Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
KIRILL
Glass sprays across the restaurant in a glittering cascade. On pure instinct, I launch myself across the booth and take Dinara down to the floor, my body covering hers as bullets punch through the wood where her head was a second ago.
“Kirill!” She shoves at my shoulders, wriggling underneath me. “I can handle myself!”
“Like hell.” As if I’d take a chance with her life. I keep her pinned, scanning for the shooter. Three shots, semiautomatic, came from a vehicle outside. Carlos ducks behind the counter, and I can hear Rosa screaming from the kitchen.
“Seriously, you need to move off of me.” Dinara’s voice is steady, no fear, only irritation. “That was the opening shot. Let me up before this restaurant is surrounded.”
She’s right. The gunfire stopped too quickly. This wasn’t a drive-by; it was an announcement of what’s to come.
I pull back enough to take her face between my palms. “Listen to me. Get to the back and hide with Rosa and Carlos. Preferably somewhere with a lock.”
“No! I want to help you,” she argues, my blood pressure spiking. “I’m trained for this.”
“Absolutely not, Dinara. I won’t risk your life. I only have one gun on me and I’m going to need it. Promise me you’ll stay safe. Promise,” I growl.
My jaw tightens, eyes darting toward the window and back to her face. The hand against her cheek trembles once before I steady it.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.” Every instinct screams to keep her pinned here, protected under my body where bullets can’t reach her. But I know she’s right. I need to fight, and her best bet is to hide with Rosa and Carlos.
“Go.” I pull my gun from my waistband, already loaded with a round in the chamber, safety off.
She rolls out from under me, staying low as she sprints toward the kitchen. I position myself behind the booth, eyes on the shattered windows.
I have time to send a quick SOS to my brothers before five men in black tactical gear pour through the destroyed window, weapons raised. These aren’t street thugs here to rob the place; they’re professionals.
And they’re here for me.
I drop behind the booth as bullets chew through wood, sending splinters flying. I return fire, two quick shots catching the first one in the chest. He goes down hard.
The other four split up into flanking positions. Two circle wide, trying to pin me down with crossfire. A third moves toward the kitchen. The fourth drops back near the window, cutting off the exit.
Toward Dinara.
White-hot rage floods through me. I break cover, firing at the one heading for the back. The shot clips him in the shoulder and he spins, returning fire. He doesn’t go down, only staggers and adjusts his grip on his weapon, still advancing.
One of the men circling wide is closing in from the side. I pivot, fire, but my gun clicks empty.
Fuck.
I dive behind the bar as bullets tear through the space where I was standing. My shoulder hits the ground hard, pain shooting down my arm. I fumble for my spare magazine but there isn’t one.
The other flanking soldier is closing in from the opposite side. I’m trapped, unarmed, and fucked in the truest sense of the word.
The one who dropped back near the window makes his move, coming around the end of the bar.
He doesn’t see me until he’s almost on top of me.
I get a hand on his rifle, wrench it sideways, and the shots go into the floor.
We grapple before I drive his own weapon up under his chin.
The trigger pull is his, not mine. He drops and I have a gun again, but the magazine is almost spent and I have no idea how many rounds are left.
And then Dinara appears.
She has a long chef’s knife gripped in her right hand.
The man I clipped in the shoulder, still mobile, still armed, is advancing toward the kitchen entrance where she’s positioned.
He doesn’t see her until she’s on him. Her free hand clamps over his mouth as she drives the chef’s knife up under his ribs with brutal efficiency. His eyes go wide, then empty.
Holy shit.
She yanks the blade free and the man collapses. She’s already moving toward the next target. One of the flanking soldiers has his back to her, too focused on keeping me pinned behind the bar to notice.
She closes the distance. The chef’s knife goes into his thigh, hamstringing him. He screams and drops to one knee, and she’s on him, the edge finding his throat before he can turn his weapon around.
The last man standing, the other flanker who was circling wide, realizes his teammates are down.
He swings his rifle toward Dinara. My heart stops as the barrel tracks her chest. I raise the stolen rifle and pray there’s a round left in the magazine.
I pull the trigger. The recoil punches my shoulder and the mercenary’s head snaps back. He collapses into a heap.
Silence crashes down, broken only by the ringing in my ears and the sound of car alarms outside.
I am on my feet, weapon raised, scanning for more threats.
“That’s all of them. We’re clear.” Dinara’s breathing comes in sharp bursts, her face flushed with exertion. Blood streaks her face and clothes, but her hands are steady as she wipes the chef’s knife clean on a dead man’s jacket.
The fear I’ve been holding back since the first shot fired crashes over me in a wave. She’s alive. She’s standing there covered in someone else’s blood and she’s okay.
I close the distance in three strides and pull her into my arms, one hand tangling in her hair as I kiss her hard enough to bruise. She makes a surprised sound against my mouth but then she’s kissing me back, her blood-slicked hands gripping my shirt.
When I pull away, we’re both wired, electric, the aftermath of violence singing in our veins.
“That scared the shit out of me,” I say against her forehead.
“I told you I could handle myself.” But her voice is softer now, the bravado gone. Her hands are fisting in my shirt like she needs to hold on to something solid.
“You did more than handle yourself.” I pull back to look at her face. “You were fucking impressive. And I’m so pissed off that you risked your life for me, I don’t have the words. I’m going to smack your ass the moment we’re alone.”
She gives me a crooked grin. “Promise?”
Shouting from outside announces my brothers’ arrival. Matvey and Dem burst through the door, guns drawn, six of our men behind them.
They stop dead, taking in the carnage. Five bodies sprawled across Rosa’s once-pristine restaurant. Blood pooling on the tile. Me bleeding from the arm, Dinara covered in gore.
“Jesus Christ,” Dem breathes.
“Check the bodies,” I order, my voice rougher than usual. “I want to know everything.”
Matvey’s already kneeling beside the nearest corpse, going through their pockets, patting them down.
“No ID,” he reports, standing. “No phones or wallets. All their gear was professional, with serial numbers filed off the rifles. These are mercenaries. Hired guns.”
“The Ghost,” I say flatly.
Matvey nods, grim. “Has to be. Someone paid serious money for this kind of attack in broad daylight.”
Dem examines the bodies Dinara took down, his expression shifting from disbelief to grudging respect. “Your wife did this?”
“She saved my life.” I look at Dinara, who’s watching the exchange with careful eyes.
He meets my gaze. “We need to talk.”
I nod. Later. When we’re not standing in the middle of a massacre in Rosa’s restaurant.
Dinara slips away toward the kitchen to check on Rosa and Carlos, giving us space to work.
“This changes everything,” Matvey says quietly. “The Ghost just came after you directly. In broad daylight.”
“I know.” The weight of it settles over me like a shroud. “They’re escalating.”
We cover the bodies and call for a cleanup crew.
Dinara emerges from the kitchen with Rosa and Carlos. Rosa’s face is streaked with tears but she’s walking on her own. Carlos has his arm around her, but he looks pale and shaky as expected.
I turn to two of our men. “Take Rosa and Carlos home. Full security detail, round the clock. Get contractors here to board up the windows tonight. I want this place fixed within two days. Bulletproof glass in every window. Hidden panic buttons behind the counter and in the kitchen. And I want it to look exactly the way it did before.”
I cross to Rosa, taking her weathered hands in mine.
“I’m so sorry. This is my fault. But I promise, I’ll make it right. You’ll be safe. Your nephew will be safe. And this restaurant will be better than ever.”
She nods, unable to speak. I pull her into my arms, her small form trembling against me, guilt like a physical weight in my gut. This woman fed me when I was a kid, gave me a safe place away from home. And I brought violence to her doorstep.
“Take care of them,” I tell my men. “Treat them like family.”
As they escort Rosa and Carlos out, I turn back to Dinara. She’s standing perfectly still, watching my brothers examine the bodies, her face carefully blank.
But the adrenaline is starting to fade from her system, the shallow, jagged breathing that happens when the high of a fight wears off. The reality of the attack setting in. How close we were to death.
I take her hand, threading my fingers through hers. Blood and all.
“Let’s go home.”
The penthouse is quiet when we get back. Dinara heads straight for the shower without a word, and I let her go. She needs space to process what just happened, and honestly, so do I.
I pour myself a whiskey and stand at the windows, watching the city lights blur and sharpen as I replay the attack in my mind. The spray of glass. The bullets punching through the booth. Dinara appearing with two knives and a look in her eyes I’ll never forget.
She could have died because of me. Rosa and Carlos could have died because of me. Because apparently, the Ghost isn’t happy to stand around anymore. The Ghost wants me dead.
My hand tightens around the glass until my knuckles go white.
I keep seeing her face when she drove that knife up under the man’s ribs.
And all I could think, standing there in that blood-soaked restaurant, was that if she’d been a second slower, if one of those bullets had found her instead of the booth, I would have burned this city to ash.
My phone rings. My shoulders tense when my father’s name fills the screen. Amazing how quickly word spreads in a city of eight million.
“Privet,” I answer, too tired to bother with pretense.
“I heard about the attack,” Ruslan says, cutting right to the point.
“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
“I assumed you were, or I’d have gotten a very different phone call.” His voice is unaffected and businesslike. “What happened?”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose and give him the basic details, carefully leaving out Dinara’s presence. Although I have a feeling whoever squealed to my father wouldn’t have left out that detail. “And how exactly did you find out about this so fast? I haven’t even washed the blood off my shoes.”
“I have ears everywhere, Kirill. You know that. I’m more concerned about the company you were keeping. I’m told you were with a woman. The one I specifically told you to cut loose.”
“What I do on my own time isn’t your concern.”
“Everything you do is my concern. The Ghost is lying in wait and you’re wasting it on some waitress instead of the task at hand.” His voice hardens. “Do you have any idea how much effort I’ve put into salvaging the Morozov relationship after you embarrassed their daughter?”
I drain the rest of my whiskey, letting the burn settle in my chest before responding. “I don’t have the energy to get into this right now.”
A beat of silence. “Find the Ghost, Kirill. That’s all that matters now. And if you fail, the Morozov arrangement stands.”
He hangs up without saying goodbye.
I lower the phone, my father’s words settling like stones in my gut.
With all my father’s spies, he doesn’t know Dinara’s true identity, or the fact that I married her … yet. But he will find out soon enough, one way or another.
That’s a problem for after I beat the Ghost. If I succeed, I have leverage. I can reveal the marriage from a position of strength, present it as a fait accompli that benefits the family. Dinara’s skills and connections are worth more than any shipping route Morozov can offer.
If I fail…
I pour another whiskey and let the thought die there. Failure isn’t an option.