72. Vasiliy
My fist slams against the door.
Again.
Again.
My knuckles bleed, but the sturdy metal doesn’t give way in the slightest. Prone bodies fill the hall, marking my pathway with splatters of red.
The distant explosions have died down, and the rampant gunfire has fallen to a gentle scattering like the end of a storm.
From my earpiece, I know Ivan’s team has successfully infiltrated the compound.
By all accounts but one, we are winning this battle.
And none of that matters if I can’t get into this door.
With a few steps back, I run forward and throw every last bit of force at the shiny metal.
It doesn’t move. Not even a rattle. I didn’t think anything could be worse than clutching the bars and watching them slice her in that chair, but at least I could see her twitching limbs and that delirious grin.
At least I could be sure that her heart was still beating.
Pop.
Pop, pop.
Gunshots.
“Octavia?” I roar, slamming harder. “Octavia!”
My chest splits open. It doesn’t matter that the door is unaffected by my efforts. I keep hitting. Keep screaming her name over and over. The skin on my fists tears off, and my limbs ache from slamming the expanse. I’m a damn idiot. I should’ve seen the signs.
I can’t survive this failure. I won’t—I…
The metal groans.
For a moment, I think my force has finally had some effect, but then I hear the lock twist from the other side.
With a whoosh of stale air, the door swings open.
And a body crashes into me.
It is only when my lungs heave, and my soul returns, that I realize it has been sliced in two.
Ownership is no longer mine to hold. I fold around her middle.
Drown in her perfect scent. I know every cell in this body.
I know how she breathes. How she laughs.
I know there are twenty-two freckles on her left cheek and thirty-nine on her right.
If she wishes to take so much every time she leaves, so be it.
I will learn to be soulless without her.
“I’m okay,” she soothes, one hand brushing the back of my neck. I can’t respond. All I can do is hold her tighter. “Everything will be okay now.”
She’s okay.
I bury my nose into her neck.
She’s okay.
“I can’t get his chains off,” she whispers.
My attention finally drifts to the room behind her. Bodies litter the floor where Kirill is chained to the wall, slumped back in exhaustion. One particular corpse differs from the others. Igor Popov’s lifeless form lies a few feet away, throat split in a glistening puddle of red.
She did it. She killed him with her own hands.
“He’s in bad shape, Vas.” Her green eyes are wide and consuming, impossibly bright beside flushed, swollen cheeks.
“I’ll take care of it,” I murmur, slipping my lock-picking kit from the lower pocket of my pants.
Pulling away from her proves harder than I expected, especially when she tugs me back with a grip on my shirt.
Her forehead presses to mine. Then her hand trails over my waist until her fingers wrap the gun still sitting in my holster.
She checks the chamber. Her hand drops from my collar. I don’t move as she walks back to her grandfather’s body, flicks off the safety, and aims the barrel.
The gun fires.
It doesn’t stop firing, not until the entire magazine is buried into his lifeless body, and whatever’s left is unrecognizable in the gore.