CHAPTER 18
ANDREI P.O.V.
I set her down on the polished marble on the far side of the laser grid.
My side aches like a fucking bitch where a bullet grazed me earlier, but I ignore it.
For three seconds, we just stand there in the oppressive silence of the penthouse hallway.
The air smells like ozone from the security lasers and the recycled chill of the building’s HVAC system.
My eyes lock onto hers. She didn't flinch once while I swung her over certain death. Not a single goddamn peep.
I reach out to straighten the lapel of my ruined suit jacket, an automatic habit just to ground myself. I offer her a grim nod. We made it through the impossible.
The brief reprieve is a mistake. My internal guard drops.
Just for a fraction of a second, I let myself admire the pure, feral fire burning in her hazel eyes instead of sweeping the goddamn floor beneath our feet.
I reach out, brushing a stray hair from her sweaty forehead.
My thumb lingers on her skin just long enough to feel her pulse hammering against my touch.
She is becoming a drug I can't stop dosing myself with.
"Don't move yet. Let your heart slow down," I tell her, my voice dropping an octave.
She breathes in hard, her chest rising against the torn white silk of her slip.
"You’re faster than you look, pchelka." I nod toward the heavy mahogany doors twenty feet away. "The office is right there. We're almost done."
Ruby shifts her weight just slightly to find her footing on the slick marble.
Her left heel catches on something. A microscopic silver wire stretched exactly one inch above the floor.
There is a distinct, mechanical click.
It echoes like a goddamn gunshot in the silent hall. The sound of a steel trap snapping shut on our throats.
Ruby freezes mid-step. Her foot is still snagged on the wire. She looks down, her eyes going wide and totally horrified.
"Wait—" I snap.
"Ruby, don't move a fucking muscle."
She stares at the wire. "Did you hear that?"
The ceiling lights instantly cut out. A second later, they switch to a deep, pulsing crimson. A silent alarm. The worst fucking kind. A siren means the guards are panicked. A silent strobe means they are already moving in a highly coordinated strike. It’s an execution order.
I curse myself. I let my guard down for one second to look at a girl, and now we're both going to die for it. If she takes a bullet because I was looking at her instead of the floor, I’ll burn this whole goddamn city to the ground.
I don't wait to see where the threat comes from. I grab the back of her neck. My grip is hard, bruising her skin, a purely physical manifestation of the sudden panic spiking my blood. I shove her hard toward the recessed alcove of Arthur Hemlock’s office doors.
"Blyad! Move! Now!"
I draw my Glock in a blur of motion, swinging around to check the sightline behind us. The rhythmic red pulse of the emergency lights paints the hallway in blood. My gun feels cold and heavy in my hand.
"Stay behind me and stay low," I bark, backing her into the alcove. "If you see a shadow, you cut it. Understand?"
The heavy brass doors of the private elevator at the far end of the hall chime. They slide open.
Four tactical guards step out in perfect formation.
Full black riot gear. Suppressed rifles raised and tucked tight into their shoulders.
The blinding white glare of their tactical flashlights cuts through the red gloom, blinding me for a split second.
The smell of floor wax and expensive cologne in the hallway is instantly replaced by the metallic scent of sweat and gun oil.
I count them instantly. Four. Professional spacing. Likely ex-Spetsnaz or high-tier Blackwater mercs. They didn't come to play the purge games. They came to wipe the board clean. We are caught in a perfectly straight kill-zone with zero cover except for the shallow door frames.
I kick a decorative marble pedestal over. It shatters on the floor, leaving just enough of a base to create a miserable shield for Ruby’s legs.
"Get down! Get your head down!" I roar at her. I see the green glow of their optics. "They have thermal. Don't stop moving!"
One of the mercs unclips a cylinder from his vest and chucks it down the hall.
"Close your eyes! The flash—"
Gunfire erupts before the word leaves my mouth. The sound is absolutely deafening in the confined space. Crack-crack-crack.
I lean out, firing rapid-fire suppressed shots at chest level just to keep their fucking heads down.
My bullets chew through the expensive silk wallpaper and shatter a row of glass display cases lining the walls.
The heat of my spent casings ejects straight into my knuckles, burning the skin, but I ignore it. I'm running out of ammo.
A bullet grazes the wall an inch from Ruby’s ear. It explodes the plaster, showering her dark hair with white dust. She flinches hard, pressing herself flat against the marble.
"Stay small!" I yell, snapping off two more shots. The slide locks back. Empty. "Cover your ears, Ruby! Suka! They’re flanking!"
I scan the walls frantically. Ten feet away, I spot a seam behind a Renaissance tapestry. A seamless steel door. The panic room.
I don't think. I grab Ruby around the waist, literally lifting her off the ground, and sprint toward the tapestry. She's dead weight against my chest, her hands grabbing my shirt. I draw my backup blade with my free hand, ready to gut anyone who rounds the corner.
"Hold onto me!" I yell, my heavy boots skidding wildly on a puddle of blood leaking from a guard I clipped. I catch my balance right as the cylinder detonates.
"Almost there, don't you dare quit now!"
A high-pitched whine cuts through the air.
"Close your eyes! Flashbang!"
The hallway flashes a blinding, violent white. My vision swims with black spots. I hit the wall hard, finding the edge of the tapestry by instinct alone. I rip it down.
There is no handle. Just a massive, rusted steel wheel inset into the metal frame. Blyad.
I drop Ruby and grab the wheel with both hands, my back completely exposed to the incoming fire. I pull. My muscles bulge, the seams of my suit jacket tearing open at the shoulders as I fight the rusted mechanism. It doesn't move. I am a stationary target.
Ruby doesn't cower. She stands right over me, gripping her combat knife with white knuckles. Her breathing is ragged and terrified, but she plants her feet, ready to take a bullet to buy me three seconds.
"Open the fucking door, Andrei!" she screams over the ringing in our ears.
Sparks shower us as bullets strike the steel frame right next to my hands.
"Turn it! Turn it now!" she yells, raising her knife at the empty hallway. "I've got your back. Just open it!"
I pray to a God I don't give a shit about that the lubrication on these gears hasn't failed. I plant my boots and throw my entire body weight into the iron.
The wheel gives with a violent, agonizing thud. Metal screeches against metal. I yank the heavy door open just wide enough to fit a body. I don't usher her in politely. I grab her by the shoulder and physically hurl her into the pitch-black darkness of the room.
"Get in! Get in!"
I dive in right after her. My shoulder slams into the thick door frame on the way down, completely knocking the wind out of me.
"Down on the floor!" I cough out. "Watch the gap!"
A hail of bullets follows us inside, thudding heavily into the thick Kevlar interior padding of the door as it swings shut behind me.
I scramble up instantly. Blood drips into my eye from a scrape on my forehead.
I grab the interior wheel and pull with every ounce of strength I have left.
The heavy door seals shut with a loud, pressurized hiss.
I grab the manual deadbolts. Three massive steel bars.
I slam them into the floor and ceiling. Clack-clack-clack.
The transition is brutal. We go from a hot, deafening warzone to freezing, absolute silence.
The air smells like stale oxygen and old grease.
I lean my forehead against the freezing steel of the door, my chest heaving, listening to the muffled, pathetic shouts of the guards outside.
The vibration of their fists hitting the outside metal hums through my skin.
"We’re locked in. They can't get through this," I say. The realization sets in. We are buried alive in a steel box. "Quiet. Just breathe."
I look up at the sealed frame. "Arthur... you paranoid bastard, thank you."
A dim, flickering emergency light hums to life above us. It casts a sickly, pale glow over the space. It’s tiny. Barely ten by ten feet. A bank of security monitors flickers on, showing the hallway we just barely escaped from.
I turn around slowly. The immediate threat of death is gone, but the adrenaline isn't. It sours. It turns into a dark, simmering rage that I don't know how to channel. I look at her.
Ruby is huddled on the cold metal floor.
She looks so goddamn small. So breakable.
The thought that she almost broke under my watch makes me want to tear the world apart piece by piece.
She is picking a piece of drywall out of her hair, her hands shaking so violently that her grip fails.
She drops her knife. It clatters loudly against the steel floor grate.
"Look at me, Ruby."
She doesn't look up. Her teeth are chattering.
"Are you whole? Answer me." I point a bloody finger at the screens. "Look at the screens. They’re regrouping."
I stalk toward her. My tactical discipline is gone.
I am purely predatory now. The power dynamic shifts violently in the tiny room.
I'm not protecting her anymore. I am furious at the vulnerability she represents.
I peel off my ruined, torn suit jacket and toss it into the corner.
My shoulder holsters are strapped tightly over my damp white shirt.
I loom over her, my shadow swallowing her up until the stale air in the room feels impossibly thin.
I kick her dropped knife across the floor, clearing the space between us.
"On your knees. Now."
She flinches, staring at my boots.
"Don't make me tell you twice, pchelka." The smell of my own aggression is hot and sharp in the cramped room. "You’re shaking. Why are you shaking?"
Ruby looks up. Defiance warring with total shock in her hazel eyes. She opens her mouth to protest, to fight me, to act tough. I don't give a fuck. I need to know she's unhurt. I need to see every inch of her. If they marked her, I'll carve them open.
I reach down and grab a fistful of her dark, hacked hair. I don't pull hard enough to hurt, just enough to force her head back so she has to look at the absolute madness in my eyes. I shove her downward until her bare knees hit the cold metal grate.
Her fingers dig into the floor to steady herself.
"I said on your knees."
I crowd her, trapping her entirely between my body and the reinforced door.
"I need to check you for wounds. Do not fight me." I let go of her hair and grip her shoulders. "You belong to me in this room. Remember that."
My hands move with frantic, rough energy.
I pat down her shoulders. My large, calloused palms slide down her ribs, over her waist, checking for the wet, sticky heat of blood.
The touch is clinical but charged with a terrifying, absolute possessiveness.
She's shivering violently. Or maybe it's me.
I can't tell where my adrenaline ends and hers begins anymore.
"Be still."
My thumb brushes the underside of her breast as I check her ribs for shrapnel. I let my hand linger there for a second too long, feeling her heart trying to break out of her chest.
"If you're hiding a wound, I'll find it anyway," I mutter, my heavy breathing loud in the silent room. "Did you feel a sting? Anything?"
She doesn't answer. She just stares at my bruised, bloody knuckles.
I'm not satisfied. The torn white slip she’s wearing is coated in plaster dust and grime, obscuring my view. I can't see her skin properly.
"It’s ruined anyway," I say flatly.
I grab the neckline of the silk. In one violent, fluid motion, I pull my hands apart and rip the fabric straight down the center.
The sharp rip of the silk sounds like a whip cracking. The cool air hits her bare skin. She gasps, her skin paling under the harsh fluorescent light.
My pupils dilate instantly. I take in the frantic rise and fall of her exposed chest.
"Look at me. Stay still," I order her. I ignore her dignity entirely. "I need to see you. All of you."
Nothing. Not a scratch. She's perfect. She's mine and she's completely whole.
I shove the remaining torn rags roughly off her shoulders, leaving her kneeling and totally exposed before me. I step back just an inch, my eyes raking over her sharp collarbones, the curve of her stomach, searching for a single drop of red.
I reach out. My dark, tattooed hand contrasts sharply against the pale skin of her neck as I tilt her chin up, forcing her to meet my obsessive gaze. The tension in the room is a physical weight crushing us both. A single tear tracks through the white plaster dust on her cheek.
I wipe it away with a surprisingly gentle thumb.
"You’re clean," I state.
I stare down at her. "Don't cry. You're alive because I said you would be. They didn't touch you. Only I touch you."
I drop my hand and look up at the security feeds. Four armed men are planting explosives on the other side of the door. We have maybe ten minutes before they blow this vault wide open.