29. Sonya
29
SONYA
I didn’t get just one gun, but three.
I returned, out of breath from the exertion of running, but I refused to be distracted.
“Here.” Eva whispered it, holding her hand up for me to give her one. She hunkered down on the couch with Kelly and Irina, and I didn’t hesitate to back up and give her a gun. Keeping my face forward, on the biggest doorway that would lead to this room, I made sure to be on the lookout. Not looking back to see who I was handing the other gun to, I thrust my arm back and one of the women took it.
I hoped it was Irina. She knew how to shoot. She’d killed her father with precision. Kelly wasn’t sobbing, crying, or panicking verbally anymore, but I knew she was already riled up from that call. She wouldn’t have the level head to be able to fire a weapon at that moment.
None of us spoke, tense and listening. No one moved in the house. No sounds reached our ears. All that we could detect was the constant strum of rain pattering down on the roof. The branches knocking against the windows with the storm’s rain. The low grumble of thunder.
Gripping my gun with both hands, I kept my gaze focused ahead. With this darkness of the power going out, I had to acclimate to the lack of light. And the longer I stood there, ready to defend my family, I waited for a direction of where I’d need to shoot.
I dare you.
I fucking dare you.
Whoever you are, I dare you to hurt my family.
Try to get past me again.
Try to take me again.
And I will end your life.
Repeating a mantra of firm anger and resolution, I stood tall and ready. Bracing for anything to come at us, I did my best to listen and not panic with the suspense of waiting like this.
Guards surrounded the house. Many men were here patrolling, watching the drive, manning the gate, and standing like sentinels at the doors. It wasn’t just me here. It wasn’t me and Eva alone. Kelly and Irina were here, and among the four of us, we would need to operate as a group.
But I knew all too well how stupid it could be to assume that having guards and a full security staff meant no harm or danger could come. I had lived through the hard lesson that even with men here for the purpose of surveillance and protection, things could still go wrong. I was living proof of that.
When I was a young girl and a teenager up until I was kidnapped, that was the illusion I’d had. That I would always be safe at home. That the Baranov forces would protect me.
They failed to before. When we were taken, the guards had been drugged. A smoke bomb had rendered them unconscious so the kidnappers could swiftly sneak in and take me and my mother.
It happened before and it could again.
Unfortunately for them, whoever dared to cut the power and trespass, I wasn’t the kind of person to repeat my mistakes.
I lived and learned.
I’d spent so much time clinging to the fantasy of coming home to be reunited with my family that I never really developed a conviction that I'd be one hundred percent safe here.
I wouldn’t be.
And that was why I was prepared to stand here as the eldest Mafia princess. That was why I had the courage to stay steady on my feet and have a gun ready as one of the pregnant women in this small group. It was also why I didn’t let the fear or anxiety claim me as I remained tense and listened.
There.
Footsteps sounded outside the hallway. In the stretch of the corridor that connected this great room with the foyer, the sound of softly placed footsteps on the polished marble reached me.
I heard it, straining to keep listening and not lose it. Without turning my head, staying perfectly still, I narrowed my eyes and relied on my senses to lead me.
Again.
Someone was definitely walking in here. An intruder had gotten past the guards to be walking in the house. I hadn’t imagined it. I heard it. Someone was definitely sneaking further inside.
Releasing and re-tightening my fingers on the gun, I mentally charged myself to be ready to act. Steeling my spine and steadying my breath, I waited until I could aim and end this danger.
No one stirred on the couch. The other women were just as quiet, and I knew without looking that Eva had to have her gun up.
Then movement entered my vision. As I locked my stare on the open doorway, I watched as an object came into the room.
A slim, dark object flew through the air, dropping on the floor and rolling. The short cylindrical item stopped when it collided against the leg of a side table.
Mist hissed and escaped an opening at the end of it.
Gas.
A stark sense of terrible déjà vu hit me.
It was just like before.
Someone slipping in and using a gas bomb to render the guards unconscious.
The Ilyins? Again?
I clamped my teeth together so tightly that my jaw and teeth ached. Knowing the same assholes who’d taken me before would try to do this again was too much to handle.
“No.”
One of the women whispered it, spotting the rising fumes.
Without risking too much movement before the trespasser could see us and know where to fire, I stayed still even as one of the women rushed forward.
Irina. I saw her long hair as she dove forward. With her shirt pulled up over her mouth and nose in a makeshift mask, she lunged down to the floor, grabbed the gas bomb, and ran.
Reaching the windows, she flung one open and lobbed the gas bomb out into the yard. Before she could fully spin and face us in the room again, my mark made himself visible.
“I wouldn’t,” the Ilyin said neutrally.
He placed one foot, then another. Slowly, he entered my line of sight. He crept closer, hands up, until he was fully in the room.
“I wouldn’t shoot,” he warned.
Numerous thick packs and devices were strapped on him. Over his chest, his abdomen, and onto his back. As he stepped completely into the room, turning slightly in order to face me, the sobering and horrifying realization of what we were facing dawned on me.
Bombs.
He was covered with bombs. The shapes and wires connecting them were too damn obvious.
And in his hand, raised with his fingers up but his thumb down to hold something in his clutch, was a slim stick with a blue button at the top.
He held the detonator.
“If you shoot, I’ll press this button.”
My lips trembled under the pressure to kill him. In the face of a direct threat like this, I vibrated with so much anger, I couldn’t contain it. Still, I kept my arms locked and ready, the gun firmly in my hands and aimed at his head.
“Do you hear me?” he asked, deferring to me since I was in the front of the room.
“Fuck you,” I growled through clenched teeth.
“Don’t test me,” he warned. “I’ll press this button before you can shoot.”
I wasn’t in any position to guess or wager who would be faster. Maybe he had a quicker reflex and trigger finger. I didn’t know. All I could assume was that pressing that button would cause an immediate detonation whereas the bullet I fired at him would have to pass over the distance of this room to reach him.
“I’ll be damned if you try to ruin my life again.”
He lifted his chin, so loyal to his leader that he would be a kamikaze soldier. If he wasn’t here to capture me and the others behind me on the couch, then he had to be here to kill us.
“You won’t take me. Not again.”
He didn’t respond.
“I’m sick of you fucking Ilyins trying to destroy my family. I won’t be a pawn you can use in your schemes.” With every word I said, the decibel of my voice scaled higher and louder until I was screaming.
“I am devoted to the prosperity of my family,” I vowed. “And I order you to leave. Now!”
“Shut the fuck up and sit down.”
“No,” I bit it out with such vehemence I felt like my blood was boiling and spilling over. “Get out of this house now.”
“I’m not listening to a single fucking thing any Baranov bitch says—” He turned his head slightly. Without taking his attention off me, he shifted just a little. Clued in to someone else entering the house, he reacted and registered that we weren’t alone.
My stupid heart lifted. I wanted to believe it was help arriving. That Ben and Lev were back. Vik and Rurik. Any of the many loyal guards and soldiers in this organization.
Anything could go wrong on a day like today with so many deadly missions and goals being put into action.
But it looked like everything was bound to go wrong on a day like today.
It wasn’t any of the Baranov men who rushed in from the front door. It wasn’t the man I wanted to call my husband. It wasn’t my brother-in-law or cousins.
It was a stranger. With a deranged, maniacal grin morphing his face, he ran in to stand next to the Ilyin strapped with bombs. As he skidded to a stop, surveying the man then the rest of us in the room, he nodded and chuckled. The long black coat he wore dripped water onto the floor, making his shoes squeak with his steps as he walked in further, but beneath it, his suit gave me no clue who he was.
An enemy.
That was all I needed to identify him.
He was an enemy to smile at the sight of bombs in our place. He was an enemy because he held a gun in one hand.
“Just in time.” He smiled at the Ilyin, pointing his gun at him. “Give me the detonator.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Eva demanded. “Both of you.” She’d come to stand next to me, gun up and ready.
“No,” the man said. “No, no, no. You’re done. You are all done. This is the end of the Baranovs.” He waggled his gun at the soldier. “Give me the detonator now. I hurried here to watch the carnage. To see this place blown to rubble. All of you bitches dead. Now I can be the one to press the button. And everyone can know I was the one to end your fucking family once and for all.”
The Ilyin handed the detonator to him. His vacant stare proved that he’d accepted his death. In suicide, in the name of serving his family or this stranger. However he justified it in his mind. With a lift of his arm, he moved the detonator closer to this businessman.
But he didn't go far with it.
“Fuck you, O’Malley.” Kelly screamed it, coming between me and Eva. “Fuck you!”
She was the one who’d taken that third gun. She was the one who screamed so loudly as she emptied the clip into O’Malley. Whoever he was, she’d gotten him at the perfect moment of distraction. He dropped the detonator at her scream.
Perhaps he hadn’t seen her seated behind me and my sister. Maybe it was the feral ferocity of her screams that jarred him and distracted him from holding on to the detonator.
Kelly missed twice, but as she walked forward, elbows locked, both hands on her gun, she ensured that he was directly in her line of fire.
And she shot and shot. Plugging him with one bullet after the next, she sank lead into his chest, his stomach, his neck. They weren’t clean shots, but all of them worked to kill him.
Just in case, I lifted my gun to fire once. A clean hole between his eyes would promise he was definitely dead in case her shots didn’t work fast enough.
“Get the—” Irina lunged forward again, diving low to grab something off the floor. She wasn’t afraid of the violence, not even caring that O’Malley was still falling over and slumping to his death as he stared at Kelly glaring down at him.
The detonator had fallen to the floor from the botched handoff between the bomb-laden soldier and O’Malley.
Irina dipped to get it at the same time the soldier did.
But before either could claim it, the man stood and tried to rip at the bombs, probably intending to sever the wires and set it off just the same.
“What the?—”
Gunfire followed the grumbled question to the side of the room. Two shots sounded off, and the Ilyin guard dropped down. His hands didn’t move. He didn’t move with his head blown to bits.
I whipped my head around, finding Uncle Oleg standing in the hallway.
He still blinked his eyes, clearing the sleepy, drowsy look from his face. With his gun still lowering, it was clear he was the one who’d shot him.
Finally, finally , I lowered my arms. Releasing a long exhale, I sighed and let all the pent-up stress seep from me at the sight of my uncle, the Boss, standing there and taking charge.
It was over. It had to be over, and as I willed my heart to slow, I tested a new reality on myself.
They were dead.
All of them.
Every one of our most determined enemies were dead or soon would be.
Eva eased Kelly back from O’Malley’s body. Uncle Oleg walked further into the room, more alert and concerned. He glanced at me, raising his brows while Irina backed up to help Eva with Kelly, who seemed the most stunned.
I opened my mouth to say something. To tell Uncle Oleg thanks. Or to confirm that we were okay. Something had to be said to snap us further out of this shock.
But I didn’t need to. Tires squealed outside and the hammering footsteps of running men came.
“Sonya!”
My lips slightly lifted of their own accord.
Ben.
It was Ben yelling as he ran inside. Lev was right there with him. They didn’t stop, still holding their guns as they rushed toward me and Eva.
Only when his arms were wrapped tightly around me did I know everything would be okay.
“Rurik called and said he’d received a notification that the power was cut,” Lev said, talking to Oleg.
“He’s alive?” Kelly cried out from behind Irina as she hugged her.
Lev nodded.
I stared up at Ben, needing another moment of the comfort he gave me. As they started to talk and collaborate on what had gone down, I closed my eyes to accept Ben’s kiss.
Then resting my cheek against his chest, hearing his steady heartbeat, I held on to my future and knew it would be as bright and full as I dreamed it could be.
The danger was over.
For good.
With sacrifices from us all, through teamwork and counting on every one of us surviving our hardships, we removed the danger from our lives so the Baranov legacy would continue into the next generation.