaky. “I left her inside, in the terminal. Selene’s keeping an eye on her.”
Thirty seconds later, one of Irina’s men holds something up.
The bunny.
Lily’s stupid, loved, worn little bunny.
Bella sucks in a breath, fingers tightening in my shirt.
They bring it to Irina. She takes it delicately, like it’s something fragile. For a heartbeat she just looks at it, thumb brushing one ragged ear.
Then she tears it open.
Stuffing rips, white fluff blowing across the tarmac like snow. Her fingers dig into the cotton until they close around something hard and small. She pulls it out.
A thin, dark drive, no markings.
My throat goes dry. That little piece of plastic and metal has the capability to ruin anyone, including me. With all that knowledge, my mother will be more powerful than ever.
Irina holds it up between two fingers, turning it in the light. “At last,” she says softly. She holds it up so I can see it. “All this,” she says quietly, “for something that fits in my hand.”
Bella tenses in my arms, eyes locked on the drive. “Are you really going to let her take that?” she whispers, voice raw. “After everything she’s done? After what’s on it?”
Irina hears her. Of course she does. She turns that cool gaze on me.
“Are you?” she echoes, a mocking edge in her tone. “Going to let me walk away with this, Aleksander?”
My fingers tighten on Bella’s shoulder. I know what that drive means. I know what she can do with it, how untouchable it will make her.
But I also know what it means if I try to take it from her here, now, with Bella pressed against me and my daughter hiding in a building a hundred meters away.
There’s no version of this where I keep them both.
I meet Irina’s eyes. “Take it,” I say.
Bella jerks, looking up at me like I’ve betrayed something huge. I squeeze her shoulder, steady and firm.
“It’s a small price,” I murmur, just for her. “She gets her power back. We get to walk away.”
For once in my life, I am choosing my family over the war. That has to count for something.
Irina turns as if it’s already decided, already over. She starts to walk back toward her car, her men closing around her, guns lowering but not put away. The jet is still humming behind us, but no one’s thinking about boarding now.
“Mother,” I call.
She doesn’t stop.
“Mother,” I say again, louder this time.
She reaches the open car door. One foot inside. For a second, I think she’s going to ignore me completely.
Then she pauses.
She looks back over her shoulder, eyes taking us in. Me, with my arm wrapped around Bella. Bella clinging to me, still shaking. The dark shape of Nikolai’s body on the ground.
For the first time all night, there’s something almost human in her face. Not softness, not quite. Something tired. Something like regret that never got the chance to grow.
“For what it’s worth,” she says quietly, “I never planned for it to be you standing on the wrong side of my gun.”
She holds my gaze a beat longer.
“You should have left when you had the chance, Aleksander,” she adds. “But then…you never did know when to walk away.”
Her gaze flicks to Bella in my arms, then back to me. There’s something almost like regret there, buried deep.
“Keep them alive, if you can,” she adds. “I’d rather not waste a good son twice.”
Then she turns away fully and walks on, climbing into the car without looking back.
The engines start. The convoy pulls out, taillights shrinking into the dark, taking the drive—and whatever comes next—with them.
I stand there on the tarmac, Bella pressed against me, her heartbeat thudding against my chest.