Chapter 19 #3
“If you cut her—.”
“You’ll what?” Kristo asked with a mean laugh. “Shout at me?”
Luka held his breath as his cousin slashed the plastic ties holding her ankles together and the one between the table leg and the cuffs holding her wrists together. He left the ones actually tied around her wrists in place. Still bound, Elona came up swinging, refusing to go down without a fight.
Kristo had obviously been expecting it. He popped her right in the stomach, burying the brass knuckles into her soft belly and forcing all the air from her lungs. She doubled over, her mouth agape and eyes wide with panic and agony.
Luka swore. He shouted. He threatened. He jerked and yanked and fought, but there was no freeing himself from this.
He’s going to kill her, and it’s all my fault.
Kristo curled his fingers in Elona’s dark hair and hauled her up straight. He kicked the back of her legs, forcing her to walk forward. Luka held her gaze, refusing to look away. He couldn’t let her do this alone.
Dragging the knife point along the neck Luka had been kissing only hours earlier, Kristo said, “This is the knife I used on your father. Seems fitting I’d use it on you, too.”
“Don’t,” Luka begged, no longer caring about his own pride. “Let her go, Kristo. Let her walk out of here. Her stepfather will pay you, and you can disappear. Kill me if you have to but let her go.”
Kristo didn’t even pretend to think about it. “What would be the fun in that? I’d miss out on the look on your face when I do this.”
“No!” Luka shouted so loudly his throat burned, but it wasn’t enough to stop his deranged cousin. Like an absolute psychopath, Kristo stabbed Elona in her belly. She shrieked and brought her zip tied hands down toward the blade now buried in her body.
“Don’t.” Kristo pressed his mouth to her ear. He kept the knife stabbed into her, the handle gripped in his evil fingers. “If you do, I’ll cut you from hip to hip.”
Luka had seen his cousin gut enough freshly caught fish to know that Kristo was capable of such savagery.
“Don’t worry, Luka,” Kristo said in a frightfully calm manner. “This isn’t the first time someone has had a knife in her belly. Is it, Elona?”
“Please,” she cried, tears spilling down her face.
“Oh, you’re right. It wasn’t a knife back then. It was a scalpel.”
“Stop,” she begged.
Luka glanced between his cousin and the woman who had captured his heart. What was this? What was he saying?
“That’s her biggest secret,” Kristo said matter-of-factly. “The really shameful one. Right, Elona?”
She shook her head, lips pressed together and refusing to talk.
“She’s got daddy issues,” Kristo explained, looking at him now. “Obviously.” He laughed in the meanest way. “You don’t binge eat yourself to this size without having some serious mental issues.”
“Fuck you,” Elona ground out, no longer taking his bullshit.
“No, it’s okay,” Kristo assured her in an eerily soothing way. “Luka’s mother was fat, too. She ate her feelings just like you. Not sure if that’s why Luka’s father kept straying or if the straying led her down the path of eating.” He shrugged. “Chicken. Egg.”
“You fucking asshole,” Luka snarled. “My mother was a saint. She was the best of us.”
“Not a high bar considering our family, cousin.” Kristo dug the knife in a little deeper into Elona’s belly, and she gasped. “This one went to a private Catholic school, but she didn’t pay much attention in Mass. She missed the lesson about fucking your married teacher.”
Her teacher? Was that why her stepfather had taken her away from Houston?
“You’d think that was the worst of it,” Kristo continued, “but she missed another lesson in sex ed, I think. You see she—.”
Elona slammed her head back into Kristo’s mouth, instantly smashing his lips and breaking his nose.
She stomped his foot hard, grinding her heel into the top of it, and when he stumbled back and let of the knife, she yanked it free from her own body.
Kristo realized his mistake as he cradled his bleeding face.
Holding her right wrist with her left hand, she stuck the fingers of her right hand into the brass knuckle handle. She didn’t have full momentum or range with her wrists still shackled by plastic ties, but she didn’t need it.
She swung at Kristo’s face. The sickening crunch of the impact startled Luka. He’d expected carnage, but this was something else. She used those powerful arms of hers, the muscles honed with years of swinging a softball bat, to unleash absolute hell on his cousin’s face.
When Kristo fell to the floor, the gun clattered out of the back of his jeans and landed near his head.
She didn’t give him a chance to reach it.
She battered him, screaming like a harpy and throttling him nearly to death.
She only stopped when Liliana attacked her from behind, pummeling her back and trying to strangle her.
Elona dropped the trench knife and snatched up the pistol. She whirled on Liliana who froze. Panting hard, Elona said simply, “Run.”
When Liliana didn’t move, Elona fired a warning shot into the wall right above her shoulder. Liliana screamed and fled, leaving the door wide open as she disappeared.
“Cut me loose,” Luka ordered, his gaze fixed on the door. “His backup is probably coming for us right now.”
“I know.” Elona slashed at the cable ties imprisoning him. “Cut these for me.” She held out her trembling wrists, the zip ties still binding her. He slipped the knife blade under the plastic and cut straight up, freeing her. “Now what?”
He didn’t know. He had two gunshots to the belly. Skender had passed out cold not long after Kristo had shoved that knife in his sister’s gut. They were all haggard and wounded and down to their last six bullets unless Kristo had another magazine on him.
“We’ve got to get you to the hospital,” she said, pressing her hands onto his oozing stomach.
“You first,” he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and leaning on her for support. “Or maybe your brother. Is he even breathing?”
Elona left his side to crouch next to her brother. She felt his neck, searching for a pulse. “Yes. He’s breathing, and his heart is beating.” She scanned his awful injuries. “What if it’s brain damage?”
Luka’s head spun as he tried to close the distance between them. She must have noticed him leaning because she quickly stood and braced him with her body. “We have to get out of here, Luka. I’m the least injured and the better shot, I think. I’ll go and see if I can pick them off.”
“Are you insane?” He marveled at this woman, aghast at her courage and audacity.
“I must be,” she said before pressing her swollen, busted lips to his in a ginger kiss. “Because even knowing all the horrible things you’ve done, I still care about you.”
“Elona, I lo—.”
Gunshots ricocheted above them. A rescue?
“The door,” he groaned, his head spinning from blood loss.
She understood what he meant without having to be told. She ran to the door, closing it and then shoving a chair under the handle. There wasn’t anything else to use as a barricade.
When she returned to his side, he pushed her behind him. He might be dying, but he would use his last breath to protect her. She pressed herself to his back, her shooting arm under his, the gun pointed at the door.
Above them, the firefight continued. The shots moved closer, sounding as if they were coming downstairs. Heavy footfalls thundered in the corridor outside their cabin. Another gunshot. And then another, just inches from the door.
Luka reached back, gripping her hip with his hand. “Let them shoot me. It will give you a chance to escape.”
“Luka, I’m not using you as a human shield!”
“I’m not asking!” Ready to shove her even further out of the way, he squeezed her hip and shifted his weight.
Something hit the door. A shoulder? Then a kick. The door splintered under the handle. The chair fell. Another kick and the door flew open in a burst of splinters.
Luka held his breath—and then exhaled as Zec appeared in the ruined doorway.
He stepped through the destroyed entrance without a moment’s hesitation.
His cold, black gaze scanned the room, taking in the brutality that had happened here.
He crossed the cabin, slowing down as he came to Kristo, still alive but burbling bloody bubbles from his smashed nose and mouth.
“He betrayed—.”
Luka didn’t get to finish his sentence. Zec fired three bullets in quick succession into Kristo’s chest. No discussion. No arguments. He acted as judge, jury and executioner without even blinking.
The realization that Kristo, his best friend, his brother, was dead finished what little strength Luka still had.
He collapsed, his lungs suddenly tight and his gut heavy and hot.
Elona cried out behind him, grasping at his body, trying to soften his fall.
He opened his mouth to tell her what he desperately wanted her to know, but the only thing that came out was blood. Thick. Salty. Metallic.
And then everything went dark.