Nikolai balks. “I think someone else should—”
“It wasn’t a question, brat. I was simply informing you of my plans.” I stand and crack the knuckles on each hand. “Stay here; wait for my signal. If the gates open, move fast and quiet. If you hear a gunshot or any sign of commotion, you attack. Take no prisoners. That clear?”
All of the gathered men nod in deference. Dimiv pulls out his gun. Nikolai is the only one who doesn’t move.
“Brother?”
“I’m not sure we should be sending in the most important member of this Bratva into the lion’s den.” He steps towards me. “Uri, you are the pahkan. Your life is more important than mine. Let me go instead.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I know I don’t say this often enough, but… you’re a good second, Nikolai Bugrov. And you’re an even better brother. But you forget, I’m the lion. I can handle this.”
He relents with a reluctant sigh. I don’t wait for him to fish for any other lines of argument—the time to move is now.
So, with one final breath, I’m off and running.
I stick to the shadows around the perimeter of the estate. Halfway along the southern wall, I see a pair of trees leaning over the barricade. That’s as good a way up as any, I decide.
You can do this.
For Polly.
I take two deep, measured breaths. Then I charge.
I jump, catch the lowest-hanging branch, and vault myself up toward the wall. I misjudge just enough that I slam into the wall and knock the wind from my lungs, though my hands still manage to grasp the upper lip. It’s a strain to pull my weight up, but I do, getting one leg over, then the other.
I pause at the top. The night is silent and still. Shadows move in the far distance as the patrols circulate, but none of them cast any attention in my direction.
This is how Alyssa must’ve felt. Whether she knew it or not, she was poised between two lives while she hung on that fence. There was no going back—all she could do was delay how long until the next chapter began.
I don’t intend to delay a goddamn thing.
I leap down and land gracefully on the grass at my feet. Twisting around, I clock the security station. Fifty meters away, give or take. So far, nothing seems amiss. There’s no sign that my entry has been noticed. I belly crawl my way towards the station through the thickets of grass.
As I get closer, I hear the whistle of a snore. Sweet dreams, motherfucker. I pull out the Swiss army knife hidden in my boot and slide it across the bastard’s neck. Blood sprays out like a garden sprinkler, but the man never wakes up. He slumps into his seat, maintaining the same position in death that he had in sleep.
I get to my feet and sneak a peek inside the security station. There’s one other guard in there with his back to me. I step into the doorway and dispatch him with a quick stab into the carotid. Before he can fall over onto the control panel, I loop a hand under his arm and across his chest, then drag him out into the night and dump him behind a hedge.
When I return to the station, I tuck my knife away and get to work.
It’s quick business to use the dead man’s hand to unlock the controls. From there, I navigate to the monitor feeds and disable them one by one. Dozens of screens go black. Exterior lights extinguish. Not a single alarm makes a peep.
I power down the system and, last but not least, open the front entrance. Through the one-way glass of the security both, I see the gates slowly begin to part like sideways metal lips.
I screw a silencer onto my gun and creep back out into the darkness. A trio of shadows—more of Agapov’s guards—are milling around in confusion, barking into radios that no longer work as they try to figure out who the hell opened the gates.
Two of them die before they ever get an answer. The third figures out where the bullets are coming from and starts to turn, but only enough that my kill shot catches him in the eye instead of the back of the skull. He goes the same way as the rest of his comrades: down, never to get back up again.
Nikolai is the first one of my men through the gates. His grin is lit up by the moonlight, white and excited. “Nice work, brother,” he calls ahead.
But I’m frowning. Something prickles at me. Something wrong in my math, my approach. I’m wracking my brain, trying to figure out what it—
Wait.
Didn’t Stepan say there were four guards at the main entrance? I’ve killed one, two, three…
I turn in time to see the forgotten guard sprinting into the house.
“Blyat’,” I growl. “He’s going to alert them all. Let’s go!”
We’re racing towards the house when I see the windows overhead being opened. “Take cover!” I roar. But my voice is drowned out by the scream of gunshots.
In the midst of all the chaos, I hear a high, shrill scream.
Her scream.
Polly.
33
URI
Only one question matters now: did I come this far just to watch her die?
The answer is obvious.
Hell.
Fucking.
No.
With my heart in my throat, I follow my sister’s scream, charging as fast as I can through the house in search of her.
My men fan out around me, covering me while I sprint up to the second floor. A man runs out from behind a door, taking me by surprise, and I just barely manage to elbow him in the face. I hear the crunch of cartilage and he falls backwards onto his spine.
I bend down and press my gun against his forehead as I snarl, “Talk or you die. Where the fuck is your boss?”
His eyes are wide with terror. “Down the hall! The last room on your right.”
“Good man.” I give him an approving nod and then pull the trigger. He flops backwards, his blood spilling out onto the wool carpet.
I’m tearing down the hallway when another pair of men emerge from a room on the left. I dodge a bullet by a hair’s breadth and answer back in kind. My shot misses the first soldier but it hits the second one in the chest.
I’m turning to get a better line of attack on the lead man when another scream distracts me.
“Aargh! No!”
My blood goes cold. Polly. It’s definitely her. I’m so close—but there’s still one bastard rushing at me and two others following behind him. They’re like ants pouring out of the woodwork, endless and inhuman.
I feint to the side and get my bare hands on the man closest. I twist him around and use him as a human shield. He twitches spastically as he takes a hail of bullets that was meant for me. When the onslaught stops so the shooters can reload, I make my move.
One falls to a bullet of mine. Another catches my elbow in his windpipe and flails backwards as he struggles to draw in a breath he’ll never catch. The third, when he rises up to take aim again, gets my knife hurled into his open mouth.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
But it’s not enough. Not fast enough, not soon enough, not enough enough—because I still don’t have Polly.