27. Thea
THEA
“Kirill,” Pasha says loudly through the door, gun at the ready. “You need to leave now. Walk out the way you came in, and this won’t escalate. That’s your only offer, and I’m making it once. Take it.”
Silence from the hall.
Galina’s back is against the door beside the bolt, the butcher knife still in her fist, blood drying at her chin. My own hand is wrapped around the grip Pasha gave me, muzzle pointed at the floor. Sweat trickles down my spine.
A popping sound lashes out, and I feel it in my teeth and my sternum. There’s a black hole through the door in a puff of splinters, then Pasha folds.
He flops down hard against the desk like his strings got cut, both hands going to his stomach.
When he lifts them away to look, they come back dark and wet and shining in the firelight.
“Oh,” he says, almost polite, like he’s noticed a stain on a shirt.
“That’s—okay.” Then he slumps, halfway on his back on the floor.
Galina’s already down beside him, on her knees, the knife forgotten, both her old hands pressing hard over his. I know enough now to catch the edges of her Russian orders to Pasha.
Stay. Stay, stay, you foolish boy, you stay.
For one absurd second, I’m aware of everything at once. The heat of the fire, Pasha’s breathing gone fast and shallow and wrong next to the desk, Galina’s hands dark to the wrist. The lime, under my ribs, that has no idea any of this is happening.
And then the door comes apart.
Kirill’s one massive kick beside the bolt turns the good old wood to kindling.
Then he steps through the wreckage into the firelight.
He’s exactly as bad as memory promised, and worse now, because I’ve seen what he does with a boot.
Blood sheets down his arm where Galina must have stabbed him. He doesn’t appear to notice it.
The huge man fills the doorway. And behind him, hanging back where it’s safe, is Klaus.
My mind momentarily rejects it. Klaus is meant for dinner tables and expense reports, not here, not with these men.
Behind the two of them, a crowd of men with guns and flat, impatient faces. There are more than I can see, but I hear them.
I grab the fire iron off the hearth and raise it.
A pistol with one magazine does not shoot its way through fifteen men, especially not one wielded by a person who is out of practice.
But a woman with a length of iron and a small pistol can maybe make the next sixty seconds cost more than they want to pay.
“Okay,” I begin. “Okay, everybody just—Klaus. Klaus, look at me, not at him, at me.” My voice comes out shaking. He used to laugh at my jokes across a dinner table. He’s not laughing right now.
He’s smirking.
“This is insane, and you know it’s insane. You’re smarter than this, Klaus. I don’t know if you know, but I’m pregnant with your sibling. You cannot do this.”
His eyes flash with anger, then something else.
I can’t read it. Klaus’s voice is thin, and he looks green under the pricey tan.
“Just—hang on. Nobody’s supposed to—“ He stops, staring down at Pasha on the floor, at the spreading blood. “This isn’t what we’re here for.
Kirill, what the fuck? You were supposed to shoot the lock. ”
Kirill laughs. It’s worse than the gunshot.
He crosses the room toward us in no hurry at all, and he stops over Pasha. And then he moves his boot. Deliberate, slow. He watches my face all the while, then nudges the toe of it near Pasha’s stomach. Pasha’s cry comes out raw, and Galina throws her entire body across him to shield what’s left.
“Stop it.” I’ve got the poker up. “Stop it, you fucking asshole!”
“Little Witness.” Kirill glares down at Pasha. He keeps the boot where it is and watches Pasha’s face while he speaks to me, like we’re two friends catching up at a party. “You have been a problem since the hotel. Do not think name-calling makes you my friend.”
“Back the fuck off of Pasha right now!” I hoist the poker high.
His pale eyes flick up to mine, finally, and there is nothing behind them. No humanity. No soul. Dead eyes. “You should have left town, Little Witness.”
Galina comes up off her knees and drives her fist up into Kirill between the legs. His breath leaves him in a grunt, and he staggers back a half step. His gun swings toward her gray head, and there’s no thinking left in me. I just swing.
The poker catches him across the injured shoulder with a sound like a dropped bell, the shock of it jarring all the way up both my arms into my teeth.
He snarls and the gun jerks off its line.
I plant myself in front of Galina and Pasha with the iron cocked back for another swing.
My heart slams so hard I can feel it in the hand around the grip. “Back away now!”
Kirill straightens. He rolls the struck shoulder, almost lazy about it, testing the joint, and something in his ruined face settles into a quiet decision. He brings the pistol up and levels it. At the center of me. “We’re done here.”
Before I can blink, Klaus steps in front of the gun. His hands half-raised, as if giving up. As if he didn’t just make things worse for himself.
From behind, I watch as his hands shake.
“Kirill, hey. Eyes on me. Put it down. That’s not the job. We take her out of here alive, remember? That’s the entire point. We ransom her back to my father, and we make him pay for her, and we make him kneel to do it. That is what Alexei said, and that is what we will do. Stick to the plan.”
“That is what Sokolov said to you.” Kirill’s voice doesn’t change at all, still that unhurried warmth, as if he was speaking to an old friend. “My boss, he tells people what moves them. You wanted your father humbled, so he sold you a humbling.”
“Sold me—no. That’s not… no.”
Kirill tilts his head. An imitation of sympathy. “The real order came to me. She doesn’t leave this house alive.”
“Bullshit! This is not the plan. Call Alexei. Call him before you do something stupid that you can’t take back!”
The gun doesn’t waver. “Your father doesn’t get a new heir. Is that not what you wanted?”
“Not like this!”
“Maxim gets a house full of his dead and no future in it at all. That is the order, and it was always the order. Now, move.”
“That’s—no.” Klaus’s voice cracks straight down the middle. “You’re lying. That’s not what he said. Alexei looked me in the eye and said—“
“He said what he needed you to hear to cooperate and get us in here.” Kirill smiles, all ice and daggers. “He does not trust you, boy. You sold your own blood over pride. You know Alexei laughs at you when you are not around, don’t you?”
“Like hell he does—”
“You were told the pretty version, so you’d cooperate. It worked. Now move.”
Klaus’s shoulders tense as he plants his feet firmly and stands his ground.
“That’s my brother or sister in there. I won’t let you do this.
Whatever I am or whatever I did, that person is my father’s child, and blood ties me to them.
You’ll have to go through me because I won’t be moving, Kirill, I won’t—“
“Suit yourself.”