Chapter 6 #3
I grab Yulia and yank her from her seat.
She gasps as I pull her under our table, one of my arms locked tightly around her middle.
I throw my shoulder against the edge of the table, knocking it onto its side to create a crude barrier.
My knees slam into the tile, and hot tea spills across the floor, steaming against the cold floor that is now flooded with broken shards from the windows.
Yulia’s shaking. I hold her tighter, curling my body around hers, shielding her with every inch of myself. Her tiny hands clutch my coat in fistfuls. Her head is pressed against my chest, and I can feel the ragged rhythm of her breathing against my neck.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, even though I have no idea if it’s true. “It’s okay, honey. Just stay still. Don’t move.”
Another round of shots rips through the cafe, inside this time. I flinch, ducking lower, pressing her tighter to the floor. Muffled yelling echoes around us, commands barked in Russian that sound sharp and urgent. Someone sobs nearby.
I start counting seconds under my breath. One. Two. Three.
It has to stop soon. Drive-bys don’t last this long. Not in broad daylight like this. Whoever the target was, they’ve either been hit or gotten away. That’s how these things go. Hit and run, loud and fast. A storm that tears through and disappears before anyone can react.
Ten seconds. Fifteen.
A ringing hush fills my ears, not just from the gunfire, but from the absence of anything else.
I can’t even hear the crying anymore. No screams or moans of pain.
No panicked shuffling of people getting up and scrambling to leave as the eye of the storm comes.
Just the deafening silence and the heavy, horrible knowledge that someone is still here.
I swallow.
Boots crunch over broken glass just a few feet away. Each step sounds like a hammer slamming against the floor, over and over at an excruciatingly slow pace. Yulia holds her breath. I feel it. She’s completely still now, her body understanding something her brain can’t name yet.
The footsteps get closer, then they stop right beside us.
I freeze. My body hums with fear. I hear the slow bend of leather, the dull crunch of boots shifting on broken glass as the figure close to us crouches.
A shadow slinks over us, the faint glint of something metallic catching my eyes when I raise them up from the broken shards of glass surrounding us.
“You two,” a voice says, calm, and in near-perfect English. “Get up.”
When I lift my head, I see a man crouching with his hands dangled between his spread thighs, dressed head to toe in black.
Tactical clothing, not casual. The side of his face is streaked with blood.
His hands are bare, and one of them clutches a gun loosely that he lifts to settle into the holster at his hip.
He stares at me with eyes so cold and icy blue that they make my stomach drop. When he lifts back up onto his feet, the glass under his boots crunches again, making me flinch.
“Up,” the man repeats, this time with less patience.
My heart stutters so hard, I think it might stop altogether.
Having no choice, I reluctantly rise, dragging Yulia with me and tucking her firmly against my side. My arms shield her small frame even as my knees wobble beneath me.
Behind him, the cafe is a war zone.
Glass and splintered wood litter the floor. The pastry display case is a shattered mess, its contents destroyed. A man lies slumped over the counter, his head at a grotesque angle, blood pooling beneath him in a slow, horrifying bloom.
The other patrons are still pressed flat against the floor, though some of them are lying unnaturally still.
I pull Yulia tighter against me.
“Where are you taking us?” I manage to say.
He doesn’t answer. He just turns and begins walking toward the back of the cafe, past the complete chaos that’s been left of it. He moves with the confidence of a man who’s used to being obeyed, a man who expects fear to be enough of a tactic to get him what he wants.
I’m too afraid not to do as he says, because what else can I do?
I carry Yulia as I make my way over to where he’s paused at the open back doorway. We follow him through the ruined kitchen, past pans and trays knocked from the counters, through a door that slams behind us as we exit into the alley so loudly that we both flinch.
A black SUV idles there, parked halfway into the narrow alleyway. Its tinted windows reflect the gray sky above and the devastation we’ve just escaped. The engine hums softly, far too calm in contrast to the panic still thundering in my chest.
A woman stands by the rear passenger door, dressed almost identically. She holds the door open as we approach, her expression pinching for a quick moment before falling into something unreadable.
I stop in my tracks. “We’re not going anywhere with you.”
The man who led us out turns back toward me. There’s no surprise in his expression, just a sharp exhale through his nose. “This isn’t up for negotiation. Get in the car.”
My voice rises despite the panic rattling in my chest. “No. You don’t get to order us around. You don’t explain anything, and now you expect us to just follow you after what just happened in there?”
“We just saved your life,” he says simply. “You can thank us later. Now get in the fucking car.”