Chapter 35
EVGENY
I can’t answer. I’m stuck in a different place, a different time, but with another fire. I feel the searing heat, hear the inferno’s roar, and feel it rake my lungs until I can’t breathe, and my clothes catch and char my skin until all I know is pain.
My mother’s screams ring in my ears, growing fainter, lost in the crackling flames and black, oily smoke. I can’t get to her. I can’t save her. Her screams finally fall silent, and I know she’s dead.
Dead.
“Evgeny!”
Dmitri’s shout pulls me from the deepest, darkest parts of my memory. His hands are tight on my shoulders, his gaze dragging me back to the present, to the flames and the rain, to my reality.
“Eva,” I gasp.
“Go. Find her. The fire department is on its way. I’ll see if I can find anyone else.”
He shoves me away, the push I need to get control of myself, to write a different ending. To save the woman I love this time.
“Keep yourself fucking safe!” Dmitri calls back as we split, each running in a different direction, our guns out.
I jog around the side of the house, hoping there’s a way to get in through the back to find Eva. Why the fuck isn’t the alarm blaring? It’s state-of-the-art, and the fire department should have been here ages ago. They should have beaten us to the house.
It’s dark, and the storm and rain combine with the setting sun to create shadows that are difficult to see through. Water drips into my eyes, which is why I almost don’t see the man dressed in black slumped against the wall.
Fuck.
I crouch and press two fingers to my man’s neck, and his eyes flutter open. He’s wearing a bulletproof vest, but I can see a red stain blooming just below it.
“What happened?” I demand, gripping his shoulder, not sure I’ll get an answer.
His chest rises in fits and starts, his breath rattling in his throat. “Vasya,” he finally murmurs on a breath. “Came… from nowhere. Stabbed me. I…”
I grip his shoulder, catch his fading gaze. “It’s okay. Rest now, brother.”
I’ve seen enough death to know my enforcer’s life is slipping fast. As I watch, his eyes flutter closed again, a death rattle in his chest as he breathes his last.
“Good journey,” I wish him, forcing down my emotions, then climb to my feet.
That answers where the guards are. Why hadn’t I told them to watch for Vasya?
He had snuck in, taken them all out because they knew and trusted him.
Even after seeing the evidence of his betrayal, I still believed my old friend, my brother, could never do anything like this.
I’d resisted, buried my head in the sand, and now I was paying the price.
Vasya knows everything about me, from where and when I work to the inner workings of the Bratva and even all the details about the security system, which he must have disabled.
And there he is, Vasya, standing in the yard overlooking the sea cliff.
From his vantage point, he can see every angle, so taking him by surprise is impossible.
My only chance is to come up on him quickly and fire my gun, hopefully before he fires his.
I want to wound him, not kill him. I want answers first.
“Vasya!”
My roar echoes across the space between us as I close the distance, my gun at the ready.
He grins, bright and maddened, under rain-soaked hair plastered to his forehead and cheeks. My finger tightens on the trigger, aiming for his knee, when he yanks someone in front of him.
My steps stop. My breath stops. My world stops.
Eva.
Vasya holds her by the hair, his belt wrapped around her wrists.
“Eva!” I bellow, my vision going red and tunneling until she is all I see. They’re too close to the cliff, close enough that he could send her tumbling over the edge with one push.
“Vasya, let her go! She has nothing to do with this.” I have to shout to be heard over the roar of the fire and the rain.
“She has everything to do with this!” He shouts back, and I hear the fury in his voice, seeing it in his eyes as I edge closer.
“You’ve taken everything from me, Evgeny, you and your father and your entire fucking family.
Did you know that? Did you know your father ordered my father’s death? And my mother’s? And mine? Did you?”
“I didn’t know until today, Vasya, I swear it,” I call back, some small part of me still desperate to hold on to the brother I once had.
Thought I had.
“I swear I didn’t know,” I repeat. “I can’t change the past, Vasya, but help me change the future. You and me—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Vasya snaps, the smile gone in an instant, breathtaking in how fast it flips from amused to rage-filled.
“I’m done with your lies. I’m done with being your bitch.
This Bratva should have been mine, and I’m going to take it.
I’m going to take everything you love and make you watch as I destroy it, just like your father did to me. ”
A flicker at the edge of my vision resolves into Dmitri, stalking silently from the other side of the house, shrouded in dark smoke rolling off the flames.
“Vasya.” I step toward him, keeping his attention on me. “We can talk this out. Tell me what you want.”
“I want you out of my way. I want you to stop ordering me around like I’m your bitch errand boy.” Vasya’s gestures are jerky and wild. He waves his gun to punctuate his words, and Eva flinches at each movement. “I want what’s mine, Evgeny.”
“It was never yours. Your father would have betrayed my father, the Bratva…”
“All is fair in love and war,” he taunts. “You know what Maslov told me before he died? The vor agreed your father was ruining the Bratva, and he didn’t deserve to be pakhan. That whore he married made him soft.”
“Leave my mother out of this,” I snarl, then desperately rein in the explosion of my anger. As I move closer to him and Eva, Vasya edges closer and closer to the cliff’s edge. “Whatever Maslov told you isn’t true. Your father betrayed us. But you don’t have to. You and I, we are like brothers.”
“We were never brothers.” Vasya’s voice rises with every word until it’s a shout.
Vasya is too far gone, there’s no way I can reach him. But I have to reach Eva. Vasya held my entire future in his hands right now.
“Eva, look at me. Keep your eyes on me. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I’m close enough now to see how wide and terrified her eyes are. They lock on mine, trusting I’ll keep my promise and protect her.
Vasya laughs. “Bullshit. You really believe the myths about you, don’t you? But the truth is, you hide behind everyone else while they do your dirty work. You can’t save shit.”
A glint in his eyes makes every muscle in my body tense. My heart hammers, blood pounding through my ears, dimming the roar of the fire.
Before I can yell a warning or make a move, Vasya shifts and shoves Eva toward the cliff’s edge.
My shout echoes her scream as she loses her balance, grabbing for anything that will hold her up.
Her feet slip on the stones of the path leading down the cliff.
With her weight already off balance, Eva tips.
I have the heartrending knowledge that I’m not going to make it to her in time, the certain knowledge that she’s going to tumble down the path, if not the cliff, and I’ll lose all of them.
But in a flash, she’s then falling into Dmitri, who has grabbed her around the shoulders and tugged her into him as I barrel into Vasya with an incoherent bellow.
Our guns fly as we go down in a tangle of arms and legs, just like when we were boys, wrestling in the grass. Except there is no laughter or good-natured name-calling. Whoever wins this fight will live, and the loser will die.
I manage to roll up onto my knees, straddling Vasya, and land several punches to his face as he thrashes below me. His fist connects with my side, right at my kidney, and I spring up to protect the spot from another blow, giving him the chance to dance away.
Vasya and I spent years training together, doing boxing, MMA, and even wrestling at our elite boarding school. I know his moves, yes, but he also knows mine.
“You think you can get one over on me, you fucking bastard?” He’s grinning, his blue eyes bright with the fire behind us and manic rage, the rain washing away the blood pouring from his nose and split lip.
“My father gave you everything!” I shout to be heard over the rain and the roar of the fire as Vasya and I circle wearily.
Over his shoulder, I can see Dmitri standing protectively in front of Eva, the belt gone from her wrists.
“He gave you a home. The best schools. A place in the Bratva!”
“Your father took everything from me!” Vasya roars and barrels into me again like a linebacker. I see the move and try to dodge it at the last second, but he hits me from the side, knocking the wind from my lungs and thumping my head against the ground.
In a daze, I stumble to my feet, wavering, just in time to see Vasya scoop up his gun in one smooth move and shoot Dmitri.
Eva screams as my second goes down, ducking her head and curling around her belly as Vasya aims his gun at her, madness in his eyes.
Pure rage blocks out every other emotion coursing through my body and every other sense. No one will take my woman and my children away from me.
Mine.
Eva screams again. The gun goes off harmlessly into the air as I barrel into Vasya.
One knee in his chest, my hand holding down his shoulder, I pound my fist into his face again and again until he’s groaning, his head lolling.
No sooner am I on my feet than a sharp pain in my lower back doubles me over.
“I know all your moves, asshole.” Vasya’s mouth twists in a leer as he comes for me again with the bloody knife in his hand. I haven’t had time or the presence of mind to look for another weapon.
I manage to dodge the first, then the second thrust, and finally catch his arm on the third, hand clamped around his forearm as I turn into him and check his leg with mine. My back screaming, I yank Vasya’s arm up and forward and use his momentum to flip him heavily onto his back.