Chapter 13
Damien
“Take one more step, arsehole, and you will be decorating my wall with your brains.”
The remaining man out of three who thought they could bait me, standing in the wreckage of my hallway, doesn’t flinch. He should. The Glock is aimed at the centre of his forehead from six feet away, and my hand is steady enough to thread a needle.
He’s big. Not my size, but close. The second figure is slumped against the console table. That one isn’t getting up. The knuckleduster took care of that when he came through the window first, thinking they could divert my attention to the front gate.
The Basquiat is crooked on the wall. That pisses me off more than the window.
“You’ve got about three seconds to give me a name,” I say, “before I redecorate.”
His eyes flick to his other fallen colleague with a bullet in his skull, then back to me. He’s assessing. Calculating odds. I can see the exact moment he arrives at the conclusion that they’re shit.
“We were sent to collect the girl,” he says. His accent is Eastern European—Russian, but not Moscow. Southern. Krasnodar, maybe.
“Sent by who?”
He doesn’t answer. He holds his hands up, disarmed several minutes ago, but I’m not taking any chances. Not with Lidiya upstairs. He works his jaw, and I take a step closer. “Do not even think about it,” I growl.
“Too late,” he says and swallows.
Cyanide.
I’ll fucking beat him until the poison ends him.
His body crumples before I reach him. The bastard drops like a marionette with its strings cut, convulsing once, twice, then going rigid.
Foam bubbles at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes roll back until only the whites show.
The whole thing takes maybe fifteen seconds.
Fifteen seconds of information dying inside a dead man’s skull.
I stand over him and feel nothing but fury. Three men. Three corpses. Zero names.
“Fuck,” I snarl, kicking the nearest body hard enough to shift it across the marble. Useless. All three of them are useless. Trained well enough to breach a Belgravia townhouse with one man inside, but not well enough to survive the attempt, and every single one of them is a dead end. Literally.
The cyanide is the tell. You don’t give foot soldiers suicide capsules unless the information they carry is worth more than their lives.
Whoever sent them anticipated failure. Expected it, even.
These men weren’t here to succeed—they were here to test response time, breach points, and how many bodies I’d have to step over before someone got past me.
A probe. That’s all this was.
My knuckles throb inside the knuckleduster, blood smeared across the titanium.
I flex my hand and survey the damage. The living room window is gone, glass scattered across the marble like crushed ice.
The coffee table is cracked down the middle where I put the second man through it.
A vase that cost me twelve grand is in pieces by the skirting board.
The crystal vodka decanter survived, which feels like a personal message from the universe about my priorities.
I pull out my phone and dial Kirill. He answers on the first ring because he knows better than to let it go to two.
“Three bodies to clean. My house.”
“On my way.” No questions. That’s why I keep him.
Lidiya.
Pocketing the phone, I take the stairs two at a time, sliding the Glock back into my waistband as I go. The hallway is dark, and I stop outside the third door on the left. It’s ajar. Unlocked. Empty.
My chest tightens.
I move to the next room. Empty.
“Dammit, Lidiya,” I growl. If she’s run, she is dead.
I move to the next door and open it, casting my gaze over the office and coming up empty of frail, little blonde women.
I turn to my bedroom door and turn the handle.
Locked.
Somehow deep in my bones, a dark thrill spikes that she is in my room, locked away, while I protect her.
I kick the door in, the feeble lock snapping under the pressure.
The door flies open, slamming against the wall.
In seconds, I’m pushing open the door to the en-suite and seeing Lidiya in the bathtub, tears streaming down her face as she tries to muffle the sound.
She looks up at me with wild, terrified eyes, her body curled so tight she’s practically folded in half.
The hand clamped over her mouth drops when she sees it’s me, and the sob she’s been holding back rips out of her like something physical, raw and ugly and completely beyond her control.
“It’s me,” I say, keeping my voice low. Steady. The same tone I’d use to approach something wounded and unpredictable. “They’re gone.”
She doesn’t move. Her eyes scan me—my face, my hands, the blood on my knuckles, the knuckleduster I haven’t taken off yet. I watch the moment she registers the blood and the way her already pale face goes a shade whiter.
I strip the knucks off and shove them in my pocket. Out of sight. Then I crouch beside the bath, bringing myself to her level. The porcelain is cold under my palm, where I brace against the rim.
“Lidiya. Look at me.”
Her gaze snaps to mine. The tears haven’t stopped, but she’s fighting them now, jaw clenched, throat working. She’s trying to reassemble herself in real time, and I can see every crack in the process.
“What do you mean gone?” she whispers, dread in every syllable.
“Dead. Three of them. Kirill is on his way with a cleanup team. It’s best if you stay up here. It’s not a pretty sight downstairs.”
“Clean up?” she croaks. “Who is Kirill?”
“My assistant.”
“Your assistant cleans up dead bodies,” she says, and it’s not a question. It’s the sound of a woman recalibrating her entire understanding of the world she’s stumbled into.
“Among other things. He also manages my calendar and picks up my dry cleaning. Very versatile.”
She doesn’t laugh. I didn’t expect her to.
Her hands are gripping the edge of the bath so hard her knuckles have gone bone-white, and the trembling hasn’t stopped.
If anything, it’s gotten worse now that the immediate danger has passed and her body is catching up with what her mind already knows: she was in a house that three armed men just tried to breach, and the only thing between her and them was me.
“Were they here for me?” she asks.
I don’t lie to her. She deserves better than that, and she’d see through it anyway. “Yes.”
The sound she makes isn’t a sob. It’s something worse. It’s a quiet, involuntary exhale that carries the weight of every terrible thing she’s ever suspected about her life finally being confirmed. She presses her forehead against her knees and stays there, breathing in sharp, stuttered pulls.
I give her a moment because pulling her out of this too fast will break something I might need intact later.
“Come on,” I say after ten seconds. “You can’t stay in the bath all night.”
“Watch me.”
I study her serious expression. “I can bring you a pillow and a duvet.”
She nods, grateful that I haven’t hauled her out of the tub. It’s ridiculous, but it’s what she wants to feel safe. Fine by me. I’m fairly sure after an hour in there, she will creep out and slide into my bed… A man can dream.
I move through to the nearest guest bedroom and grab two goose down pillows from the bed and haul the double duvet off, carrying them back to my en-suite.
Lidiya hasn’t moved an inch. I drop the pillows in and hold out the duvet.
She takes it with a shaking hand, pulling it over herself as she curls up under it, covering her head as if that will protect her from the monsters.
“I’ll be downstairs,” I say. “The front door is secure. Kirill will handle the rest.”
No response. Just the faint, rhythmic shudder of the duvet rising and falling with her breathing.
I leave the en-suite and pull the bedroom door closed behind me—or as closed as it gets, given that I just kicked the lock mechanism into the next postcode. The splintered frame stares back at me like an accusation. I’ll fix it tomorrow. Or I won’t. Doors are replaceable. She isn’t.
The thought stops me mid-stride in the hallway. I press my tongue against my teeth and file it away for later examination, preferably when I’m not standing in my home with three dead men cooling on the floor.
I take the stairs down and step over the first body without ceremony.
The hallway looks like a warzone. Glass crunches underfoot.
The console table is canted at an angle, one leg snapped, and there’s a dent in the plasterwork where I put someone’s head through it.
The Basquiat is still crooked. I straighten it as I pass because priorities are priorities.
Kirill pulls up outside and steps into the house with a blink. “Fun,” he says with a sadistic smile. “Crew will be here in five.”
“Does Baron know?” I ask, pouring out two vodkas.
“Not yet. It has been contained. For now.”
I nod. For now, it’s fine. I will tell him, but it will come from me, not the random Bratva grapevine. “Time to up security,” I say. “Looks like the spare is on the radar.”
Kirill snorts at the self-deprecation and nods. “Consider it done.”