Chapter 37 Luca
LUCA
I know the time because I checked it when we pulled off the road and killed the headlights, and Pavel gave the signal. Forty minutes from the estate to this river complex, every one of them longer than the last, and now we’re moving and time stops mattering.
Fourteen men across two entry points. Pavel takes the east side. I take the west.
The side door is reinforced, but not well. Two of my men hit it together, and it gives on the first attempt. Inside, a corridor, low light, the smell of river damp and old machinery. Two of Renat’s men at the far end turning toward the sound.
They don’t get further than turning.
We move through the ground floor fast and tight.
Room by room, door by door. My men know what they’re doing.
They’ve done this before, most of them, in buildings worse than this one, and they move with the economy of people who understand that speed and precision together are the only combination that matters.
I’m not watching them work. I’m moving toward the center of the building where the light is strongest.
A man comes out of a side room directly into my path. He’s reaching for something at his belt. I don’t give him the chance to find it. He goes down, and I step over him and keep moving.
Pavel’s voice in my earpiece. “East side clear. Two men down. Moving to the central corridor.”
“Copy. I’m at the main junction.”
Two doors ahead. Light under both. I take the one on the right, and Pavel takes the left, and inside is a storage room with crates and two more of Renat’s men who make the mistake of going for their weapons.
Pavel’s voice again. “Left side clear.”
“Right side clear. Moving to the rear.”
The rear of the building is where the holding rooms are. I know this from the layout Pavel pulled from his contact, three rooms along the back wall, reinforced doors, the kind of setup that tells you exactly what a building gets used for.
Two men are in the corridor outside the doors. They see me coming, and they make a calculation, and the calculation is wrong, and then there’s just the corridor and the three doors, and I’m trying all of them.
First door. Storage.
Second door. Empty.
Third door. I put my shoulder into it, and the lock gives, and I’m inside.
The room is larger than the others. Bare bulb overhead.
Crates along one wall. And in the far corner, Anna is on the floor with both twins pressed behind her, her body angled between them and the room, her bound hands raised, her chin up, her eyes finding me the instant the door opens with an expression I’ve never seen on her face before.
Not relief. Something past relief. Something that looks like a person who told themselves a thing was true and has just been proven right.
Viktor is against the wall. Svetlana beside him, her hand at his side, her face bruised. Both of them are alive. Viktor’s color is wrong, and he’s not fully conscious, but he’s breathing.
Mila sees me and makes a sound that I will hear for the rest of my life.
I cross the room and drop to my knees, and she hits me hard enough to rock me back on my heels. I catch her. Alexei comes from the other side, both arms around my neck, his face pressed against my jaw, and I hold them both against my chest and look over their heads at Anna.
She’s looking back at me. Wrists still bound. A bruise forming along her left cheekbone. Her mouth pressed into a line that’s holding more than I can name.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
“No.”
“The bruise.”
“I’m fine.”
I hold her eyes for one second. Then I look at Pavel appearing in the doorway behind me. “Get Dasha. Now. Viktor needs her immediately.”
Pavel is already on his phone with the medic, stepping back into the corridor.
I cut Anna’s zip tie with the knife from my belt. She flexes her wrists without looking at them. Her eyes go straight to her father.
My men come in and take positions. Two of them move to Viktor carefully, hands under his arms, supporting his weight without being asked. Svetlana stands and lets them work, her hand going briefly to her mouth before she pulls it back down.
“Can he be moved?” Anna asks.
“He has to be.”
She nods. Takes both twins by the hand and stands. Mila won’t let go of my jacket. I let her hold it, and we move toward the door and through the corridor and past everything in it and out into the night air.
Dasha meets us at the vehicles. She takes one look at Viktor and starts directing my men with sharp, quiet instructions. I watch them load him in and turn to find Anna standing at the vehicle door with the twins pressed against her sides.
She’s looking at me.
I held this building with fourteen men and worked through every room and put my shoulder into a locked door and crossed a room to get to her, and she’s standing here looking at me like she’s trying to figure out how to carry something she’s been holding wrong for a very long time.
Renat is still in the building.
I look at Pavel. He’s already reading my face.
“Northeast corner,” he says. “I’ll take three men.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Luca—”
“I’ll do it.”
I look at Anna once more. She heard all of it. She knows exactly where I’m going. She doesn’t say don’t. She doesn’t say anything. Just holds my gaze for a moment and then turns and puts the twins in the vehicle.
I go back inside.
When I come out four minutes later, the building is quiet, and Pavel is at the vehicles, and I get into the front car without stopping.
“Move,” I tell the driver.
The convoy pulls out onto the dark road. In the vehicle behind me, Dasha is working on Viktor. In the vehicle behind that, Maxim is with Anna and the twins.
I sit in the front and look at the road ahead and think about Anna on the floor of that room with her hands raised and her body between my children and whatever was coming.
She told them I was coming. She believed it before she had any reason to.
My phone buzzes. Maxim.
Alexei wants to know if you’re in the car.
I text back: Tell him yes.
Three seconds.
He says okay. Mila is asleep already. Anna hasn’t let go of them.
I put the phone down, watch the road, and say nothing the rest of the way.