Chapter 18 #2
The door opened outwards. I was outside it. Oleg was inside, aiming through the gap.
If I could shut it, he would lose sight of Daniil.
Kostya was still in the way.
“Take her back to the office,” Oleg told him.
My uncle turned his head.
I dropped my weight and wrenched away from him. His fingers dragged down my arm, caught my sleeve. The seam ripped. I shoved him with my good hand, hard enough to send him stumbling across the threshold.
Then I kicked the brick.
It scraped over the concrete. The door began to close, and I drove my shoulder into its outer face.
Kostya shouted. The edge struck his forearm as he reached for me. He snatched it back.
For an instant I could still see Oleg through the narrowing gap. His gun. His mouth opening.
The door slammed.
I ran.
My first step almost put me on the ground. My knee gave, and Daniil caught me beneath the arm before I fell.
“Move, baby. With me.”
I moved. It hurt. Everything hurt. The towel slipped off my hand, and I left it on the concrete.
Behind us, the door handle rattled.
Daniil pulled open the rear passenger door. His hand went to the back of my head.
“In.”
I grabbed the frame with my bleeding hand and scrambled across the seat. My shoes caught each other. I couldn’t get my feet out of the way. I heard the steel door crash open behind us.
A shot smashed the rear window.
I screamed. Glass struck my hair, my neck. Daniil came through the door after me and forced me down across the seat.
For a moment there was only his weight and the ringing in my ears.
Then the car door slammed.
“Go.”
Nikita reached for the phone beside him, tapped it and dropped it back onto the console.
“Sent.”
The car moved.
I caught Daniil’s shirt. His shoulder. His neck. I couldn’t see enough of him. He had been outside when the shot came.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Daniil—”
“I’m not hit. Keep down.”
Shouting came from the garage. Another shot, then several so close together I couldn’t separate them. Daniil bent over me as Nikita swung the car towards the gate.
Through the broken rear window, I heard Kostya scream.
“Oleg! Wait!”
I lifted my head beneath Daniil’s arm.
Oleg was out of the doorway, dragging Kostya in front of him by his coat. He kept looking back into the garage. His driver had the SUV running beside them, its rear door open.
Kostya tried to get around him. Tried to reach the car.
“Everything I did for you!” His voice cracked. “My own family—”
“You’re not mine.”
Oleg shoved him backwards, into the path of the man emerging from the garage.
Arkady.
I saw Kostya fall. I saw Oleg wrench the SUV door shut behind him. Then Daniil pulled me down again, and the sedan jolted through the gate.
The garage disappeared.
“They’re here,” I said.
My voice sounded strange. Too loud. I could hardly hear it.
“They’re here,” Daniil answered. “We’ve got you.”
The car turned hard. I slid against him, and his arm tightened around my shoulders. Cold air poured through the broken window.
Another engine roared behind us.
I went rigid.
“The SUV,” Nikita said.
Daniil’s body stiffened over mine.
“Other direction,” Nikita added. “He’s going the other way.”
Oleg was getting away.
I knew what that meant. I knew he could come back. But the car kept moving, and Daniil was in it with me, and all I wanted was more road between us and that garage.
“Don’t go back,” I said.
Daniil looked down at me. There was blood on his cuff. Mine. A tiny piece of glass clung to the fabric at his shoulder.
“I’m staying with you.”
I couldn’t nod. I couldn’t thank him. I held on to his shirt and waited for the next shot.
It didn’t come.
My hand hurt again.
The pain returned so suddenly that I made a sound against Daniil’s chest. He looked down, saw the blood running over my fingers and took a handkerchief from his jacket.
“I need to press on it.”
I nodded.
He folded the cloth over my palm. I sucked in a breath as he closed his hand around mine.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
His voice was rough. He kept checking my face, then looking down at my hand, as though there might be another injury he hadn’t found yet.
“Anywhere else?”
“My knees. The car—when we crashed.”
“Your head?”
“I don’t know.”
I hated the answer. I tried to remember the collision properly, to put it in order. The truck, the sound, Boris’s voice. My head against something. Had that been before the gunfire or after?
“I don’t know,” I said again, and this time I sounded frightened.
Daniil kissed my forehead.
“All right. The doctor will check.”
“Teterboro?” Nikita asked.
“Straight there.”
The traffic lights ahead turned red. Nikita braked, and I gripped Daniil’s shirt so hard my fingers cramped.
A white delivery van stopped alongside us.
I couldn’t look away from it. The driver leaned towards his window, staring at our shattered rear glass. I watched his hands. I waited for the door to open.
“Ksyusha.”
Daniil shifted, putting himself between me and the window.
“Look at me.”
I tried. My eyes kept going back to the van.
“I can see him,” he said. “Nikita can see him. You don’t have to watch him.”
The light changed. We moved. The van fell behind.
I put my face against Daniil’s neck. He smelled of sweat and the cologne I had kissed off his skin that morning. I knew that smell. I tried to breathe it in instead of the cold air and gun smoke.
His phone rang.
He took it from his pocket without letting go of my hand and put it on speaker.
“Arkady.”
“We have Kostya. Alive.”
I lifted my head.
“Anton?” I asked before Daniil could speak.
There was a pause. Then my brother’s voice, further from the phone.
“I’m here, Ksyusha. I’m all right.”
My mouth trembled.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Are you?”
I looked at Daniil. At the blood on his shirt and his hand wrapped around mine.
“I’m with him.”
Anton let out a breath I could hear through the speaker.
“Good. Stay with him.”
Arkady came back on the line. “The garage is secure. Sal’s men are all standing. Two of Oleg’s men surrendered. We’re dealing with the rest.”
“And Oleg?” Daniil asked.
“Got to his car before we could stop him. Threw Kostya straight at me. By the time I had a clear shot, he was gone.”
Daniil looked towards the road behind us.
I felt how badly he wanted to go after him. His shoulders tightened. His hand went still around mine.
“We saw which way he went,” Nikita said.
Daniil’s eyes came back to my face.
“We’re taking Ksenia to the doctor.”
“I’ll get men looking,” Arkady said.
“Do that. Nobody hurts Kostya. I want him alive and able to answer questions. Take the phones and everything in the office.”
“Understood.”
For a moment neither brother spoke.
“You have her?” Arkady asked.
Daniil bent his head. His mouth touched my hair.
“I have her.”
The call ended.
Kostya was alive. Somehow I had expected to feel something simple about that. Satisfaction. Rage. I had watched him reach for Oleg’s car as though he had any right to beg not to be abandoned.
Instead, I remembered a wooden box of drawing pencils. My uncle placing it in front of me. How delighted I had been that he’d remembered the exact set I wanted.
I still had it.
I didn’t want it in my house.
“He offered me water,” I said.
Daniil waited.
“He kept telling me it would be all right. Like he was looking after me.”
My throat closed. I stared at the handkerchief around my hand.
“How could he do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“He helped kill Papa, and then he—”
I couldn’t finish. There was too much of it.
Daniil drew me closer. He didn’t tell me what Kostya had wanted, or explain how men like him justified things. I couldn’t have listened to any of it.
“He doesn’t get near you again,” he said.
I closed my eyes.
For a while I listened to the road. Each time Nikita slowed, I felt it through my whole body. Daniil kept his arm around me and his hand over mine. He didn’t ask me to stop shaking.
“The video,” I said at last.
He lowered his head to hear me.
“I heard it. In the garage.”
“It wasn’t a surrender. The captains knew to ignore it.”
I looked up at him.
“You didn’t give it to them?”
“No.”
“Any of it?”
“No, Ksyusha.”
I let out a breath. It hurt my ribs.
“I thought you had. I thought it was because of me.”
His hand came to my cheek.
“Listen to me. None of this is your fault.”
“You were going to go inside.”
He didn’t deny it.
“Arkady and Anton were waiting. Sal’s men, too. They couldn’t move until you were clear.”
I looked at his open jacket. The place where a holster should have been.
“But you didn’t know you’d get out.”
His thumb moved once over my cheek.
“I was getting you out.”
I wanted to be furious with him. I wanted to tell him he had no right to decide I could live through losing him. But I had seen the gun pointed at him and thrown myself at a steel door. I hadn’t stopped to think what might happen to me, either.
“I couldn’t let him shoot you,” I whispered.
Daniil’s face changed. He pressed his forehead to mine.
“I know.”
We stayed like that until the car turned and I had to lean against him again.
“Your hand,” he said after a while. “Is the pressure too much?”
“I need you to keep holding it.”
“I will.”
I listened to his heart. It was beating hard beneath my ear.
I held his shirt tighter.
“I’ll never you let you go.”