Chapter 22 Andrej
ANDREJ
Cold. My face is squashed against something icy, but I feel the sweat beading on my forehead. Dark too.
Pain in my chest.
I sit up, and the pain in my chest brings the recollections flooding back.
Cartier!
Nothing else matters.
I went to get a bottle of champagne from the fridge because she said yes. She was wearing my great-grandmother’s emerald ring. Everything felt off, but I was too elated to acknowledge it.
Mistake number fucking one.
If Cartier is hurt, I’ll spend the rest of my life hunting the fuckers down and making them wish they’d never been born. They might think they know pain, but they don’t have a fucking clue how much pain a crossed Ivanov can inflict.
I haul myself upright. I know where I am by the smell of mold and damp and the lingering stench of our enemies’ blood.
What I don’t understand is how I got here.
Blood on my sweater. If the bullet had hit any major organs, I wouldn’t be standing here now. Someone’s bad aim just cost them their life. There’s a swelling on the back of my skull, blood trickling down the back of my neck.
I’ll live.
It isn’t my life that concerns me right now.
I cross the cell to the metal bars of the door. It’s one of several built underneath the house by one of my ancestors, a man with so many enemies he had to keep some in the dungeons until he could get around to ending their lives in the manner they deserved.
The cells are situated in the tunnel, the secret escape route from the property.
The one that no one outside of family is aware of.
It’s locked.
So, someone used the tunnel to enter the house, dragged me down here, and then proceeded to lock me in. They should’ve killed me while they had the chance. They won’t get another go.
They took my gun.
But I can still feel the weapons tucked inside my socks. A pistol and a dagger.
It’s enough to work with.
The lock blows with the first bullet.
Adrenaline pumps through my veins as I make my way along the tunnel and back towards the house. Past the vault. The door is untouched. Not that I give a fuck about family jewels while my woman’s life is in danger. They can suck the fucking jewels up their squeaky fucking asses for all I care.
But if they touch Cartier…
Now I understand how my brother felt when he offered himself to the Amory family in exchange for Gianna.
They broke into his home, kidnapped his woman, and then hid like the fucking cowards they are.
So, he torched their warehouses, their territories, their haulage containers, and marched straight onto their land with his arms in the air.
Until then, I’d been under the misconception that love made a man weak.
That love provided a man’s enemy with a crack that they could manipulate into a gigantic fucking hole.
That love had no place amongst the Bratva.
But Leonid proved me wrong, and then Cartier wandered into my life and turned my entire world on its head.
It’s with this thought at the forefront of my mind that I climb the staircase that will lead me back inside the house.
The first thing I hear is gunfire.
Good.
It means that the war isn’t over.
I slip inside the piano room and wait with the door open a crack. I need to scope out what’s going on before I make a move. I won’t put Cartier in danger by acting on impulse, because if protocol has been followed, they will have contained the infiltration, and secured Cartier’s location.
Two men pass the room. Armed guards. Men that Leonid brought in from the Russian operation. I don’t question them. They’re not who I’m looking for.
If I can trust anyone to keep Cartier safe, it’s Ivana.
Whatever her reasons for wanting to leave Russia, she will always put the Ivanovs first.
No one else comes this way. The house is too fucking quiet, and it’s feeding the writhing snakes inside my gut. Nothing about this feels right. The house should never have been compromised in the first place, but now I know that the fuckers had inside help.
The tunnel.
The timing.
The shitshow that my security team is putting on for their benefit.
Just another reminder that there’s only one person I can trust when shit goes down.
My phone vibrates—another error on the part of whoever dumped me in the cells and left me to sleep through the main event. A message from Victoria. She finally found the evidence she was looking for.
I load my pistol and prepare to step outside when a shadow creeps past the doorway.
Yuri-fucking-Asimov.
I wait until he’s out of sight before peeking around the door. He seems to know exactly where he’s going, almost as if he has been here before. Or as if someone leaked a layout of the property before he arrived.
Either way, he isn’t going out the same way he came in. I’ll bury him in the snow and stick a fucking carrot on top so that the wolves know where to find him. But shooting him in the back isn’t the answer.
I linger in the doorway, blending into the shadows when he peers behind him to check that he isn’t being followed.
I watch him navigate his way around the bodies on the floor and slip inside the library.
Then I make my move.