Chapter 2
KONSTANTIN
The table breaks across my shoulders before I can move Nora clear.
Wood cracks above us, and crystal rains over my hands while the linen collapses around our bodies in a wet tent smelling of wine and gunpowder. Beneath me, Nora makes one small sound through her teeth, sharpened by pain.
Braced on one forearm, I lift enough of the ruined tablecloth to find her face. A bright line of blood marks the corner of her mouth, red on red where her lipstick has been kissed away, but her eyes are open and fixed on mine.
"Can you move?"
Her eyes narrow through the dust. "I can move. I would also like an explanation before another piece of furniture tries to kill me."
Another round strikes the stone base behind her. Fragments hiss across the floor.
"You'll have one in the car. Until then, stay under me and save your anger for somewhere with armored doors."
"Fine." Her mouth tightens around the blood. "But I'm not wasting it."
Her contempt remains intact. Relief goes through me with unpleasant force.
I tear the ruined cloth aside. Overturned tables, fallen waiters in pale jackets, and bodies pressed to the floor have made the dining room a maze.
Snow flies through the broken lake windows.
Each time a weapon flashes outside, my men answer from behind the limestone columns.
They fire only on targets while the attackers spray the room.
Near the entrance, the port patriarch is down behind a serving station with his daughter. One of his guards lies across the open marble, his arm stretched toward a pistol he won't reach. The other fires toward the doors while bullets continue to strike the stone around their own principal.
Bullets chew through linen, plaster, wood, and flesh without favor. Whoever planned this intends to leave bodies from both families on the floor.
My security chief appears beside the wreckage, gun held close to his body. Blood darkens one sleeve, though his hand remains steady.
He reports the kitchen route open, with at least two shooters working the lake side and three more through the service entrance. The first port vehicle took rounds before our table did.
Across the room, the patriarch stares at me through the settling dust. His expression does not change. Hearing that both families are under attack has done nothing to weaken his suspicion of me.
I order the port delegation moved on its own route and then have my lead car prepared. Nora comes with me.
My security chief looks at Nora under me, then at the corridor his team cleared for one passenger. His hesitation lasts less than a heartbeat before he abandons the north vehicle and orders the armored sedan brought to the laundry dock.
Years beside me have taught him to move before asking why. His questions will come later, sharpened by the fact that I altered an evacuation plan during an attack for a woman whose last name I don't know.
I slide my hand beneath Nora's arm. "When I move, stay against me. Do not stop. Do not look toward the windows."
"You keep issuing instructions as if I've forgotten how to listen." Her fingers close around my sleeve. "I'm going with you because the bullets are persuasive. Announcing our wedding didn't entitle you to give me orders."
I look at her for half a second longer than the room allows. Her hair has fallen from its pins, with one bare shoulder stippled by tiny pieces of wood. The green dress is twisted high over one thigh. My body registers all of it with an appetite I resent.
"I remember both parts," I say.
My men lay down fire. I pull Nora up and turn her into my chest before we run.
She does exactly what I tell her.
The trust is involuntary, born from gunfire and a shortage of choices, but her hand closes around my jacket with enough force to give that trust weight.
We cross behind the cover of an overturned wine cabinet.
A bullet strikes its brass frame as we pass, making the bottles jump in their racks. Nora flinches without breaking stride.
At the kitchen doors, a young waiter lies curled against the wall with both hands clamped over his forearm. Blood runs between his fingers. Nora sees him before I do.
She drops.
"Nora."
"I bit my tongue. He has a hole in his arm." She snatches the nearest fallen napkin, folds it into a thick square, and presses it into the waiter's shaking hand. "Give me three seconds."
Her voice changes when she speaks to him, becoming calm and firm in a way that belongs under bright clinic lights rather than gunfire.
"Hold this exactly here. Harder than you think. Someone is coming for you."
My security chief signals one of the rear men, who drags the waiter behind stone cover. Nora rises before I have to touch her. She knows when to keep moving, yet spends three seconds on someone everyone else stepped over.
Then her palm returns to my jacket.
The kitchen is all white tile and stainless steel, designed to withstand heat but never this kind.
Steam pours from an abandoned stockpot. Something sweet burns in an oven, butter and sugar blackening together while cooks crouch beneath their stations with hands over their heads.
We pass through rows of hanging pans that tremble at every shot in the dining room, their copper bottoms flashing under the hard fluorescent light.
A dishwasher stands frozen in the middle of the passage. Nora reaches for his wrist as we pass and pulls him down behind the steel prep counter. He goes because her voice leaves no room to refuse.
"Stay low," she tells him.
My advance man cracks the service door. While he checks the narrow corridor, I picture Nora at work, putting sharp instruments into frightened mouths while expecting obedience.
He lifts two fingers. Clear.
The instant we enter, the dining-room gunfire dulls behind the fire door. The quiet is worse. It makes every footfall distinct and turns the metal walls into a channel for sound.
My security chief speaks low beside us, keeping the report inside the moving group.
The north exit is compromised, the camera network went dark ninety seconds before first fire, and the authorization came through a ground-services vendor still approved in my aviation system despite years of inactivity.
Someone has reached into my legitimate empire to put my fingerprints on a massacre.
Nora turns her head without slowing. "I heard aviation. Whatever you mean by later, it had better include why restaurant gunmen are using credentials from your company."
I promise her the full explanation once we are behind armored doors.
At the far end of the corridor, a red exit sign glows above the turn toward the loading bay. My lead vehicle should be waiting beyond it, positioned for a clean north departure. Now the north side belongs to whoever knew the plan.
My security chief confirms the armored car is waiting at the laundry dock. The port daughter is already clear, with her father thirty seconds behind on the south route.
Nora's grip loosens. She has been waiting for that answer.
She catches me noticing. "Of course I was worried. She looked as though everyone in the room had decided her life except her." Nora glances back once before the corridor turns. "I recognize the feeling."
A burst of shots sounds beyond the loading bay. My advance man stops so abruptly Nora strikes my chest. I close an arm around her and move us both behind a steel linen cart while two of my men take the corner.
The cart is too small for the width of my shoulders. Nora fits against me because I make her fit, her back tight to my chest and my palm spread low across her stomach. Her breath catches. So does mine, though no one alive would hear it.
Her perfume survived the powder and spilled wine. Its faint floral warmth now mixes with snow from the broken windows. Beneath my hand, her body rises with each quick breath. She followed me through the gunfire, and the next bullet hasn't found her.
I lower my mouth to her ear. "When the door opens, six steps to the car."
"You knew the distance in the middle of a gunfight?"
I tell her I checked when the vehicle was repositioned because I locate the exits before I sit down. Her look suggests she now understands why I try to control every situation.
I remember the kiss in humiliating detail. Her fingers close in my lapel, and her mouth catches mine at the moment a useful performance becomes real desire. I intended to borrow her courage for ten minutes. Instead I claimed her as my intended wife.
The loading-bay door opens onto the laundry dock, and winter air strikes us full in the face.
My men fire toward a black shape behind the dumpsters.
I take Nora across the six icy steps. My body shields hers from the open lot.
The rear door of the armored sedan waits wide.
She climbs in without being pushed, gathering her green skirt with one hand while leaving a smear of blood from the other on the pale leather.
I get in after her. One of my men throws a black wool coat around her shoulders before the door slams, sealing out the snow and most of the gunfire. The vehicle surges, throwing us both toward the center.
Nora catches herself against my chest. For a fraction of a second she stays there, one knee between mine, her mouth inches away. I can see where her teeth broke the skin of her tongue. Her pupils are wide. Anger holds her upright when shock would prefer the floor.
Then she plants a hand against me and pushes away.
"Who are you?"
Once I tell her who I am, she cannot return to being the ordinary woman who was drinking wine alone beneath amber lights.
"I lead a Bratva family. The aviation network is mine, along with the men who moved us out of that restaurant. The gunmen are not."