36. Chapter 36 #2
“Right,” I murmured. “You just … saw an opening.”
When neither of them corrected me, my stomach twisted and a quiet, sinking feeling settled in. This hadn’t been ordered or even planned from above. It was just them trying to prove something. I couldn’t decide if that made things better or worse.
Fucking hell.
“That makes sense. I mean, I gathered things were tense at the moment and this is a way for you to show them you can handle things.”
A stupid fucking way, possibly getting all of us killed but it is a way.
Luis glanced at me, then away again. “Something like that.”
Yeah. No fucking kidding.
I nodded, like I understood, like I wasn’t sitting here as the very tangible consequence of that decision. “Okay. Yeah. I get that.”
And I did, in a sense. It was only natural for people to want more. The problem was, they just didn’t always consider the cost.
“I don’t suppose you could tell me what’s actually going on?” I continued, easing into it instead of diving straight in. “It’s just … No one really tells me anything, and now it seems like I’m in the middle of this shit show.”
Javier’s mouth tightened. “We just know some of our shipments disappeared.”
My fingers stilled against the edge of the crate.
I kept my voice light, curious. “Yours?”
“Yes,” Luis said, quicker this time, like the frustration had been building up, waiting for an excuse to come out. “They go missing, get delayed, and everyone’s just talking about taking the Russians out instead of actually doing something.”
“So we decided to be the ones to take action,” Javier added.
Huh. That didn’t line up. Sasha would have told me if he’d retaliated by attacking their shipments — if only to warn me to stay at the villa for fear of retaliation.
No, more than that. Sasha wouldn’t let something like that spiral out of control without knowing exactly who was responsible. This was far from being under control.
“How long has this been going on?”
Luis scoffed under his breath. “Months.”
Right. We hadn’t even been here yet when it started then.
My thoughts started to rearrange themselves more slowly and deliberately, the pieces clicking into place in a way I didn’t particularly like.
If both sides were losing shipments, then this wasn’t retaliation or escalation.
It was something else.
And these two had just decided, on their own, to throw me into the middle of it and hope it worked out in their favor.
My grip tightened slightly against the crate.
They really, really hadn’t thought this through.
I opened my mouth to continue when suddenly something crashed somewhere deeper in the warehouse. All three of us froze. Heavy, uneven footsteps followed. Whoever was approaching us sounded angry.
My insides twisted with anxiety.
One of the men who had disappeared earlier with my unwitting victim came storming back into the main area. His movements were sharp and aggressive; his entire body radiated fury, triggering an immediate alarm in my mind.
His eyes locked onto me and I knew instantly he definitely wasn’t here to talk.
“You.”
My heart thundered against my ribcage as he advanced, his expression furious.
“Okay,” I started, because talking felt like survival and silence felt like dying, “in my defense, that was a high-pressure situation and—”
The man moved so fast it took my brain a second to catch up. The gun was in his hand in a blur, the motion so sharp it snapped the rest of my sentence clean in half and sent a jolt of adrenaline straight through my system.
“Carlos is bleeding the fuck out because of you!” he roared, crossing the distance in seconds. His voice was loud enough to echo off the metal walls.
“I said I was sorry!”
His hand grasped my shirt and pulled me halfway off the crate so hard my teeth clicked together. Then cold metal slammed against my temple.
Everything in me went still. I froze, knowing that if I moved even an inch or breathed wrongly, that would be it.
“Do you have any idea what you did?” he snarled, his face inches from mine now, eyes wild, spit hitting my cheek with every word. “You fucking shot him. You think that’s funny? You think this is some kind of joke?”
“N-no! I’m not—”
“He might lose them! You understand that? You might’ve fucking ruined him!”
“I didn’t —I wasn’t even aiming for … look, I just reacted—”
“Reacted?” he barked, a harsh, disbelieving sound ripping out of him. “You call that reacting? You fucking maimed him!”
The gun pressed harder against my head. My breath hitched, sharp and shallow, and panic clawed its way up my throat as I bit back a whimper.
“Why the fuck should this bitch live after what she’s done?” the man snapped, not even looking at me now, his voice cutting across the space toward the others. “Huh? Give me one good fucking reason why I shouldn’t shoot her right now!”
My heart hammered so hard it hurt.
This was it. This was how it would happen.
Javier stepped forward quickly. “Hey, hey! Stop, man. Listen. Rafael is coming.”
“I don’t give a shit about Rafael!” He shoved the gun harder into my temple like he was trying to make a point with it. “She shot Carlos! She fucking shot him!”
My pulse roared in my ears, loud and overwhelming and impossible to ignore.
“You kill me,” I blurted out, the words tumbling out too fast and unevenly. But I couldn’t stop. “And then what? That was your whole plan, right? Leverage? Congratulations, you just shot your leverage in the head, that feels a little fucking counterproductive—”
I caught sight of something flickering through his eyes, just for a second.
“Rafael didn’t sound like he wanted me dead,” I forced out, my breath hitching, clinging to that tiny crack. “He sounded like he wanted me alive.”
“Shut the fuck up!” he snarled.
“No, I don’t think I will,” I shot back.
If I stopped talking, I might start panicking, and if I started panicking, I might die and that felt like a worse option.
“Because if you shoot me, you won’t just have a Russian problem.
You’ll have a personal problem. I don’t know Rafael personally, but he didn’t sound like the forgiving type. ”
The gun stayed exactly where it was, pressed to my temple.
He hadn’t fired yet, though, and all I could do was hope it would stay this way so I could stay alive long enough for Sasha to get here.