The man would undo her. Her rage rushed back in. How dare he try to protect her. This was war.
She was on her back and he lay within her guard. Their bodies were flush as their gazes met, his blue-black in the night and pleading. Bone ignored the unspoken request. She would neither break nor give in.
His full weight pressed on her. He was six feet four inches, two hundred fifty pounds of heavily muscled male and she was barely one twenty soaking wet. She relaxed, going limp and he took advantage, pressing his chin into the hollow between her neck and shoulder and grinding down. The pain was immediate but not such that she couldn’t function.
Instead she welcomed it—let it flow through her so it became strength. She twisted and brought her feet up to push against his hips. With a swift shift of her shoulders, she countered his attempt to subdue her and once again shoved up with her feet. He flew over her head and she was on him, taking his back as he rolled and wrapping her arm around his neck, leveraging the hold with her other arm.
He fell back and she was pinned beneath him but she folded her legs around his waist, squeezing to cut off his ability to draw in air as she did her best to choke him out. He tapped her arm desperately, a classic sign he was giving up, but she wouldn’t relent…couldn’t relent. This wasn’t a sparring session.
He went limp moments later and she released the hold before shoving him off. He fell to his side and Bone rubbed her chest at the pain there.
She glanced up again. Flakes of snow fell from the sky above her, a sanction from the darkness, and she knew a hurt she couldn’t counter. “I am not your Bone Breaker, Dmitry,” she whispered.
She had no time for this. There was another move to put into play and until she had Vadim Yesipov’s head in her hands, this part of her journey wouldn’t end.
She hadn’t held Ninka’s hands in the darkness like Bullet, so she would go after her betrayer with the fury of a million demons. She would rip and rend the one who sold her into Joseph Bombardier’s hands—the one who still catered to the devil who created them all.
She feared it would all be over too soon. What would she be without the hate and the kill?
Bone checked Dmitry’s pulse, found it steady and strong and then whispered the words she’d spoken to him two weeks ago.
“Do not follow me, Dmitry Asinimov,” she said at his ear. “Do not make me kill you.”
That would destroy her as nothing else could.
He groaned and Bone stood, grabbed up her backpack, secured it over her shoulders, and backed away.
Dmitry came to swiftly, standing in a smooth motion that spoke of the fighter he was. Had she time, were she a different person, she would have taken a few seconds to admire the shift and play of his body, the effortlessness he displayed.
But she was Bone. There was to be nothing more.
“Bone!”
She heard him yell but she was already flying, leaping off the building as fear locked her throat. The waters of the Griboyedov Canal flowed below. The air stroked her like a lover, but the distance to the water taunted her. She pushed through the terror, swallowed it like the bitterest pill, and met the water in a clean slice. She pushed deep, into the darkness of the frigid river that wound like a snake through St. Petersburg.
And she swam until she was far enough away he couldn’t reach her.
Chapter Two
Bone pulled herself out of the water and rested on the snow-covered bank approximately five kilometers from where she’d entered. She took a moment to scout her surroundings before she stood and began to walk west, back toward the city proper. By now, word of Boris and Anatoly Yesipov’s deaths would have circulated.
Vadim would be holed up in his mansion on the outskirts of St. Petersburg and there she would meet him face to face. The warning had been sent the moment she broke Anatoly’s neck. She wanted Vadim to feel panic. She wanted him to know she was coming.
If she was lucky, she’d beat Dmitry there. She knew he thought Vadim was his kill to make. He believed Vadim had put his father in the ground. The number of people who knew the truth could be counted on one hand. She would spare Dmitry that truth if she could, though she didn’t fully understand why.
Did she want him kept in the dark for her sake or his? She’d analyzed the thought endlessly and still the answer evaded her. The only truth that mattered right now was Vadim Yesipov was Bone’s.
Like Minton, Vadim’s death held a certain appeal for Bone. He had taken little girls and sold them for years. Young Ninka had been one of many. The difference between Ninka and the many was that Ninka was hers, Bullet’s, Arrow’s and Blade’s.