40. Vadim
VADIM
I run back through the warehouse, past the rusted machinery and broken concrete, my gun still in my hand and Iosef’s blood still warm across my knuckles.
The moment I reach the loading entrance, I see them.
Anton is beside Sloane, one hand hovering near her elbow as if he’s afraid to touch her without permission, while Marek stands a few feet away with his gun raised toward the open yard, scanning every blind corner with the kind of rage that means he already knows something went badly wrong while he was gone.
Sloane is standing, barely. Her face is pale, one hand braced against the support pillar, the other pressed low over her stomach.
She looks at me first. Then at the blood on me. Then at the warehouse behind me.
“Vadim.”
I go straight to her.
Anton steps back immediately.
Marek does not. “Where were you?” he demands, his voice rough with anger and something close to fear. “We thought we heard shots, then we found her out here alone.”
“There’s no time to explain.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting right now.”
Anton looks past me into the warehouse. His eyes narrow. “What happened inside?”
“Petrov is in there,” I say. “He’s alive, but badly injured.”
Marek’s head turns toward the warehouse entrance. “Petrov is alive?”
“For now.”
Anton gestures to two of the men who arrived behind him, and they move toward the entrance with weapons ready.
Marek keeps looking at me. Then around the yard. “Where is Iosef? And why was he here in the first place? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him interested in being in the line of fire.”
I look at Sloane. She’s watching me with wide eyes, and I know she heard enough inside that warehouse to understand pieces of it. Maybe not all, but enough.
“That’s because he got us into this hot shit,” I murmur.
Marek stares at me.
Anton’s expression changes by a fraction, but on Anton, a fraction is enough to mean he has felt the ground move beneath him.
“What?” Marek says.
“Iosef was the leak.”
For a moment, neither of them reacts.
Then Marek says, very softly, “No.”
“Yes.”
Anton’s voice is low. “Are you certain?”
“He admitted enough.”
Marek looks toward the warehouse again, fury rearranging itself into something more dangerous. “Where is he?”
“Dead.”
That silence is different. Heavier.
Anton’s jaw works once, the only visible sign that Iosef’s betrayal has reached somewhere personal. Eleven years is a long time to stand beside a man and not know he has been waiting for the right moment to destroy you.
Marek looks at me, then at the blood on my shirt. “Did he shoot you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters if you’re bleeding out.”
“I’m not.”
“You look like hell.”
“You should see him.”
Sloane makes a small sound, and all three of us turn to her. She tries to straighten, but her knees soften instead, and I catch her before she can slide down the pillar.
Her hand grips my shirt. “Uh, guys,” she says, and her voice is shaky enough to stop everything else cold. “I think my water just broke.”
For half a second, the whole yard becomes impossibly quiet.
Marek blinks.
Anton looks down.
I look too. The fabric of her dress is dripping wet.