Chapter 18 #2
And then silence.
Fuuuuck...
For one second, I feel nothing but darkness, where time stops in place.
I only hear a melody played on the piano, so sad it tears apart the soul I did not even know I had.
All at once, a wave of pain slams into me, like a truck crushing my body. I can barely move. I can barely breathe. All I know is that I must do it.
A sharp ringing floods my ears, while two shadows take shape above me and grab my arms, lifting me from the ground. But they are not my men, and a new rush of adrenaline takes over when I realize they are taking advantage of my moment of weakness, dragging me toward one of their cars.
“We’ve got him,” one of them says to someone, reality still confused inside my head.
Where the hell is my sniper?
With what little strength I have in this moment, I try to break free, but it is useless. I receive a blow to the back of the head that cuts the strength from my legs completely.
The voices scream.
Panic, something I have never known in my entire life, wraps itself around me with cold fingers and freezes my blood.
I have to get to Ekaterina.
Ekaterina is waiting for me.
I count silently in ascending order, trying to stay lucid, even though a brutal exhaustion melts my bones and tries to close my eyelids.
If I fall asleep, will I dream of her?
Or will I wake beside her?
No.
Miracles like that don’t exist, and I have to fight to be with her.
I let my body go slack, and they take cover from the gunfire behind another car.
Every second helps me regain some of the strength I need to break free, but I am still too weak to confront them both.
I am losing blood, and that does not help at all, but I fight every shadow trying to convince me I need to close my eyes.
One voice alone tells me that if I do, I will never see Katya again.
Luckily for me, I am shoved into one of the smaller cars, with one idiot beside me and the other behind the wheel. Their voices are still distorted around me, but I hear clearly when one says, “The target is captured.”
I don’t know who the fuck sent them after me, but I know for certain I will not meet my end before they meet theirs.
My former great love, Death, will have to wait.
Sorry, darling, but I have another lover now, and I do not want to leave her for you.
I use my dazed state to give the two bastards the impression that I am nearly unconscious from the explosion and my wounds.
I don’t give them more than a few minutes, and when my body feels little stronger, I attack.
I strike the idiot beside me straight in the throat.
He chokes and raises his gun toward me, but this time, I allow no mistakes.
The confined space works against him, because his body is too big to move quickly.
I clench my teeth when I move my arm, struck fully by the pain caused by the wound in my shoulder, which, fortunately, I am used to ignoring to some degree.
Especially now.
I catch his hands, and the gun discharges into the roof, making the driver destabilize the car, even though he has already thrown us into London traffic. Among horns and pedestrians, the idiot tries to get out toward the outskirts as quickly as possible, but I don’t allow him to get far.
Even though the man I am now fighting for the gun is stronger than I am, my agility gives me a major advantage.
I need only one second to free one hand and punch him in the throat again.
This time, I am almost sure I damaged something there.
My blow weakens his grip, and I use that to aim the gun at the idiot behind the wheel.
I shoot him straight in the back of his head.
His brains splatter across the windshield, and the car slams hard into a curb. All I feel is the moment we lift into the air and overturn, and from that instant, the thread snaps completely.
Everything becomes calm.
This time, I dream of a melody, and in a colorful, brightly lit room, Ekaterina waits for me beside a piano. She smiles at me, and I go straight toward her to kiss her, but she stops me. Her face turns somber as the dress on her body transforms into one soaked in blood.
“You arrived too late, Pakhan. This is what happens when you don’t keep your promise.”
Blood begins to pour from wounds opening all over her body, and the roar that tears from my chest merges with a painful reality, not only in my mind, but in my body too.
I open my eyes abruptly, strangled by a pain that would make other men cry like little boys.
I am trapped inside the body of the overturned car, its wheels in the air, and panic seizes me.
I am not afraid of death, but I do not want to lose Ekaterina.
I have to get to her, because I promised her.
And the simple fact that I am caught in a death trap and cannot escape, cannot even see her, suffocates me. Hurts me more. The air seems to grow thinner while dozens of voices race through my head and claw at my thoughts.
We have to get to her
!
You cannot die!
Someone else will take her from us. We must get out of here!
OUT!
Get out!
Get out!
Run to her!
You disappointed her.
My head hurts, my body is bleeding, my heart
is pounding hard, but I still find the strength to scream.
I scream in a way I have never had before, because I cannot reach her.
I scream because I cannot honor my promise.
I scream because I disappointed her, and there is nothing I can do to change what is happening now.
I scream because I am very close to losing her.
I try to struggle, to rip myself apart, if that is what it takes to get out of this damned car, fighting to find a position that will allow me to move.
Through an inhuman effort, I manage to shift enough to try opening the door or at least smash my elbow into the window beside me. My legs are tangled among the lifeless limbs of the bastard next to me, so I slam my heel twice more straight into his already bloodied mouth.
“Pashol nakhui!12,” I spit through my teeth, punctuating each word with another blow to his ruined face.
He could bleed from every pore and still give me no satisfaction.
They kept me away from my woman, and I regret not giving them a more painful death.
I turn back toward the window and try to open the door, but fortunately, someone manages before I do, and unfamiliar hands attempt to pull me out. I can barely make out the faces of ordinary people, probably nearby when the crash happened.
Stronger arms help me stretch out on the sidewalk while they check the condition of the others. But it doesn’t take them long to see the driver’s scattered brains or the other man’s mouth full of blood. They ask if I am OK, but they are cautious, and I hear them calling the police.
Right now, all I can do is hope my brothers are safe and that my men find me before I end up in a situation where I have to give explanations. We will already have to clean up among those trying to film what happened, but that is not what matters now.
12Пошёл нахуй (ru.) – Fuck off!
I try to get up, assessing the damage at the same time. Everything hurts, and besides the wound in my shoulder, I very likely have a few cracked ribs. At least there is nothing serious enough to stop me from trying to reach her before the performance ends.
“Voron!”
Looks like miracles do happen after all. I see Sasha jump out of a car that barely has
time to stop before he comes running toward me. Yar appears beside him immediately, and a great wave of relief moves through me when I see they are both alive.
As my brothers drop to their knees beside me, two more brigadiers appear.
“Don’t move. Help is on the way.”