Vadim
“Try that again, and I will remove your head from your shoulders with my bare hands,” I snap, firing off a round as one of Melnikov’s men tries to shoot me in the head. “Arsehole.”
The man drops behind an overturned table, and I duck behind the bar, wood splintering above my head as another shot cracks through the already-cleared club.
Anton’s men have made a mess of my floor. Glass everywhere. Bottles smashed against the mirror behind the bar, spirits splashed everywhere. Somewhere behind me, another glass shatters.
I risk a look over the bar. Anton raises his gun, and I duck, cursing the daylights out of him for pinning me down in my own club.
I’ve got three men down, Bogdan with some random woman I felt the insane need to protect instead of throwing to the wolves, and now I’m pissed off.
I count the shots. Anton’s man to the left, another near the stairs, and Anton himself somewhere behind the second column, using it for cover like the coward he is.
I press my back against the bar and reload, my fingers steady even as adrenaline burns through my veins. This is the part I like. The part where the noise stops mattering and everything narrows down to angles and timing.
“Anton!” I shout. “You need to fuck off before my pakhan realises you’re here.”
“You killed my brother, Voronov!”
“Sadly, no.” I lean out, fire twice, and duck back before his return shot takes a chunk out of the bar edge. “But keep shooting up my club, and I’ll consider killing you so you can join him.”
The club goes silent. I don’t take that to mean Anton and his remaining men have left. They’re up to something.
They know Bogdan was here and then left. They know he left with something I want to protect.
It gets me to my feet, and I fire, hitting two men with non-fatal rounds as Mika and Dimi pivot and give me cover. I reach Anton as his men scramble, and I press the barrel of the gun to the back of his head. “Get the fuck out before I shoot you dead.”
Anton goes rigid beneath the muzzle of my gun. His breathing turns ragged, but he doesn’t move. Smart man, for once in his miserable life.
“Order them to stop,” I say. “Now.”
“You think this ends here?” His voice shakes, but the words come out defiant anyway. Men like him never know when to shut their mouths. “My brother is dead, Voronov. Someone pays for that.”
“Not me.” I press the barrel harder against his skull. “And not anyone in my club, unless you keep giving me reasons to make an exception.”
Somewhere behind the overturned tables, one of his men shifts. I hear the scrape of a shoe against broken glass.
“Tell him to stand down,” I say, “or I redecorate this floor with what’s left of your head, and then I hunt the rest of them down one at a time. You’ve got the wrong man, Melnikov, and I don’t appreciate false accusations. You have five seconds to move out, and two of them are already gone.”
Anton’s chest rises and falls hard beneath my grip on his collar. His men have gone quiet, waiting for a word that doesn’t come. I count three seconds in my head before he finally raises his hand, palm out, low enough that his own people see it.
“Stand down,” he calls out, voice cracking on the second word.
Nothing moves for a beat. Then a chair scrapes somewhere near the stairs, and one of his men rises with his free hand up, gun pointed at the floor.
“All of you,” Anton says louder, and the rest follow, dropping weapons or lowering them, stepping out from behind the wreckage of my club like cockroaches caught under a light. He bought a fucking army. No wonder we got pinned down so fucking quickly.
I don’t lower my gun. “Good boy.”
“This isn’t finished,” he mutters.
“You said that already. Too bad you chose a Voronov to attack. We don’t fuck around.”
“Just shoot him,” Mika snarls. “Kusok govna.”
“Yes, he is a piece of shit, but I’m not about to start a war over this. Get the fuck out, Melnikov, and don’t come back.”
I step back but keep the gun raised, ready.
He is about to make the biggest mistake of his life, and this is what I was waiting for.
Unequivocal permission to fire at his face.
Anton straightens his jacket with shaking fingers, trying to salvage some dignity from the wreckage he made of my club.
He casually turns, but then his gun comes up, and he spins, aiming it at my face. I fire.
The bullet hits him square between the eyes, and he goes down.
“Problem solved.”
The rest of his men scatter like rats.
Mika lowers his gun and stares at Anton’s body, then at me. “Nice.”
“You lack faith.”
“Pakhan’s going to lose his shit.”
“Nah. He’ll manage.” I holster my weapon and survey the wreckage.
Broken glass crunches under my boots as I walk the floor, checking corners, checking shadows.
Nobody’s stupid enough to still be hiding.
Anton’s remaining men are long gone, half-carrying their wounded, leaving a trail of blood toward the fire exit.
Dimi picks his way over an upturned table, blood running from a graze along his temple. “Want me to call clean up?”
“Yes. And get this floor cleaned before the night crowd shows up expecting cocktails, not a crime scene.”
“On it.”
I check my watch, luckily unscathed by this unfortunate skirmish. I’ve been gone ten minutes.
I head out anyway because Bogdan likes to defy an order, and I have a feeling he hasn’t driven off into the sunset with my mystery woman, despite being told to.
As I round the corner to the private parking at the back of the club, I discover I’m correct. My Bentley still sits there with Bogdan looming over it, arms crossed, face vicious.
“You were meant to leave,” I chide.
He shakes his head.
Fair enough.
I open the driver’s side door and climb in. “What the fuck is your name?” I ask the woman.
She flinches at the sharpness of my voice, wet hair plastered to her cheek, and for a second, she just stares at me like the question is too big to answer.
“Taisiya,” she finally says. “Taisiya Korotayeva.”
I start the engine, and the dash lights up. She’s shaking.
“Is he dead?” she asks. “Anton?”
“Very.”
She exhales slowly. She looks down at her hands, at the bruise on her wrist. “You killed him.”
“He tried to kill me first. Poor decision by anyone, especially cockroaches like him.”
“Who are you?” she asks. “And why are you protecting me?”
“Vadim Voronov,” I reply. “And fucked if I know.”
I pull away from the club, leaving Bogdan to find his own way home. I’m sure he’ll manage.
“Where are you taking me?” she whispers.
“To my home. It’s the safest place to be until this is figured out.”
“It is figured out. You said Anton was dead.”
“You think Anton is the only one who will be concerned Gregor is dead?”
She chews her lip. “I—I…”
“Exactly. You aren’t safe.”
“So, get me the passport, and I can get out of here. I’m not your responsibility.”
“You are now.”
“Why?”
“I wish I knew.”
She doesn’t say anything else for a while, and I don’t push. The wipers cut a steady rhythm against the windscreen, matching the pace of my thoughts as I take the corner too fast and correct without thinking about it.
Taisiya looks out the window and up at the house as I pull into the driveway. The gates open and she whimpers.
“It’s just a house,” I say, though it’s a fucking mansion, and I’m not stupid enough to think otherwise.
“That’s not a house. That’s a compound.”
“Semantics.”
The gates close behind us with a heavy clank, and I park the Bentley beside the front steps. She hasn’t moved. Her hands stay knotted in her lap.
“You’re not getting out?”
“I’m considering my options.”
“You don’t have any. That’s the point.”
She glares at me, and even soaked through and shaking, there’s something sharp behind it, something that hasn’t quite broken yet despite today’s best efforts. I find myself oddly pleased about that.
“Fine,” she mutters, and shoves the door open before I can walk round to open it for her.
She stumbles out into the rain, and I round the bonnet before she face-plants on my drive. She doesn’t thank me. She yanks her arm free the second she’s steady and glares up at the house.
“How many people live here?” she asks.
“Me. Ivan.”
“Ivan. Your…” she chews her bottom lip.
“Butler.” I smirk.
“You have a butler.”
“Ivan.”
“Right.” She wraps her arms around herself, rain still dripping off the ends of her hair, running down the collar of that ridiculous coat. “Does he stab people too, or is that just you and the giant?”
“Bogdan doesn’t stab. He prefers his hands.”
“Comforting,” she mutters.
Ivan opens the door before we reach it, and takes one look at Taisiya’s soaked coat and white face without so much as a blink. Thirty years in my family’s employment will do that to a man.
“Sir,” he says, then turns his attention to her. “Madam.”
“I’m not a madam,” she mutters, stepping past him into the entrance hall. She stops dead the second she’s inside, staring up at the chandelier, the marble, the sweeping staircase like she walked into the wrong postcode entirely.
Ivan closes the door behind us, shutting out the rain. I shrug out of my jacket and hand it to him without looking, already studying her instead. She is a killer, and yet she is not Bratva.
“This is bigger than my entire building,” she says. “My entire building could fit in this hallway.”
“Probably.”
“That’s not normal.”
“It is to me.”
“Well, la-di-da.” She turns to look at me and lifts her chin. “I need dry clothes.”
“Ivan will sort something.”
“Right away, sir,” Ivan says, already halfway up the stairs.
“Not some lost and found bullshit,” she says with a pointed look.
“Nothing lost and found about it, madam,” Ivan calls back over his shoulder, unbothered by her tone. “I’ll find something suitable.”
“I’ll be over here dripping on your obscenely expensive floor, then.”
I gesture towards the sitting room off the main hall. “Through there. There’s a fire.”
She doesn’t move. Her eyes track from the chandelier to the paintings lining the staircase, oil on canvas, real ones, not prints, and I watch her doing the calculations in her head, working out how many years of her rent this house represents.
Whatever number she lands on, it doesn’t sit well with her, judging by the way her jaw tightens.
“Are you coming, or are you planning to redecorate my hallway with your opinions?” I ask.
She glances back up the stairs, to the front door, and then, with reluctance, follows me into the sitting room where Ivan has created a roaring fire.