Chapter 37
Zoya
“Where is home, exactly?”
“You want to go back to the townhouse?”
“Well, I don’t think Nik will be playing change the locks on me again,” I say with a wry smile.
He smirks. “I changed your locks.”
I close my eyes for a moment and draw in a deep breath. When I open them, I exhale. “I figured as much. Your timing was too convenient.”
“Smart thinker. You aren’t mad?”
“I’m… annoyed. If this hadn’t worked out the way it did, I’d be fucking furious.”
“Calculated risk,” he says as we bounce over another pothole, but then the van veers off to the left, and it feels like we mount the kerb.
“What the fuck?” I ask, gripping the side of the van as Roman pulls his gun out and grabs the pin from my hair. It cascades down around me as I take it from him and grip it like I’m about to slam it into someone’s neck.
Maybe I’m going to have to.
The van bounces around a bit more and then screeches to a halt.
“Move,” Roman says urgently as the divider between the front and back of the van is suddenly kicked in, and the driver moves into the back with us.
“Rammed. They stopped. Three ghosts.”
“Fuck,” Roman hisses and holds his hand out. The driver slaps a second gun into his hand, which he holds out to me. “You got this?”
I gulp. “Yes.”
“If they get within arm’s distance of you, shoot. Not a second before.”
“Arm’s distance,” I repeat and level it at the back doors.
Roman and the driver move into position as the van’s rear lock is blown and the doors are yanked open.
Roman and the driver dive out before whoever it is can dive inside, and I sit there, moving the gun right to left as an almighty scrap happens on the grass verge, on a country road somewhere on the way to Roman’s estate.
A shot is fired off, and I flinch before I see Roman.
He ends up going through a hedge from a punch that landed from a man twice his size, which is saying something.
“Jesus!” I scream.
“Not quite,” a growl echoes through the back of the van as a man lumbers inside with me.
Our driver throws himself at the man, and they tussle as my hands shake. I can’t shoot in case I kill our guy.
“Zoya!” Roman yells as he is twisted into an arm lock by the giant behind him. “Drive!” He slams his head back into the guy’s face.
He grunts but shakes it off.
“Drive?” I mutter.
“Go!” the driver says as he sends himself and his tussle partner falling out of the back of the van.
“Go,” I mutter and scramble through the kicked-in divider and into the driver’s seat. “I’m not leaving you!” I shout out, even as I turn the engine over. It gives a growl that is muffled by the hedge and overgrown, soaking grass.
“Move!” Roman yells now being tossed over the bonnet of the van by the giant.
“Where is your gun?” I scream at him through the open window and throw mine, hoping he will catch it.
He doesn’t.
“Zoya,” he growls with enough menace to make me rev the engine and put it in gear.
I stare at Roman, who has fallen onto the ground at the side of the van, nowhere near the gun I threw, with the giant grinning down at him… right in my line of sight.
“Fuck it,” I snarl and slam the hand brake down.
The van lurches forward, hitting the giant but barely moving him.
“Zoya! Fucking drive around him and go!”
“No. I am not leaving you to die!” I increase my revs.
It’s giant vs Transit van with not much run up.
The giant locks gazes with me and grins again.
“Don’t fucking smile at me!” I grit my teeth and ram him. This time, he stumbles back a foot. I ram him again.
He stumbles harder, his body crumpling against the verge as the van’s grille catches him properly. I don’t stop. I put it in reverse, gun the engine, and then slam it back into drive. I hit him with enough force to send him down.
“Zoya,” Roman growls, hauling himself up against the driver’s door. He looks terrible. Bloody, rumpled and bruised.
“Get the fuck in and get the driver!” I yell.
I hear a clatter in the back and the rear doors slamming.
I turn my head to see our driver safe and sound, if a little worse for wear.
Roman storms over to where the giant is downed, and he reaches down, presumably to take back his gun, or pick up the one I threw at him, which he then uses to fire a single shot into the man.
Straightening his cuffs, he strides over and slides into the passenger seat as if this were any other day.
“Will you fucking drive away now, please, malyshka, before the third guy decides the shot in his kneecap isn’t so bad?”
“Yes,” I say breathless and laughing as I lurch into the country road. “Yes, I can drive away now.”
“Next time I tell you to go, you fucking go. Are we clear?”
“You don’t get to order me about anymore, krasavchik. I outrank you now.”
He glares at me to see if I’m joking.
I’m not.
He huffs and simmers in a fuming silence for a few minutes before he turns to the driver in the back. “Where the fuck did they come from?”
“Around the bend, opposite direction.”
Roman growls in irritation. “Yeah, that will do it. Unseen and sudden.”
“How did they know it was us?” I ask, chewing my lip. I actually don’t know where I’m going, but I don’t want to admit it, so I just keep going.
“They were waiting for the switch,” Roman says grimly.
My stomach drops. “Who is they?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
I take a sharp left onto a smaller road, my hands tight on the wheel. The adrenaline is wearing off, leaving me shaky and furious. “So what do we do?”
“We get to the estate. We lock down. We figure out who just tried to take you from me and make them regret it.”
The casual way he says it—like removing a threat is as simple as changing a light bulb—makes my skin prickle.
This is what being pakhan means. Not just reading letters in churches.
Not just wearing pearls and looking bereaved.
It means dealing with people who decide your death is worth the risk.
It means hitting them with a Transit van to save your man.
“Laszlo,” Roman says, turning to look behind us. “How bad?”
“Breathing,” Laszlo replies. “Ribs might be cracked. Nothing critical. You?”
“Face fucking hurts, and I think he threw my back out.”
Laszlo snorts. “Old man.”
“Fuck you.”
I open my mouth to shout at them for being reckless and then joking about it, but nothing comes out.
Roman leans over and whispers in my ear, “Next time I tell you to drive, you fucking drive and you don’t look back. What you did was incredibly stupid.”
“But brave,” Laszlo pipes up.
“Incredibly stupid and brave,” Roman says, his voice dropping lower as he leans closer. “Don’t do it again.”
“I wasn’t leaving you,” I grit out. “I need you.”
“Aww,” Laszlo drawls before Roman shoots him a look that could kill a man.
“And I need you alive and well, malyshka. Next time, what do you do?”
I glance at him briefly, intending to argue, but the look of darkness on his face changes my mind. “I drive.”
“You fucking drive.”
He sits back with an exhale of pain so quiet, I almost didn’t hear it. But I won’t comment on it. Not yet. He needs to believe he is invincible, even when mountains try to crush him.
The road stretches ahead, grey and rain-slicked, and I grip the wheel tighter as my hands finally start to shake properly now that the immediate danger has passed.
“Where exactly are we?” I ask, trying to focus on something practical rather than the fact that I just used a Transit van as a weapon.
“About twenty minutes from the estate,” Roman says, and I can hear the strain in his voice despite his attempt to sound casual. “You’re going the wrong way. Take the next right.”
I nod and navigate the turn, my eyes flicking to the mirror to check on Laszlo. He’s leaning against the back of the van, holding his side, but his expression is calm. These men are built differently than me. Pain is just another language they speak fluently.
“Who were they?” I ask again, because the question won’t stop circling my brain. “And don’t tell me you don’t know. You always know.”
Roman is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is low and measured. “My best guess was a Nik contingency plan. Before he died.”
“How did he know where we’d be?”
“I don’t know. Possibly he had people all over. Those weren’t your father’s, your, men. They were mercenaries.”
“Hired thugs,” I mutter.
“Precisely. Stationed at every possible route back to my estate. Maybe we should’ve gone to the townhouse.”
I try not to stare at him and keep my eyes on the road at this tone. He isn’t unsure exactly, but he is questioning his own judgement on a level that he probably never has before.
“No, I bet that place is crawling with these guys,” I say, shaking my head. “He wouldn’t leave anything to chance.”
“Exactly,” Roman says, and I hear the sharp exhale of someone who’s just had his thinking validated by the one person whose validation matters. “We made the right call. Right again.”
I take the next right as instructed, and the road narrows further, hedgerows closing in on either side like we’re being swallowed by the countryside.
My hands are steadier now, though adrenaline still hums through my veins in sharp, electric pulses.
As I drive up to the gates of Roman’s estate, I know with absolute certainty that if Nik weren’t already dead, I would kill him for hurting Roman.
But Roman did kill him, so hopefully this contract dies with him when the thugs don’t get paid because we all know that mercenaries are loyal only to themselves.