24. Vasiliy #2
“Morozov,” the Pakhan voices sternly. I look over, seeing everything left unsaid in his tense expression.
Those steady eyes hold a thousand words in a single, voiceless request. He doesn’t trust me—not as far as he can throw me.
Still, he must see the hard truth lingering underneath my skin, because he holds contact like he’s come to terms with his last option.
“I won’t leave her side,” I vow.
His gaze lingers for a moment before he reluctantly turns to scope out an exit.
“How bad is this, Vas?”
My attention pulls back down at the soft question.
We’re on the second floor of an isolated residential house, and the fact that the guards up here have already been dispatched suggests that this is, in fact, pretty bad.
Siderov allowed this place to be infiltrated in broad daylight.
If the intruders are clever enough to manage that, I’m certain they’ve got every exit on lock. I don’t want to tell her that.
“We’ve lived through worse,” I respond instead, wrapping an arm around her ribs and edging us a step forward.
I can’t see her face anymore, but it doesn’t prevent her thoughts from breaching my mind. That’s a low bar.
I know, I think back.
A soft rustling leaves the dark room behind us, causing Octavia’s nails to claw into my shoulder in alarm. We freeze.
I hold a single finger over my lips.
She nods as I silently clear the chamber and flick off the safety. The resounding click echoes down the hall now that everything has fallen silent once more. Sasha Siderov isn’t Pakhan for nothing. He’ll manage to clear an exit.
Sure enough, gunfire bursts out downstairs in telltale warning shots.
At the sound of the violent confrontation, a flurry of movement bursts from the dark entrance of the bedroom beside us.
The moment the hostile lunges into the hall, I send off two level shots, each hitting the newcomer’s head and heart, respectively.
I’m not shooting to maim today.
While it might be useful to keep one alive for questioning, I’m not opening Octavia up to unnecessary risks while we get the hell out of this place.
“Oh my God,” Octavia mutters behind me as I dive to the body to pocket his weapons. These are shit. A handgun that looks older than me and cheap switchblades for close combat. I’ve never missed my personal armory quite so much in my life.
“Still okay?”
“Yep,” she responds in a steady voice that makes my pride soar higher.
“Good girl.” I spin around, then press our best handgun into her uninjured palm. Her fingers move immediately, gripping onto the grooves of the weapon like a lifeline. Instead of that faraway stare, her eyes blaze back with the same determination I saw her exhibit in the cage.
“Safety off?” she asks, voice rising an octave. Her breath is a hot pant against my cheek.
“Do you even know what that means?”
“Not really.” Her brows rise. “Does it matter?”
I huff, shifting my thumb to disengage the safety. Fair enough. The resounding click fills the air.
“You know, when I asked you to train me, I had imagined a much slower curriculum,” she whispers.
I can’t stop myself from leaning down and brushing my lips to the tip of her nose.
“I’ll get right on that.” Her breath stutters at the chaste kiss in a way that makes me want to lean an inch or two lower and steal her next.
Unfortunately, more shots sound off somewhere else in the house, snapping us back into shitty reality.
“No matter what, stay behind me. When I move, you move. If you see an easy shot, take it, and flex your stomach for the kickback, got it?”
“Copy,” she says, saluting me with her loaded weapon like she’s holding something from Toys R Us.
Christ Almighty.
But I’ll take her sarcasm over that terrified, thousand-mile stare any day. It’s like she’s flipped a switch in her head, converting fear to steely resolve. I would give anything to stop and study her response, but when the pops start ringing through the air once more, I lock down my focus.
The gunfire seems to be coming from the main staircase, where the Siderovs ran to clear an exit, but if I can get her out in a less obvious way, I’m going to take it.
Did they really take out all of our guards while we were in the office?
I screw on the silencer I found on the last body.
My analytical training kicks in, every exit filtering into risks and probabilities.
The window I used this morning would work best if the hostiles are stationed only throughout the house, but there’s no way to know whether they have snipers on the exterior.
We can’t take the chance of becoming such an easy target.
That leaves two options: The front staircase or the back one.
More shots crack through the air, forcing me to choose. Hoping the Siderovs draw the intruders to the front, I nod my head left. Octavia lowers her chin in one sharp, definitive motion before falling in line behind me.
A shout radiates through the air behind us, summoning more shots.