28. Vadim
VADIM
One minute she’s there, and the next she’s gone.
I see Sloane beside Camille when the shooting starts, pale and frozen, blood across the front of her dress and one hand still lifted as though she has not understood yet that the woman in front of her is already dead.
Then the garden erupts.
Men are shouting from the eastern side of the grounds, somebody fires from beyond the hedge, and two of my security team move between us at the same time. I turn because another round hits the stone near the terrace and Anton is yelling that someone has breached the side perimeter.
It can’t be more than a few seconds.
When I look back, Camille is on the ground.
Sloane isn’t there.
“Sloane!”
There’s no answer.
I move toward the path immediately, scanning the garden as men rush in both directions around me, but there’s no dark hair, no pale dress, no glimpse of her between the hedges.
She was right there. I saw her. I saw the way she looked at me after I shot Camille.
That’s the part I can’t stop seeing.
Camille was running toward Sloane with a bloody knife in her hand.
Anton had already told me through the radio that Iosef had been attacked inside the house, and when I saw Camille coming out of the dark with that knife still in her hand, heading straight for Sloane, there had been nothing to consider. I aimed at her and fired.
I would make the same choice again.
What I didn’t expect was the look on Sloane’s face afterward.
She hadn’t known about Iosef. All she saw was Camille running toward her, saying something I couldn’t hear, and then me raising a gun and putting a bullet into her.
“Sloane!”
Still nothing.
Anton reaches me near the path. “East side is being contained.”
“I don’t care about the east side. Where is Sloane?”
He looks around. “I thought she was with you.”
Something inside me twists hard enough to hurt. “She was.” I turn toward the gate. “Get men on every exit.”
“They already are.”
“Then put more.”
“Vadim—”
“Do it.”
He doesn’t argue again.
I move farther into the garden, past Camille’s body and toward the line of trees where Sloane might have run.
There are too many people outside now. Guards.
Staff being moved toward the house. Men checking the hedges and outer wall.
Every movement catches my eye because for half a second I think it might be her.
None of them are.
My house is under attack.
The thought comes almost separately from everything else, and when it finally settles properly in my head, the anger that follows is so complete that it blurs my vision for a second. But I have to think clearly.
The garden is full of more people now, which makes it worse rather than better, because every dark shape becomes her for half a second before resolving into one of my men or one of the household staff being moved toward the interior rooms. A security team crosses the lawn carrying one of the injured between them.
Another man is shouting that the east service door has been forced.
Somebody else reports movement near the outer wall.
None of it matters.
Not until I see her.
“Sloane!”
Nothing. No answer.
I turn toward the gate. “Anton!”
He appears from behind the terrace wall, moving quickly. “What?”
“Gate.”
His eyes follow mine. “The front gate is secure.”
“Check it again.”
“It’s secure.”
“I said check it.”
Something in my voice makes him stop arguing. He speaks into his radio immediately.
I keep moving.
There’s blood on the path. Too much of it, although most belongs to Camille. My shoes leave dark marks through it as I pass. I don’t look down again.
I’ve been attacked many times. That’s the price I pay for being a Pakhan.
This is different. They came into my home.
My home.
Another burst of gunfire comes from somewhere near the western service road. I turn toward it instinctively, raising my weapon, and one of my men shouts that the shooter is down.
Anton reaches me again. “Front gate is still locked. Main access has not opened.”
“What about the service gate?”
“Checking.”
“Cameras?”
“Somebody knocked out two feeds three minutes before the first shot.”
Of course they did.
I look toward the house. “Inside job.”
Anton doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.
Camille. The knife.
I force myself to think beyond Sloane for three seconds, because panic is useless and I have survived too long by refusing to let fear choose the next move.
“Where is Iosef?”
“Inside. Near the study.”
I look once more toward the gate.
Nothing. No Sloane.
“Keep searching.”
Then I go inside.
The first thing I see is the birthday table. Half the cake is still sitting there. Glasses have been abandoned beside plates. A ribbon hangs from the back of one chair, and one of the paper decorations Anya insisted on making is lying on the floor where someone stepped on it.
Less than an hour ago, everybody was laughing.
Sloane was sitting beside me. She leaned closer when Anya tried to convince Mila that one slice of cake was not enough, and I rested my hand on her knee under the table because I liked knowing she was there.
Now there’s blood on the hallway floor.
Iosef is lying against the wall outside the study while a medic works over him. His shirt has been opened around the wound, and there’s blood along his side and shoulder. His face is pale, but his eyes open when I crouch beside him.
His voice is weak. “She came looking for you.”
I glance toward the study. “And?”
“I told her you were outside.” He winces when the medic presses fresh dressing against his side. “I knew something was wrong about her,” he says. “I tried to ask more questions, but she attacked me instead.”
“Did anyone come with her?”
“I didn’t see anyone,” he says.
The medic tells him to stop talking. This time I let him.
Anton is a few feet away, listening. “What do you think got into her?”
“My guess?” I say. “She got spooked. And then she decided to go after Sloane next.”
“Maybe.”
“There is no maybe.”
I know what I saw. Whatever Camille intended to tell Sloane does not matter now. Camille stabbed Iosef and then ran toward Sloane with the same weapon in her hand.
I don’t regret firing.
I regret only that Sloane didn’t know why I did it.
Because now she’s missing.
I head back outside. The gunfire has mostly stopped, but the grounds are still full of movement. Men are checking the perimeter, calling locations through radios.
I hate every second of it.
“Any sign of her?”
One of the guards shakes his head. “No, sir.”
“What about the cameras?”
“We lost several feeds before the attack.”
“Which ones?”
“The east garden and part of the front approach.”
Anton is watching me. I know what he sees.
I know because I’ve seen the same thing in men who have just realized that fear has found the one place inside them they cannot cauterize.
“She could be anywhere,” he says.
“No.”
“Sloane could have hidden.”
“She ran toward the gate.”
He pauses. “You saw her?”
“I saw the direction.” I turn away. Every second we spend speaking feels stolen from something worse.
I move back toward the garden. The air outside smells of smoke, earth and blood. My men have secured most of the grounds now, but there are still reports coming in from the outer perimeter, and every one of them feeds the same question.
Where is she?
I reach the place where the path splits toward the front gate.
One of Sloane’s shoes lies in the grass.
I stop. It is hers. Black, narrow heel. The pair she wore with the dress tonight.
I pick it up, and for several seconds I just stand there holding it.
I remember fastening the zipper of that dress for her. I remember her turning around and asking whether it was too much. I remember telling her it wasn’t enough. I remember her laughing and pushing my shoulder.
That was hours ago.
Now I’m holding one of her shoes in a garden full of spent casings.
“Sloane.”
Her name comes out quieter this time.
I walk farther. The second shoe is near the hedge, and then there are marks in the grass. A heel dug into the earth. A scuff. Something that looks like the imprint of a knee.
I crouch.
Someone struggled here.
My vision narrows. “Anton.”
He’s beside me almost immediately.
“There.”
He looks down, and his expression hardens. “She was grabbed.”
I stand too quickly. “Find the camera covering this section.”
“It was one of the feeds that went down.”
I turn on him. “Then find another angle.”
“We’re doing that.”
“Do it faster,” I say.
He says nothing.
I walk toward the gate. The security booth is empty. That is wrong. “Where is the guard?” I ask.
Anton turns toward one of the perimeter men. “Where is Petru?”
The man looks toward the booth. “He was here.”
“Was?”
Nobody answers.
Anton opens the booth door. Blood is smeared along the inside wall. The guard is on the floor. He’s alive, barely.
My phone vibrates, and I answer without looking. “What?”
“Sir, east team has two bodies. Neither is ours.”
“Identities?”
“Not yet.”
“Sloane?”
“No sign.”
I end the call.
No sign. The words are becoming unbearable.
I turn toward Anton. “Lock every exit.”
“They already are.”
“Nobody leaves.”
“Nobody is.”
“Search every vehicle.”
“Yes.”
“Basement. Staff quarters. Garages. Storage. Roof access. Every fucking room.”
“We are.”
I step closer. “If she is not inside this compound, I want every road sealed before whoever took her gets five kilometers from this house.”
Anton holds my gaze. “It’s being done.”
My chest feels too tight. I force air into it.
The last time I felt this kind of fear, I was a boy in a cellar listening to rats move behind the walls.
That fear had been simple. I had been afraid for myself. But this is different, because I can’t control what they do to her. Because I can imagine what someone might do to Sloane.
I know exactly how men like Petrov think because I have spent my life surrounded by them. If he has her, he won’t simply kill her.
I grip the shoe in my hand until the edge digs into my palm.
I think of Sloane arguing with me beside the terrace doors.
When can I leave?
The answer has not changed.
That was what I told her. I was so certain I was keeping her safe. The thought makes bile rise in my throat.
I kept her here. I told her she was safer inside my walls.
Then men entered those walls.
If she dies because I refused to let her leave—
No.
I shut the thought down so violently it almost makes me dizzy.
She is alive. She has to be. I won’t imagine anything else.
A security man comes running from the house. “Mr. Chernovar.”
I turn. His face is pale. Not from the gunfire, from something else.
“What?”
He stops a few feet away. Looks at Anton, then at me. “Sir…”
My patience disappears. “Speak.”
His throat works. “We have another problem.”
I take one step toward him. “What problem?”
He looks toward the house. “We can’t seem to locate your sister, Mila.”
“What do you mean you can’t find her?” I ask.
He looks almost afraid to answer.
“She’s missing too.”