Chapter Fifteen #2
"Raisa!" Marco screamed, a sound of pure, feral agony tearing from his throat. The Italian Capo abandoned his cover. He stepped into the open hallway, his weapon barking a continuous, rhythm, annihilating the man who had struck his wife before rushing to her side.
The firefight devolved into chaotic, desperate, close-quarters carnage.
Tamara, huddled behind the pillar, saw Nadia Rostova stepping out of the shadows of the adjacent corridor, looking frail and disoriented by the deafening noise.
"Babushka, no!" Tamara cried out, terrified for the older woman.
Tamara broke from the cover of the pillar, sprinting across the open space to pull Nadia back. As she grabbed the matriarch’s arm, a volley of bullets shattered the mirror hanging on the wall directly above them.
The jagged shards of mirror rained down like shrapnel. A thick, razor-sharp piece of glass sliced brutally across Tamara’s forehead, tearing the skin open to the bone.
Tamara cried out as the warm, thick blood instantly flooded down her face, blinding her left eye, but she didn't let go of Nadia. She pulled the older woman down, trying to shield her with her own body.
"Tamara!" Sasha bellowed, seeing his wife bleeding. He lunged forward to reach her, his weapon firing continuously into the retreating Ukrainian line.
But the Odessa operatives were desperate. They were cornered, bleeding, and trying to secure their exit. The lead Ukrainian mercenary, realizing they were being overwhelmed by the Bratva counterattack, grabbed the nearest, most valuable asset he could reach.
Yelena Voronin, who had stepped out from behind a statue to try and drag Raisa to safety, was violently seized.
"Move and I kill her!" the mercenary roared in Ukrainian, wrapping his arm around Yelena’s throat, pressing the barrel of a pistol directly to her temple.
Sergei Voronin froze, the blood draining from his face as he watched his wife being used as a human shield.
"Let her go!" Dmitri screamed, taking a step forward, his weapon raised.
"Back up!" the mercenary shouted, dragging Yelena backward toward the shattered front doors while his men provided cover fire.
In the chaos of the retreat, another Odessa operative turned his rifle blindly into the hall, unleashing a wide, desperate spray of bullets to cover their exit.
The rounds tore through the plaster, ricocheted off the marble, and struck the area where Tamara was desperately trying to pull Nadia behind a table.
Nadia Rostova gasped. A sharp, violent exhalation of air left her frail lungs.
Tamara felt the older woman’s body jerk violently in her arms.
"Babushka?" Tamara whispered, wiping the blood from her own eyes.
Nadia looked up at Tamara, her pale eyes wide with shock. The front of her elegant silk nightgown was rapidly blooming with a dark, horrific stain of crimson. She had taken a bullet directly to the chest.
"No, no, no," Tamara sobbed, pressing her hands desperately over the bleeding wound. "Help! Somebody help!"
The Ukrainian operatives hauled Yelena out into the freezing snow, disappearing into the darkness with the stolen duffel bags, leaving the ruined hall to echo with the agonizing cries of the family they had just shattered.
The silence that followed the ambush was infinitely more louder than the gunfire. The freezing winter wind howled through the shattered front doors, swirling snow across the blood-slicked marble.
The grand hall of the Voronin estate was a war zone of pulverized plaster, shattered glass, and devastation.
"Raisa!" Marco was on his knees, his hands trembling as he pulled his unconscious wife into his lap.
Blood was matting the pale blonde hair on the side of her head.
He pressed his hand to her pulse point, letting out a ragged, desperate sob of relief when he felt the steady, thumping beat beneath his fingers. "Raisa, cara, wake up. Open your eyes."
Across the hall, Tamara was kneeling on the floor, her own face a mask of dark, streaming blood from the deep gash on her forehead. She was holding Nadia Rostova’s head in her lap, weeping uncontrollably.
"Please, Babushka," Tamara begged, her tears mixing with the blood on her face, pressing her small hands over the fatal wound. "Please, stay awake. The doctors are coming."
Nadia’s pale eyes were unfocused, staring up at the shattered chandelier. She reached up with a trembling, bloodstained hand, her frail fingers brushing against Tamara’s wet cheek.
"My sweet... girl," Nadia breathed, her voice a fragile, wet rasp. A faint, peaceful smile touched her lips before her eyes drifted shut, and her hand fell limp against the marble.
"No!" Tamara screamed, a sound of pure, feral agony that tore through the quiet hall. She bent over the matriarch’s lifeless body, sobbing hysterically.
In the short few weeks she had been in this house, Nadia had given her the only true motherly love she had ever known, and it had been violently ripped away.
Sasha dropped to his knees beside his wife.
His chest was heaving, his dark eyes wide with a mixture of grief and apocalyptic rage.
He wrapped his arms around Tamara, pulling her bleeding, trembling body flush against his chest. He buried his face in her hair, holding her tightly as she wept, his own tears falling silently for the grandmother who had raised him.
"I have you," Sasha choked out, rocking his wife gently amidst the ruin, his hands shaking as he tried to soothe her broken heart while his own fractured. "I am here, Tamara. I am here."
A few feet away, Raisa groaned, her sea-green eyes fluttering open. The pain in her head was blinding. She looked up, seeing Marco’s terrified face hovering over her.
"Marco," Raisa rasped, struggling to sit up. Marco supported her back, his eyes dark with worry.
Raisa looked around the destroyed hall. She saw Sasha holding a bleeding, weeping Tamara over Nadia’s lifeless body. She saw Dmitri standing over by the shattered doors, frozen in shock. And then, the realization slammed into her with the force of a freight train.
"My mother," Raisa gasped, gripping the lapels of Marco’s shirt, pure panic bleeding into her voice. "Marco, where is my mother?!"
Sergei Voronin stood in the center of the hall, staring out the shattered doors into the blinding snowstorm. The king of the Russian underworld looked like a man who had just had his heart ripped out of his chest. His hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists.
"They took her," Sergei whispered, his voice vibrating with a grief so deep, it shook the floorboards. Then, his head snapped up, and the grief instantly vanished, replaced by a homicidal fury. "How did they infiltrate? The blind spots. They knew the shift changes. Someone sold us out."
Raisa pushed herself up onto her feet, swaying slightly as Marco held her steady. The blood dripped down the side of her face, but she didn't feel the pain. She felt only a burning, insatiable itch for revenge.
"I will kill every single soul in Ukraine," Raisa swore, her voice dropping into a dark, demonic register. "I will burn Odessa to the ground."
Marco Falco did not try to calm her down. He did not offer empty platitudes. He looked at his bleeding wife, at the weeping woman clinging to his brother-in-law, and at the dead matriarch on the floor, and the Italian Capo made a quiet, unyielding vow of his own.
Marco pulled his encrypted satellite phone from his pocket, dialing a direct, secured line to Naples.
"Lorenzo," Marco said, his voice echoing with coldness in the ruined hall. "The Odessa breached the Moscow estate. We have casualties. They killed Nadia. And they have taken Yelena."
There was a fraction of a second of silence on the line before the Don of the Falcon syndicate responded.
"I am mobilizing the armada," Lorenzo Falco’s voice came through the speaker, tight with, uncompromising wrath. "Enzo is already prepping the jets. Lock down the city, Marco. We are coming to tear the east apart."