Chapter 69 Gabi
GABI
I can’t hear anything from my hideout in the passage, so when the washroom’s door sweeps open, I’m caught off-guard. I didn’t expect it to be so soon.
A woman steps into the room, pulling a case with her and closing the door. At first, I can’t see her face as her hair curtains it. But then she looks at the mirror and straight into my eyes. I rear back, adrenaline spiking my blood as my heart starts to gallop.
It’s her.
That horrible, horrible fucking bitch who told me to be glad it’s all they’re doing to you—for now, you little whore. Because trust me, one day, it’s all you’re going to be.
I’m trembling all over, but I can’t move, frozen in shock.
I watch her watch me and realize she’s staring at herself in the mirror.
With a shake, I remind myself she can’t see me.
She closes her eyes, pulls her phone from her pocket, and dials someone.
She’s allowed to have a phone? In here? When I got basically stripped of mine on arrival at Ivan’s place?
And then I notice she’s crying. Quietly, but tears are streaming down her cheeks. Whoever she’s calling answers.
I read her lips, trying to make out what she’s saying, and it comes easily as she speaks Italian, and it’s intentionally not as soundproof in here as in the rest of the apartment.
It’s him. Promise you will do as you told me you would. You must release her or I will fucking haunt you. I don’t know what they were expecting, but there’s no sign of Chertnikov’s girl.
She drops the phone beside the basin, then leans over it for a second, looking like she wants to vomit.
What the fuck? Chertnikov’s girl?
When she looks up, she crosses herself, swallows once, then nods to herself as she wipes her tears away.
She was praying.
Then she starts to move at speed. She hauls her case onto the vanity and opens it, then shrugs off the jacket around her waist and tosses it to the side. She gathers her hair to tie it in a ponytail and strips her scarf, revealing her neck and chest.
Already, a sheen of sweat glows on her forehead—she’s stressed. She’s not only much older than I remember, but she has new tattoos on her body, too. When I met her the first time, she had no tattoos visible like this. The low V-neck of her tight T-shirt dips low, showing off—
I gasp. An eye, just like Ivan’s. Watching me, seeing everything.
Frantically, my gaze jumps to take it all in.
The Russian writing under her collarbone disappearing underneath the shirt, the patterned rings around her wrists, the cross on her forearm.
She’s Italian…but she has Russian tattoos on her.
From the skin peeling on the barbed wire tattoo around her neck, they’re recent.
Good God. She’s a…she’s a mole. Undercover. Here—
I’ve been so shocked to see her transformation, I only notice now what she’s doing.
She’s pulling different dark shapes from sections in the case, opening a can of…
spray paint? A tattoo artist’s ink. But she shakes out six round balls, metal agitators to mix the paint, except there is no liquid there, only a clear gel she wipes off at speed.
She’s fast, trained, having done this a thousand times, her fingers working swiftly even while they’re trembling.
It hits me that she’s assembling a…a…a fucking gun.
She shoves it into the back of her pants’ waistband then reaches for a small case, empties out three pills into the palm of her hand, and swallows them dry.
Then she lowers her case to the floor, takes her phone in hand, and I realize she never killed the call.
Whoever she phoned is still on the line.
“What do they say? In Il Consiglio?” she murmurs into it. “Party’s starting. Keep listening and stick to our fucking deal.”
She turns and opens the washroom door. I register the red spot of blood on her white jeans’ seat but instinctively know it’s fake. The oldest fucking trick in the book and one I used myself. I jolt awake as if the last three or four minutes were a fever dream.
Holy fuck. She’s here to kill someone. It’s a suicide mission.
And she’s walking out of the bathroom.
It’s him, she said on the phone.
Her new Russian tattoos.
The coup.
Ivan.
She’s come to finish off the job whoever failed at in July.
My husband.
She’s come for my husband. And his girls.
Over my dead fucking body.
And thank God they are not here because this woman will not touch any of them.
Rage like a dragon’s fire bellows in me, and I step back, rushing down the passage, going so fast I collide and ricochet off the walls to spill out of the hidden passage into the pantry.
As I shoulder the pantry doors open, her heels are clacking on the floor, every step measured as she makes her way to her imminent death.
I immediately spot Ivan where he’s standing with the others in a semi-circle, facing the direction she would come from…
waiting for her, lined up for the firing squad.
“She’s got a gun!” I scream as I tumble into the open-concept room.
As I race across the stretch between me and Ivan, I have a split-second to glance at her, gauging her aim…at my husband.
“The girl is here!” Mara shouts. “Chertnikov’s girl is here!”
I’m Chertnikov’s girl.
Ivan’s hands shoot up as he launches into motion, thinking I am the target. She’s coming from the front, I’m coming from the side. I can’t do anything but hurl myself into the narrowing gap between her and Ivan, where he is coming for me…to protect me.
In that moment, I feel like I’m flying, a little bird in the air, his moya ptichka somehow free at last, and then pain pierces me, two sharp stings that propel me forward as I collide with his chest, into his arms.
The gunshots explose loudly through the room, and then a cacophony of gunfire breaks out. A body thumps. It could be mine. I don’t register anything, sinking to the floor in Ivan’s arms as he stares into my face, stunned.
It all goes eerily quiet, Ivan’s strong arms around me, tears in his eyes.
“Moya ptichka, Gabriella—”
Chertnikov. My nemesis’s name…confirmed at last.
A warm trickle runs down my back, and he pulls his hand away, supporting me against his chest.
I glance at his hand.
Blood.
My blood. Bullets. Guns.
Did this hurt? The question I asked him about his own gunshot wounds ages ago.
Probably. I was too focused on what I had to do to survive to take stock of how they felt.
I can already feel I’m not going to survive this, but I stopped this woman. I stopped Mara.
“The girls…she will never touch the girls,” I murmur, my breathing strained. “She will never touch any girl again…” This is as close to avenging Mother Lucia’s death as I’ll get, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll be with her soon.
“Gabi—Gabriella—”
“Ivan,” I murmur, wanting to tell him everything.
That I didn’t run away, that I was brave, like a dragon.
I faced her head-on, with courage I didn’t know I had.
I showed him how loyal I am, what I would sacrifice for him, for his girls.
He told me to prove it and I’ve proven myself, with honor.
This is who I am at my core, whichever name I carry.
In my fairy tale, I have fought a dragon, just like my brothers. Now I can finally be free.
But none of this seems important now. It’s only him and me here, and I’m not wasting my last breaths on valor.
“I’m in love with you, Ivan…” I whisper, feeling Death’s fingers curl inside me, reaching for my heart.
I don’t have time. “I prayed…so much that you would fall in love…with me and we could love…each other…and the girls.” I swallow, blood somehow coming up my throat.
I cup his face, his beautiful face, so close to mine.
“I wanted more…more than two sons—I—” It is getting hard to focus my thoughts.
“I-I wanted everything with you…be everything you need… show you how worthy you are of love…I thought we still had time—”