CHAPTER 24
ANDREI P.O.V.
The heavy glass doors of the skyscraper clicked shut behind us, sealing off that fucking slaughterhouse for good. I dragged Arthur Hemlock by the back of his expensive collar and shoved him hard. The billionaire hit the drift of gray slush face-first, crying out as the ice cut into his skin.
"Stay down, you pathetic worm," I spat.
I paused, looking down at my ruined jacket.
Out of pure reflex, I adjusted the single gold cufflink still attached to my left wrist. You don't let a bastard like Hemlock see you bleed, and you sure as fuck don't let him see you look sloppy.
I pulled in a massive breath of the sharp, biting winter air.
The ozone and wet wool stung my lungs, burning the metallic stench of the purge right out of my throat.
I looked at Ruby. She was soot-stained, her knuckles completely bruised, but she was standing tall in the moonlight.
She looked like a creature forged in fire, and now she was mine.
"Breathe it in, Ruby," I told her. "The city looks different when you've conquered it."
I reached out, my large hand cupping the back of her neck.
I drew her flush against my side, needing her to feel the heat radiating off my body.
I rubbed my thumb over the pulse point at her throat, feeling the frantic, steady rhythm of her heart kicking against my skin.
I looked out at the sprawling yellow lights of the city reflecting in the frozen street.
I could already see my name written in the shadows of every block.
I didn't want to go back to my penthouse alone.
I wanted her in my bed, under my skin, forever.
"You're mine now. In the sun and the dark," I murmured. "Don't look back at that building. I’m going to buy you the world for what you did tonight."
A low, predatory rumble vibrated straight up through the concrete.
Headlights suddenly cut through the falling snow. Four pairs of blinding white eyes charged right at us out of the 4:00 AM dark. The aggressive downshift of high-performance engines shattered the dead quiet of the street, the heavy thud of a bass line vibrating from the lead vehicle.
Ruby’s fingers dug instantly into the sleeve of my jacket. Her knuckles went bone white. "Something’s wrong," she said.
"Get behind me. Now!" I grabbed her waist and shoved her back.
She stared at the charging lights, her breath pluming in the air. "Wait... those aren't police sirens."
They weren't. Four black, armored SUVs screeched into the plaza.
The tires bit aggressively into the frozen asphalt as they executed a synchronized drift, forming a solid wall of steel that pinned us against the impenetrable glass of the skyscraper entrance.
They didn't open the doors. They just idled there.
The hot breath of engine exhaust blew into the freezing air, mingling with the hiss of their hydraulic brakes.
I shifted my weight to my toes. I checked the grip on my stolen Glock. My palm was slick with sweat but I tightened my hold until the plastic frame actually creaked in my hand.
"They're armored. We can't shoot through that," I muttered.
Ruby stepped back, checking the stolen blade she kept at her hip. "They aren't firing. Why aren't they firing?"
"Keep your eyes on the driver's side." A cold knot formed in my gut. Random cops don't execute a perfect pincer movement. This was military precision. This was a tactical encirclement.
I shoved Ruby violently behind me, making my massive frame a human shield.
I kept my barrel steady on the tinted glass of the lead vehicle.
Hemlock groaned and started to crawl away into the slush.
I stepped down hard on his hand, crushing his fingers into the ice to keep him exactly where he was.
I kept my eyes locked on the vehicles. Where the fuck was Yuri?
Yuri was supposed to be the one meeting us. Yuri was my right hand.
"If they move, you run for the garage," I ordered her.
"But—"
"Don't speak. Just stay behind me. Who the fuck is this?"
A muffled radio dispatch cracked from inside the lead SUV. The clicking sound of cooling metal ticked in the dead air. Then, all the doors flew open in perfect unison.
Twenty boots hit the snow at the exact same time. Men in heavy tactical gear stepped out, raising suppressed rifles to their shoulders. The red glow of laser sights danced across my chest. My eyes locked onto the patch on the lead man’s shoulder. A snarling bear over a crossed dagger.
My own crest. My own fucking blood.
"Lower your weapon, Andrei." The voice cut through the cold.
I stared at the patch. The betrayal hit me like a crowbar to the ribs.
I spent a decade building this empire, weeding out the rats, paying these men in gold and blood, burying the fuckers who stepped out of line, and they roll up on me the second I step out of a goddamn meat grinder.
Boris. It had to be my uncle. The bastard sat in his plush office, sipping his imported vodka, while I was bleeding in that locked-down skyscraper, and he used the distraction to buy out my own guard.
The sheer audacity of it pissed me off so bad my vision swam.
"Those are my men. My fucking men!" I yelled. "Traitorous dogs."
Dmitri Volkov stepped into the light of the high beams. My uncle Boris’s right-hand enforcer.
He didn't look like an enemy; he looked bored, like he was out here taking out the trash.
He ignored Hemlock entirely and looked right at me with a smirk that made me want to rip his throat out with my bare teeth.
The smell of his cheap cigarette smoke drifted over to me. He tapped the side of his rifle.
The whole line readied their weapons. The sharp click of safeties disengaging echoed in the plaza.
"Boris sends his regards," Dmitri said casually. "He said you were always too soft for this city."
"Dmitri, you bastard. I’ll peel the skin from your bones." Soft? I just slaughtered half the billionaires in this state. I’m a goddamn king.
Dmitri just shrugged. "The girl dies too. No witnesses."
A roar ripped out of my chest. It wasn't human.
It was the sound of a rabid animal realizing it was in a trap.
I didn't give a fuck about the twenty rifles pointed at my chest. I didn't care about tactical advantage.
I kicked up a spray of snow as I pushed off my back foot, lunging straight at Dmitri with my finger tightening on the trigger.
I was going to take his fucking eyes before I went down.
"SUKA! BORIS!" I screamed, my lungs burning from the cold air. "I'll see you in hell! Ruby, RUN!"
The plaza erupted. It was a rapid staccato rhythm of suppressed gunfire, a deafening thwip-thwip-thwip that turned the snow into a strobe light of jagged muzzle flashes.
A bullet grazed the stone pillar right next to my head, showering me in granite dust and fragments.
The air instantly smelled like sulfur and hot lead.
"Open fire!" someone yelled.
"Don't let him reach the line!"
"Finish it!"
The first bullet caught me high in the right chest. It didn't pierce like a needle.
It hit like a sledgehammer swung by a giant.
The kinetic force spun me halfway around.
The air blasted out of my lungs in a wet gasp and my vision flashed blinding white.
My fingers reflexively flew open. My gun clattered uselessly onto the frozen ground.
"Ugh..." I choked out. I heard a bone snap. The entry wound burned with sudden, localized heat, and the back of my throat tasted heavily of copper.
"Andrei!" Ruby shrieked.
"He's hit! Keep firing!"
The second round slammed into my center mass, inches below the first. This one dropped me entirely.
My legs turned to absolute water and the world tilted violently on its axis.
I hit the concrete hard—first my knees, then my hip, then my shoulder, a wet slap against the slush.
I tried to reach for my chest, but my arm weighed a thousand pounds. I couldn't move it.
"No... not like this..." I rasped.
"Finish the girl!"
"Stay down, Pakhan," Dmitri called out.
I collapsed flat on my back. As I went down, I saw Ruby.
She wasn't running for the garage like I told her.
She was screaming, a raw, furious sound that ripped through the gunfire and rivaled my own rage.
I tried to reach out. I needed to grab her ankle, pull her down, get her out of the line of fire.
My fingers dragged across the concrete and only managed to brush the hem of her tactical pants.
I coughed, and a spray of dark blood splattered the pristine white snow right in front of my face.
"ANDREI!" she screamed.
"Get down, Ruby..." I mumbled, but I couldn't even hear myself over the ringing in my ears.
"I've got him!" a goon yelled.
I lay on my back, staring up at the dark sky.
The falling snow looked like tiny rocks dropping on me.
I felt the thick, metallic heat of my own blood pooling beneath my jacket, melting the ice against my spine.
The boots were getting closer. A steady drumbeat of executioners.
My chest hitched. I tried to suck in air, but it just made a wet gurgling sound in my throat.
"Check his pulse," Dmitri ordered.
"One in the head to be sure."
"Where’s the girl?"
The dark sky suddenly vanished. Ruby threw herself over me, dropping her entire body weight onto my chest. It was crushing, but it grounded me.
She became a literal meat shield. Her hands were everywhere, pressing frantically into the bullet holes, her face inches from mine.
Her eyes were wide, wet, and terrifyingly focused.
She wiped a thick smudge of blood off my lip with her shaking thumb.
"Don't you dare," she gasped, her hot tears hitting my freezing face. "Look at me, Andrei! Look at me! I'm not letting them take you."
I felt the intense pressure of her palms digging into my open wounds.
It was white-hot, screaming agony, but it meant my brain was still firing.
I watched her hazel eyes. The panic vanished.
Something cold and lethal clicked into place.
She wasn't the unimpressed cafe worker anymore.
She was forged in the purge, and I'd built this monster.
I tried to squeeze her hand to tell her to leave me, but my fingers only gave a pathetic twitch against her wrist.
"Stay with me," she demanded. Her hands were slick and sticky with my blood. "You’re okay, you hear me? You’re okay. I’ll kill them all."
The edges of the buildings started turning gray.
Shadows crept into the corners of my vision.
I laid there useless while her hand snaked out and grabbed the Glock I’d dropped.
She didn't hesitate. She didn't shake. She leveled the barrel right at the advancing line of Bratva thugs and pulled the damn trigger.
The recoil jarred her entire body, but she kept the weapon up, her jaw set tight.
"GET BACK!" she screamed, the muzzle flashing right next to my ear. Shell casings bounced off the concrete and hit my cheek. "I'll kill every last one of you! Stay awake, Andrei! Please!"
I had to tell her. The ghost bunker. She had to get us off the grid.
I opened my mouth to give her the access code, but a thick, dark surge of blood just spilled over my lips and down my chin.
I was drowning on dry land. I reached up and tapped a frantic, broken rhythm on her arm, trying to force the numbers out.
"What? What are you trying to say?" she yelled over the gunfire. "I can't hear you! Just keep breathing."
Ruby ducked as a bullet shattered the glass door behind us.
She leaned down, pressing her forehead hard against mine.
For a split second, the gunfire, Dmitri, the snow—it all vanished.
There was just the sharp smell of vanilla and gunpowder in her hair, and the frantic, desperate grip of her hands holding me to the earth.
Somewhere in the background, a car engine roared to life.
"I've got you," she swore, her voice breaking. "You aren't leaving me. Fight, damn you. Fight!"
The tunnel of my vision narrowed down to a tiny pinprick.
All I could see was her face. The roar in my ears flattened into a low, heavy hum.
A numbing warmth started at my toes and crawled up my legs, replacing the biting cold of the snow.
My eyes rolled back slightly. The muscles in my neck went entirely slack.
"Andrei? ANDREI!" she screamed, slapping my face. "Stay with me! Don't you dare close your eyes!"
My head lolled to the side. The last thing I felt was the bruising pressure of her hands on my chest. A single snowflake landed on my open eye. I didn't blink. I couldn't. I just lay there and stared at the gray sky as my body completely shut down.