Chapter 27
My heart poundsin my ears as I blink away the confusion. The roof dips overhead, the lining torn under the gouged metal from where we flipped and slid into the tree. My locked seat belt digs into my hip and breast where I’m left hanging on my side, just a few inches from the door and window now jammed against the ground.
Stars wink in the inky sky over the passenger side windows. Moonlight spills into the cab, giving us just enough light to see.
Already out of his seatbelt, Roddick braces his feet on the driver’s side door and yanks on the handle of the passenger side door over him, but it won’t budge. “Fuck! Come on,” he mutters, crouched over in the tight space as he slams his shoulder repeatedly against the door while yanking the handle.
After three attempts, he flips around and delivers a series of solid kicks, popping the window free from the frame. Just as he’s about to hoist himself free, he jabs a finger in my direction. “Stay down inside and stay low.”
Hide and do nothing? I don’t fucking think so.
Before I can tell him exactly what I think of his demand, he’s climbing out the opening.
Fingers trembling, I jab at the button of my seat belt. Just as stubborn as the window Roddick kicked out, it finally releases after the third try.
Konstantin probably had the belts made that way so I would stay put. The thought slices through me. Laughter bubbles up only to turn into a tortured sob at the thought of what could be happening out there to him right now.
Falling the few inches between my body and window, I carefully brace my palms flat on the glass. A series of spider cracks cut across the glass in jagged lines, but the window stays smooth and intact, protecting me from the ground. I push up just enough to reach for the back of the driver’s seat and use it to pull myself the rest of the way up.
My body protests every flex of muscle. The ache between my thighs is a relentless reminder of the way Konstantin took me on the balcony. Destroyed me.
Our second time.
My second time.
Now I have to wonder if it will be our last.
The sounds of skidding cars and revving engines tear through the otherwise quiet night. Cold dread pools in my belly.
I know I heard shots before. Distant, but definitely gunshots.
“Where is he? Where’s Konstantin?”
Roddick ignores me as he gets to his feet on top of the car and draws his gun.
Pushing to my feet, I slide my knife free and follow, my heel digging into the leather of the seat, giving me a stable foothold.
He’s not answering me. Why the hell isn’t he answering me?
Grabbing the edge of the door, I pull up and grab ahold of a fistful of his pants. “Answer me, dammit. Where the hell is he?”
“Nikoletta, down!” Konstantin’s rough, deep command comes from somewhere in the darkness, just as Roddick yells at me.
Headlights streak across our wrecked SUV and land on Konstantin, where he’s marching toward the oncoming car, his gun drawn.
A humming starts in my skull, the scene unfolding slowing down in a series of frames. My lungs ache from the panic that gripped my throat during the crash, of not knowing where Konstantin is, if he’s safe, and from the exertion of maneuvering through the mangled SUV.
But now, that pain is bone-deep terror as I watch the car take aim at my Kostya. Heavy dread settles in my stomach. The scream building up inside me is impossible to push past my tight throat.
I thought I had seen him at his most brutal, the night he bought me and Moretti approached him in the street as we were leaving, but no. The promise of retribution on his face then is nothing compared to the pure wrath etched into his every feature right now.
But the formidable, enraged beast before me is mortal, exposed, and fighting nearly impossible odds.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
I whirl on the sound as a bullet glances off the car a mere few inches from my arm.
My eyes meet Konstantin’s for a fraction of a second, but I swear everything he feels is right there. Horror seeing how close their bullet came to hitting me, and that look giving way to blinding fury.
A savage roar so raw it sounds as if it’s clawing its way out of him, rips from Konstantin’s chest. Jaw clenched, hooded, dark eyes never waver from their target. The raw menace in their depths promises vengeance as he squeezes the trigger over and over, still advancing on the car heading straight for him.
He doesn’t flinch; he doesn’t even blink as he fires relentlessly.
“Do something!” I scream at Roddick as I watch every one of Konstantin’s bullets glance off the car. My heart pounds viciously in my chest, vibrating through my veins until my temples pulse with it.
I just got him back. It can’t end like this.
The vicious need for payback burns through me, leaving my skin ice-cold. I clutch my knife. A crimson river of our enemy’s blood seeping into the dirt is the only outcome I can see in my mind. If they take him from me, they better hope they kill me too, because if they don’t, I’ll carve every single one of them up slowly, one agonizing piece at a time, keeping them alive and wailing until I reach bone.
Tires squeal and grass rips from the ground as the car veers at the last second.
A whoosh of air explodes from my lungs.
Metal screeches and crunches as they slam into a massive gravestone, ripping it from its foundation. The front end of the car shoots over the mangled rubble, grinding to a stop when the stone catches on the undercarriage.
Blood burning, I secure my other foot and climb the rest of the way out, with zero help from Roddick.
The asshole.
“You don’t listen for shit.” Roddick bites out the words and shoves me behind him. “Get down!”
“Fuck you.” Avoiding the mangled metal, I slide off the back, my heels sinking into the damp grass. Dashing from behind the car, I skid to a stop at the sight of Konstantin.
Captivated by the embodiment of living vengeance he makes.
He never slows. There’s no doubt. No fear.
He’s a warrior avenging the attack a hundredfold.
He fires two more shots, then tosses his gun even as he’s sliding another from his back. He doesn’t even take the time to grip it with his right hand and instead shoots with his left.
The guy in the passenger seat scrambles for something. When he brings his arms up, Konstantin fires, his bullet piercing the man’s hand with stunning accuracy, the gun he grabbed falling to the ground outside the car.
God, look at him…
He’s a living, breathing angel of death. Absolutely magnificent with his wild silver-streaked hair tumbling about the sharp angles and harsh lines of his furious face as he tears up the distance with impossibly long strides.
Grigori and Roddick are already moving in on the opposite side of the car, but they’re a blur because all I can see—all I want to see—is Konstantin.
He rears back, arm bent, and slams his whole upper arm into the cracked window, sending shards raining over the man who pulled the gun on him. Curling his fingers into the man’s dirty blond hair, he drags him through the wreckage of the window, just plucking him out like he’s nothing more than a grocery bag he forgot on the front seat.
“Well, aren’t you one stupid motherfucker?” he growls at the man before dragging him to the asphalt of the narrow lane. Shoving his face to the ground, he slams his head once, stunning him, before pinning his head with his foot.
The man is six and a half feet tall… it’s a big-ass foot.
My chest swells with a demented sort of pride watching him deliver justice. And jealousy, because I want to be the one to make them scream in pain. They need to pay in the most agonizing way imaginable for threatening me and mine.
Bending down, his face settles into a sinister promise as he digs the barrel of his gun into the man’s temple. “You see her?” he asks, jerking his head in my direction.
The man stays silent.
Konstantin takes his time, adding pressure with his foot until the man’s one open eye bulges with agony and his jaw pops.
He howls in pain under Konstantin’s dress shoe, but it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.
“I’ll ask you one more time. Do. You. See. Her?”
Sweat breaks out on the man’s forehead, but he jerks his head ever so slightly.
“You know who she is?”
He nods yes again as my heart beats in time with the waves of agony on the man’s face. A sort of alignment between predator and prey. He rained bullets on my Kostya. I flex my fingers on the handle of my knife. He’s going to pay for it.
Konstantin clucks his tongue, draws his gun back, and waits for the man to look at him from his one exposed eye. “You know what else she is?”
I’m his.
I’ll never let the words slip from my lips. Not even after seeing him like this. Looming over the fucker who shot at us, the very embodiment of retribution. I can’t give him that power and still belong to myself. But finally seeing this side he’s always hidden from me, I know it’s true. I’ve always been his.
The man finally shakes his head, his dull gray eyes landing on Konstantin’s face before darting away.
“Mine.” Konstantin smiles then, but it’s a bone-chilling smile, the kind you’d see in nightmares. “And I protect what’s mine. You…” he says, adding more pressure on the man’s jaw until he’s groaning in misery. His eyes roll back in his head before coming to focus on Konstantin once again. “Are going to beg me to die long before your heart stops beating.”
He’s a one-man walking army and as magnificent as he is in battle… he’s standing between the life thrust upon me and the one I’m taking for myself.
Enough blood has spilled in my name. By men guarding me, keeping me pristine, perfect, and untouched. Now it will spill by my hand. “Beg me to die, Konstantin.”
His ruthless gaze snaps to mine and his jaw clenches, biting back his reply.
Raising my knife before me, I turn it over in the moonlight, satisfaction burning through me at the wary look in the man’s eye. “He came after me. I’ll be the one paying him back for it. For all of it.”