by Rie Warren
There was no way I could watch this.
I didn’t want to feel it.
Couldn’t think about it.
Be it in this mindfuck game.
Held by Oleg, the bottle burrowed between my legs, close to impaling me as I shrank inside my flesh and fell into my own private hell.
Time suddenly stopped because one second Oleg prepared to rape me in the only way he could. In the next instant, the bedroom window was pierced with a pfft sound. But before I could even register the pop of the pinpoint hole in the windowpane I stared at, there was a whistle through the interior of the room that grazed the air right next to my jaw.
“FUCK!” Oleg recoiled.
My head wheeled around. The almost invisible slug that had raced through the windowpane blasted a much larger, much uglier hole in Oleg’s forearm.
Maksim!
He was here!
But Oleg knew it just as soon as I did.
I barely managed to get my hands on that bottle he’d been poised to penetrate me with before he slung me up against him.
He positioned his back to the wall, me facing out to the window across from us. Another shield from Maksim.
That didn’t matter.
New energy vitalized me.
When Feliks rushed forward, his gun shoved toward my face, I struck out at him. I cracked him a good one across the skull with the bottle, and I bet he saw birdies as his eyes went rolling back in his head.
Oleg bleated like it was him I’d hit, and his forearm cranked as hard as a crowbar around my throat.
I bit him right on top of that bloody bullet hole.
“Suka!” he bellowed, trying to shake my dug-in canines off of him.
“Pizda,” I snarled when I dragged my teeth clear.
I spit the tang of his foul blood from my mouth.
A battering sound jolted from downstairs. Then lots of boots stomped up the flight of steps.
The outer door of the apartment blasted open so hard it was as if a tornado had taken the thing off its hinges, and the whole building shook.
I jabbed my elbow into Oleg’s ribs at about the same time he realized that, whoopsie, he was facing the wrong point of entry.
Oleg’s arms released me, but Feliks was right there to take over. He gripped me to him and grappled me to the floor. We rolled over and over, and he landed on top of my legs again. The pain a gnawing buzz in the back of my mind, I smacked my barefoot into his face, curling my toes into his eye sockets then kicking him off me.
I’d just started to drag myself up from that disgusting shag carpet when the bedroom door blew inward.
And Maksim stood there like one pissed off giant.
I knew others must be in the apartment with him, behind him, but I saw nothing but him in all his malicious malevolence.
Neither Oleg nor Felix got another chance to take me out, because Maksim strode inside and took up all the breathing space from the room.
He whipped me up from the floor and whirled me around. The blazing rage in his eyes dimmed just long enough for him to make a visual inspection of my body. He ditched his leather jacket, wrapped it around my waist to provide me modesty, and made sure I stayed behind him.
When no other Zolotov Bratva soldier or Krasnov brother entered that room, I knew then there had been an agreement made. This was mine and Maksim’s. Our vengeance. Our vendetta.
Recklessly, Oleg and Feliks both belted toward us at the same time.
I watched the slow-mo sequence as Maksim did a Double Dutch punch-punch on them.
The clueless duo went down like the equal sacks of shit they were.
Maksim stalked over to Oleg.
Oleg spat a mouthful of blood onto my man’s boots, his shot-up arm hanging loosely by his side when he clambered to his feet.
Maksim aided him, with a fist curled into the collar of his shirt. His fury was in the flare of his nostrils, the firmness of his lips, the flatness of his feral silver eyes, and I knew he would kill my captor first.
A cold-blooded instinct came over me.
“Nyet, Maksim,” I uttered. “Not Oleg. Not first.”
As he held his prey aloft, feet dangling, he focused on me.
“Kill Feliks first.” My smile turned into a devious thing. “There’s only one thing Oleg loves more than revenge. I’ve seen it. He’s in love with Feliks.”
As if my words constituted a command, Maksim picked my tormentor all the way up over his head and slammed him across the room. Oleg’s airborne flight only stopped when he back-splatted against the flimsy wall.
He slid down and landed on his side while Maksim slanted a bloodthirsty grin at Feliks who’d just gained his feet.
Maksim cracked his knuckles then unsheathed his KA-BAR.
“And make it extra messy. Oleg hates that,” I added.
The man I mentioned rose up.
“Nyet! He is not worth it. Take me!” The hysteria in Oleg’s tone made me want to dance around the room, but my legs weren’t exactly working that well at the moment.
“Shut the fuck up, whiny bitch,” Maksim muttered.
His next destructive blow shot Oleg backward into his best friend The Wall, particle board really cracking that time.
Within two steps, Maksim marched to his new target.
He flipped his knife on his palm hilt over tip like he was getting ready for party games.
Well, Feliks and Oleg should enjoy that.
I knew I would.
“Now. Where did my Sasha stab you again?” Maksim asked, toxic of tone.
I almost volunteered the answer when Felix stupidly clasped his hands across his stomach.
“Da. I remember now.”
Sharp blade glinting, Maksim sliced right through both of Feliks’s hands and into his gut. He twisted the knife as his grin twisted across his lips, and Feliks shouted in gurgling grueling agony because Maksim didn’t stop there.
He tore upward with that fine-honed blade as Feliks gasped, struggling feebly while blood began pouring from his stomach and his mouth.
I wanted to open a bottle of champagne amid the bloodbath.
Behind Maksim though, I saw Oleg rise.
“You are killing him,” he croaked brokenly.
Yeah he is.
Then I saw the gun.
Pointed at Maksim.
“No!” Diving forward as Feliks went down, I had no forethought or afterthought.
The bullet meant for Maksim blasted into my shoulder. I blew backward, my feet trying to make up ground then falling out from under me.
“Sasha!” Maksim rushed for me, but Oleg closed in on him, limping, wound oozing.
“Look out,” I whispered.
But he didn’t even look away from me. He swung back with his whole arm as powerful as a two-by-four, catching Oleg in the windpipe. Heaving over, my captor dropped the gun to the carpet with a bump and a bounce.
He was not dead yet, though.
Maksim picked me up, careful of the pain streaking down my arm.
“Will you never stop to think for once?” His voice husky, he cradled me to him.
I looked at him through bleary eyes. “You have to finish Oleg.”
“Da.” Jaw so tight the edge was bone-like, he called to someone from the other room.
He transferred me to another set of arms, and I saw that Arkady held me.
He started marching out, the ranks of soldiers—so many of them—parting for our departure.
Grasping both sides of Arkady’s face, I said weakly, “I want to watch. I need to stay.”
His frown formidable, he stared down at me. Whatever he read in my eyes must’ve swayed him, because he swung back around.
He said something to Maksim, but my ears had started buzzing, my vision blurring.
Maksim’s strong voice was the one timbre that broke through—lethal, deadly, killer. “Da. Sashenka can watch. But only if she is stable. She deserves to see the end.”
I slumped as the weight of relief c
ame over me. Or maybe the crash came from blood loss, the bruises, all the battles I’d survived to witness this last moment when my husband went scorched earth on the bastard who’d tried—ultimately failed—to break me.
If I didn’t pull myself back together and pretend I was copacetic, Maksim would send me away for medical attention before I could see him do the deed.
“There are first aid supplies in the bathroom through there.” I pointed, my finger shaking.
Lucky was there when Arkady spun again, his intense eyes spearing me. “I can help you see to her quickly.”
Kirill shoved him aside. “I will do it.”
Because . . . brothers.
And, given the not-really love triangle between me, Lucky, and Maksim, I was surprised to see the O’Sullivan had been allowed to come along at all.
Arkady carried me the short way to the bathroom. Kirill shut the door behind the three of us, squeezing us in. He located the med kit and quickly sliced up through the sleeve of my dirty shirt.
I didn’t miss the dark curse chewed out from between his stiff lips as he saw the destruction wrought upon my body.
Staying as still as a block of ice, I sat through Kirill’s ministrations, itching to get back to that room with Maksim and the man who would meet his maker tonight.
The slug’s trajectory through my shoulder hadn’t hit any major arteries, a blessing at least.
Kirill was not quite as quick and proficient as me, but he got the job done with little fuss. Lots of tongue-biting alcohol splashed over the injury. A really damn tight tourniquet to stop further blood loss. About an inch-thick wad of bandages wrapped into place over the hole that plugged into the meat of my shoulder.
Huh. Maybe I’d taught these men something after all, what with tending the Bratva’s battle wounds.
“You are made of tough stuff, Sasha,” Kirill mentioned in an approving voice just before giving the belt he’d used as a tourniquet another bone-grinding yank.
Now that shit made me dizzy, but not enough to miss Oleg’s demise.
Arkady picked me up again. “We done here?”
“Da,” his brother answered.
Carried from the bathroom out into that orange-green hellhole that had been my prison, I blinked at all the men standing stiffly by. They held their weapons at the ready but aimed at nothing in particular.
They met my eyes one by one, and those stupid drops of tears fattened behind my eyelids.
They’d come for me.
All of them.
Grigor nodded as if he read my mind.
Then I started worrying about who was watching over Lucia, Jo, baby Saoirse, Baba.
Panicking about Papa, I asked Arkady, “Where is my father.”
“Baba made him stay home.” He marched back into the bedroom and tried to shut the door.
Too bad the thing was half off its hinges care of Maksim. Maksim . . . my eyes sought him out immediately from my safe vantage point. He’d waited as he said he would, but he hadn’t been idle.
My man must’ve been in a very murderous mood—and I totally got behind that—because Feliks had been propped up on the mattress that had been my bed. His insides had been arranged in a gruesome display.
Oleg’s cheeks had turned gaunt, his face pale as a ghost. He stared at his dead lover as breath panted in and out of his mouth. Sitting there, crumpled on the floor, for once his eyes flashed with life when he saw me.
“You fucking whore! What did you do? What did you make him do to Feliks?”
“Exactly what you deserved.” My voice sheared across the room. “An eye for an eye, remember?”
Maksim hauled Oleg to his feet, snarling wildly in his face. “You are done talking, you fucking madman.”
He punched him in the face again and again, his fist a blurring whir of motion. The meaty thwacks and Oleg’s shouts and the sound of his bones crunching all blended together.
Head lolling on his shoulder and face a mess of blood and gore, Oleg peered out from one red, swollen eye.
“I do this for Sashenka and her mother Liliana.” Harsh of voice, Maksim flashed his KA-BAR in the other man’s face.
Those tears I’d tried not to let fall spiked my eyelashes as my heart bounded in my chest.
Maksim’s flashing silver eyes sought mine, and I nodded.
Yes. I wanted him to do this.
No. I did not think he was a monster for the macabre way he’d already murdered Feliks.
Turning back to Oleg, Maksim thrust his knife into my captor’s stomach. He yanked the blade upward, just like he’d done to Feliks. They would die as they had lived . . . desecrated.
A pained howl ending in a thick wet gurgle gushed from Oleg’s stretched lips as Maksim methodically finished what Oleg had so sickeningly started.
Only when the sick bastard’s last breath was taken did I inhale for real.
The body slumped into a grotesque heap, and I fixed my gaze on Maksim. He cleaned off his knife. He removed his shirt and wiped off his arms and hands. Then he came to me, sterling eyes locked on my face.
Passed from the oldest Krasnov to the youngest, I folded into his strong embrace. My man. My lover. My husband and my savior.
Only then did I weep like a baby. My tears wet his chest, his throat, his shoulder as he held me. Hitching me closer, he stalked out of that awful bedroom and through the room of fighters and out onto the landing I’d never even seen before.
“Maksim?” My voice teary, I pulled my head back so I could see his face, those rugged features that had been the only light keeping me alive. “I wore the vest the whole time until he took it off me.”
“I know.” His Adam’s apple bobbed up in his throat as he jogged down the steps.
“He took my dagger and my Glock too.”
“I know.” His jaw tensed.
“I didn’t tell him about the tracker, but he found it anyway.” Shock I’d suppressed for days began inside my bones, seeping outward.
My teeth started chattering, my body shivering.
Then we were outside, and the night was hot and humid. And I was free at last.
“I found everything,” Maksim murmured.
He opened the door to a vehicle, carefully sliding me inside. He was right there, climbing in behind me, shutting the door softly, shifting me back to his lap so he could keep me safe inside the haven of his arms.
“The van—” I started.
“Blyad. Sashenka. I know. I found everything. I have your blade and your gun and”—he pressed his lips to my brow, and shudders wracked his body too—“please stop talking or I am going to lose it.”
Closing my eyes, I exhaled slowly, raggedly. The excruciating pain in my shoulder sapped me of the last of my strength.
“I am here. I’ve got you, Sashenka.” Thick emotion clotted his voice.
Maksim replaced the cold creeping fear with far reaching warmth, and I clung to him with my one good arm.
“I am never letting you go again.” That tone, dark and intent, promised safety and so much more.
That was my cue to blackout one last time.
25
Maksim
THE DAYS IMMEDIATELY AFTER I saved Sasha were endless. Anxiety-inducing. A new fresh hell overshadowing relief.
She’d been through so much . . . and I didn’t know the half of it, not from her lips, because she remained unconscious for hours and hours after the operations undertaken to repair the ugly hole in her shoulder and the deep, jagged gash on her thigh.
One could not take a shooting or stabbing victim to the hospital without the authorities getting involved, so that was always a no-go for the Bratva.
We’d transported her to the estate where Yury had a team of previously vetted surgeons and trauma nurses on standby.
He only took one look at his beautiful daughter in my careful arms before his face fell. She was so bruised and beaten but he needed to know she had not been broken.
Words, as always, escaped me. I was too bus
y carrying her into the well-lit, makeshift operating theater.
It was Kirill and Arkady who told him what had happened. That Sasha had fought. That she had demanded to stay until it was over, until Oleg was over. And the Zolotov pakhan, the male who was as strong as a Siberian bear and just as ferocious as an animal in the wild, had crumpled.
I knew how he felt. A day later, I still hadn’t let go of all the restraint I banded around myself. I would have liked to get drunk. Cry like a fucking baby. Crawl into bed beside Sasha, but I would not disturb her.
And I would be nothing less than strong for her.
At my orders, once she’d been deemed stable, I moved her back to the apartment above The Hammer and the Sickle.
Yury did not argue.
I was her husband. I made the decisions now. At least until Sasha woke up and got her mouth running again.
A moment I looked forward to.
She belonged with me in our place and, finally, she was here again. Home. In our bed while I sat—like I had that last night—in the chair. This time, however, I’d pulled the seat over to perch right beside her instead of all the way across the bedroom.
Her slow steady respirations calmed my pulse.
I watched the drip-drop of the IVs strung up and feeding into her veins—morphine and intravenous antibiotics that had been provided with precise instructions.
She’d been lights out for hours and hours. She’d woken just briefly all groggy eyed from the pain medication. She’d let me spoon feed her some of Baba’s special broth before drooping back into her non-awake state.
Blyad.
What had they done to her?
What had Oleg the psycho and his bastard underboss really done to her?
She was battered all the fuck over. Cuts on her plump lips. Welts on her face and across her belly that now discolored into blues and yellow.
Rage coursed through me with no place to go. I’d killed both those bastards and all the sukas who’d stood between me and Sasha. But I relived over and over again the exact moment when she’d taken that goddamn bullet meant for me.
My heart had stopped just as surely as if the slug had finished its trajectory into my chest instead of slicing through her shoulder.
The woman had saved my life when I’d been trying to save hers.