Chapter 43
Gavriil
The hallway has become a graveyard.
And either Arev or I will be joining it soon.
The bastard lunges, my own knife aimed for my sternum.
It slices my side—hot, shallow, furious—but doesn’t sink deep.
I kick my leg out at him, the blade slicing the top of my knee as I bury my foot in his stomach.
A sharp breath punches out of Arev as he stumbles back. He wheezes to fill his lungs with air again. Anger replaces the amusement on his face.
He launches himself at me. The two of us grapple on the floor, trading punches.
My muscles begin to burn from the exertion, but I know what will happen if I lose this fight. He’ll bury a bullet in my head, and it’ll be lights out.
When I smash my forehead against his nose, it cracks in the middle, blood spilling down his face from the impact. He shoves me away, cursing me as he grabs at his nose.
There’s enough space between us now that I go for my gun to end this fight. Unfortunately, he does the same.
My head pulses, vision splitting and swimming.
The world slows, tilting, like I’m underwater as I lift my gun.
The barrel lines up with his head. Well, one of them because I see three of them right now.
My bullet zips past his ear, while his clips the top of my shoulder. I grit my teeth through the pain as blood dampens my shirt.
I’m going to kill this son of a bitch if it’s the last thing that I do.
I fire again. The bullet grazes his cheek.
Arev answers with wild shots, blood slicking his face, rage overriding aim.
One bullet strikes the floor next to my ear. Too fucking close.
I aim at him again.
Arev lets out a roar of fury before running at me.
I pull the trigger before he can lunge at me again, making his head snap back. He hits the floor next to me with a loud thud. I lay there for a second to catch my breath.
“Holy shit,” Pyotr mutters from somewhere nearby.
“I’m fine. He’s dead.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me up to my feet, dragging my arm over his shoulders so that he can lead me into a nearby room.
I grimace as my bleeding side grazes his.
Pyotr leans me against the dresser of another guest bedroom. “You’re bleeding, Pakhan. I’ll find a medic.”
I grab his arm, keeping him from darting away. “No,” I snap. “I’m fine.”
Pyotr frowns. “Sir…”
I give him a hard look. Alina’s defiance has made everyone think they can argue with me with impunity.
The estate medic is probably up to his ass in injured men right now, or he’s dead, and Yelena may not have made it to the bunker yet. Regardless, I’m not bothering him over a flesh wound.
“Give me an update,” I order him since I probably missed a few.
“Okay.” He sighs before wiping some blood off his cheek from a deep cut. “Scouts have seen their patrols spreading throughout the area.”
My stomach lurches.
“How far?” I question him.
“Five miles. They’re probably looking for stragglers. People fleeing from the fight.”
Five miles.
My men wouldn’t run away like cowards.
But what about Alina and Dominik?
Did they make it to the farmhouse in time? Have they been found? Dominik will be the second most wanted on their kill list.
There’s an explosion out in the hallway, making Pyotr and I dive to the ground and cover our heads.
“What the fuck?”
I look up toward the doorway and freeze at the sight of fire crawling along the walls.
A grenade.
Someone set off a grenade inside my house.
I hear screaming before men on fire run past the door, the flames scorching them alive. My guts twist at the sight.
“The estate is falling sir,” Pyotr tells me as a grave expression fills his face. “The men positioned downstairs are either dead or got pushed up here. Matvei and the others up on the roof reported more men storming the grounds.”
He might as well just tell me that we’re fucked, but I’m not going to give up that easily. We’re not all dead yet, and this isn’t the only hallway on the second floor. There’s a whole other side with additional weaponry and traps set.
“Second and first floor—fall back to the rear hallway now. Roof team, start picking them off. You’re our last line,” I say in Russian into the mic of my earpiece.
Some men who aren’t in the middle of the fights for their lives respond to me, but there’s also a lot of silence. Good men have died, and the fight isn’t over yet.
I walk past Pyotr, feeling blood trickle down my back and down my side. The wounds sting but if I’m feeling pain, I’m still alive.
That’s all that matters.
I storm out into the hallway, faced with the sight of a lot of bodies on fire. Black marks stain the walls near my bedroom where the explosion went off, and the wood is so splintered that I’m able to see glimpses of the ground floor through it.
Two men leap through the fire crawling its way down the hallway, advancing on Pyotr and me.
Pyotr lifts his shotgun and fires at one of them, blowing the man right off his feet and sending him into the flames.
I fire at the other man, but he dodges the shot. Pyotr is too slow to reload to shoot him, but he’s fast enough to slam the butt of the gun against the man’s face.
Teeth and blood fly out of the man’s mouth as he stumbles to the side. He’s resilient or riding high on adrenaline because he lunges at both of us the next second, taking us both down to the ground.
Pyotr lets out a furious growl as nearby fire licks at his arm, burning his exposed skin. He releases his shotgun to pat out the flames on his sleeve.
The man grabs the front of my shirt, yanking me toward him so that his free hand can strike me in the cheek.
I retaliate with a heftier punch. I’ll knock all the teeth out of his fucking mouth.
The man shoves me down hard enough for the back of my head to hit the ground, stunning me from the impact. He secures his hands around my neck and presses down as much as he can, cutting off my air supply.
My head aches and pounds from lack of breath, my lungs feeling like they’re on fire too. The heat in the hallway is already suffocating enough as it is, smoke rolling across the ceiling above me.
Darkness starts to eat at the sides of my vision, but the thought of dying at the hands of this piece of shit gives me one more surge of energy.
I swing my fist up, slamming my knuckles into his throat, just how Alina caught Petrov by surprise that first night.
Smart. Precise. Ruthless.
The asshole gasps and his hands clutch his throat.
Pyotr finally puts out the fire and punches the man in the face, knocking him off me. He staggers to his feet and reloads his shotgun before pointing it at the man.
The bastard runs at him and grabs the shotgun, forcing it upward just as Pyotr fires. The shot blasts through the ceiling, moonlight spilling into the hallway through the jagged hole.
“Fuck,” I breathe out as I roll onto my hands and knees, my head spinning.
I shove myself to my feet as the man slams the side of the shotgun against Pyotr’s face, busting his nose. With a clenched jaw, I throw my arms around the man, one winding around his neck and the other clamping down on the top of his head.
I drag him back from Pyotr as blood pours down his face. The man thrashes, his elbows striking my torso. One blow hits me close to the knife wound, and my vision goes black for a second. But my arms stay locked in position.
With a shout, I twist—hard—until his neck cracks.
His body goes limp and collapses at my feet.
I stand there for a moment, breathing heavily. There’s nothing that I can do but let the smoke fill my lungs.
Pyotr coughs into his arm as he stumbles down the hallway. “We need to get away from this fire!”
I nod silently, listening to more reports in my right ear.
“We’re pinned down! We can’t move! We—”
“No more traps out in the back! We’re out and they’re still coming!”
“They’re approaching the back second-floor hallway! We need people here now!”
My head throbs. It feels like I’m on the verge of collapsing.
But all I can think about is that I hope Alina and Dominik are okay.
She’s better off away from me. I just pray that I didn’t send them to their deaths.
What if Dominik couldn’t protect her?
She never belonged in our world. She’s too good, too innocent…
“Sir!”
A gunshot rings out, and searing pain rips through my hip, the force knocking me to the ground. Gunfire rages around me as I lay on the floor, fire steadily crawling its way toward me to consume me too.
To take me away from her forever.