I use the opportunity to spin around.
Never give an opponent your back.
Blood streams from his nose. He’s clutching the broken cartilage between his hands, his eyes ablaze with furious hatred. There’s another crunching sound as he sets his nose straight with an evil grin.
Tough bastard.
I bring my leg up fast, aiming for his crotch, but he’s not letting me catch him off-guard again. He jumps back, avoiding the kick. At the same time, he pulls back an arm and swings a fist at me.
But I’m fast, too. I duck before the blow connects, using the momentum to make a sideway roll and smoothly push to my feet a short distance away. It’s an agile dance that comes easy, one that was drilled into me until it became second nature. I’m now in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, and the nightstand is at my back.
He advances quickly. “You think you can double-cross me?”
I act trapped, letting him believe he’s going to get his filthy paws on me. As he reaches for me with the speed of a striking snake, I hop onto the bed and grip the horizontal bar of the four-poster frame. With a powerful push, I swing through the air, opening my legs. Surprise registers on his face as I catch him around the neck in the vise of my thighs, crossing my ankles to secure the death grip.
Smothering his face in my crotch, I squeeze my legs and twist my hips at the same time. A less experienced man would’ve died from a broken neck in seconds, but Dimitrov isn’t any man. He’s a hardened criminal used to fighting dirty. He bends with the movement before falling to his knees, almost ripping my hands from the bar. I have no choice but to let him go or fall on the floor right in front of him.
I recover quickly. Before he can get to his feet, I swing back and kick out with my legs, hitting him full in the chest with the sharp heels of my shoes.
The kick hurts. It does enough damage to fold him backward and knock out his breath. Clutching a fistful of his shirt, he looks down at the red spots of blood seeping through the fabric where my heels have broken his skin.
“You’re going to pay for this,” he hisses, climbing to his feet.
I don’t hesitate. I slam a heel onto his hand where he’s grabbing the edge of the bed for support.
The unmistakable splintering of bone sounds, and blood pools around the hole my heel has left. Clasping his hand to his chest, he goes back down and utters a cry that’s bound to alarm the expert.
By now, Ilya and Yan should be on the balcony. At the sound of trouble, the expert will let Dimitrov’s guards in. The priority is stopping him from unlocking the door. I’ll deal with Dimitrov after. For the moment, Dimitrov is hurting enough to be out of action, even if just for a short while.
Using the strength in my arms, I swing myself over the bed to the other side while Dimitrov catches his breath on the floor with blood pumping from his hand. I barely feel the burn in my muscles or the jarring impact on my legs as I land on my feet in the heels. I’m about to make a beeline for the door when the mousy man appears in the frame. Taken aback, I stop dead. The man closes the door and locks it before leaning a shoulder against the wall in a confusingly casual stance.
A shot rings out from the other room. Even with the silencer, the sound resonates through me like a brass bell in a church tower.
Another shot is fired in answer.
Shit. Too late. The man let the guards in. Yan and Ilya are caught in a crossfire, and they’re outnumbered by three.
My body flashes hot and cold. A setup was the last thing we expected. We don’t have a backup plan, not for the war playing out in the other room. Our order to the hotel manager was clear. We didn’t want anyone on this floor until the job was done. The whole fourth floor was evacuated and closed for a so-called routine fumigation. With the silencers, it may take a while before someone realizes there’s a shootout happening on the floor. And if a guest or employee does catch on to what’s going down and calls the police, we’re still fucked. If captured, they’ll torture us for information on our alliances and clients before locking us up so deep and far away we’ll rot before anyone finds us. The government won’t come to our aid. They can’t admit they ordered the hit on Dimitrov. They, too, were clear with their order.
If caught, we’re on our own. We can’t rely on help.
My heart and mind race when I think about Yan and what’s happening behind that locked door, but I have to trust him to fight his battle. And I have to take care of mine.
I turn my attention to the mousy man, who probably escaped in here to protect himself and Dimitrov from the bullets flying around next door. “Go into the bathroom and stay there. You don’t need to get hurt.”
Shoving his hands into his pockets, he addresses Dimitrov. “There are two men fighting off five. They don’t stand a chance. I’m sure your team can spare a man. Shall I get one of the guards?”
“No,” Dimitrov grits out, stumbling to his feet. “The bitch is mine. I’m going to kill her with my bare hands and fuck her while I do it.”
So the setup goes this far. The mousy man was never an art expert. Whatever he is, his carelessly spoken words incite me to fury. He doesn’t know Yan and Ilya. They do stand a chance.
They have to.
The man shrugs. “As you wish.”
The expert or whatever the hell he is doesn’t budge. He doesn’t come for me. Which is good, as Dimitrov is back on his feet.
Spinning, I turn sideways so I have both men in my sight as I assess the situation. Dimitrov plunges his injured hand into the ice bucket, probably to stop the bleeding and dull the pain somewhat. Then he grabs the bottle of Dom Pérignon in his good hand. Bringing the bottle down hard, he smashes it on the edge of the table. Champagne boils over the broken shards and spills onto the carpet.
I reach behind me for the cord of the lamp on the nightstand, twisting it once around my wrist as I taunt, “Now that’s a waste of good champagne.”
Holding the broken bottle like a knife in front of him, Dimitrov charges. I jerk up my wrist, pulling the plug from the socket. The cord serves as a lasso and the lamp as a heavy weapon. I swirl the lamp through the air once before lancing it at Dimitrov.
The metal stand hits him on the wrist, and the bulb explodes, paper-thin fragments of glass raining down on the carpet. They crunch under his shoes as he hops around on them, dropping the broken bottle and shaking his wrist with an ugly curse.
“One for Mink,” the mousy man says. “Zero for Casmir.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Dimitrov shouts, baring his teeth as if he wants to rip me apart with his canines.
I lash out again, this time hitting him on the side of his head with the lamp.
Now he’s a wounded, fuming bull. His fury takes over, and he no longer fights cleverly. He acts on angry instinct. Sadly predictable. When he charges, his head bent to hit me in the stomach with the full force of his body, I whack him on the back of the neck with the wrought-iron lamp base. The blow is hard enough to make his legs cave. The moment his knees hit the carpet, I tear the cord from the lamp, wind it around his neck, and twist.
He makes a nasty gurgling sound, frantically reaching for my ankles, but I’m already darting around him and jumping onto his back. He swats at me uselessly. His arms don’t reach far or effectively behind his back. He goes for my hair, but I duck back easily enough, having predicted the move. Realizing he’s not going to pry me off with his hands, he thrashes like a madman, but I’m light and hold on without much effort. Finally, he gives up and tries to wiggle his fingers under the cord. I twist three more times, enough for the cord to cut into the thick flesh of his neck.
The shooting continues, but I force myself not to think about it. I fight Dimitrov with all my might while keeping one eye on the mousy man. The strange little man is still leaning motionless on the wall like some weird sociopath.
“Admit it, Casmir,” the man says. “You’re getting beaten by a girl.”
Dimitrov slams his bloody hand on the carpet. He twists his
head and lifts his eyes to the man with a plea for help. The man doesn’t move.
What’s up with the mousy man’s strange attitude? I don’t know what his stand is, but I better finish Dimitrov off quickly so I can deal with him.
Unfortunately, Dimitrov is a fighter. The bastard refuses to give up. With an inhuman burst of strength, he rolls onto his side and on top of me. I end up flat on my back, trapped under his body with him facing the ceiling. Before I can ward off the blow, he plants an elbow in my stomach.
The punch takes my breath. Wheezing, I fight for air. My grip on the cord slackens. In a wink, Dimitrov is on his feet, ripping the cord from my hand and cutting my palm with the force. The same cord I used to strangle Dimitrov is wound around my neck. I kick and get in a few punches of my own, but Dimitrov is fueled by his anger. He half-drags, half-carries me to the bed, hauling me up onto the mattress.
Pop! Pop!
The fighting next door escalates. I imagine Yan and Ilya taking shelter behind furniture and wrecking the suite as I struggle for my life. Maybe the guards are keeping them away from the door on Dimitrov’s order. Maybe Dimitrov told them my life was his. It makes sense. A man like Dimitrov won’t allow anyone else to kill a traitor with whom he has a personal vendetta. And I did deceive him in the most humiliating way, not only using his own lust as a weapon against him, but also making him look like a fool.
My vision turns hazy, but I refuse to give up.
I wrestle harder underneath Dimitrov, scratching wherever my nails find purchase, but his suit jacket hampers my efforts. I go for his face. He leans back far enough that I barely scrape his jaw.
Abandoning the cord, he folds his hands around my neck. His injured hand is functioning poorly, but even so, his force is frightening, the kind fueled by hatred and a blind will to survive. “I’ll fucking kill you slowly.”
I try to throw him off by bucking my hips, but he’s dead weight. A frantic glance at the door assures me the mousy man is still standing there, observing the spectacle with obvious glee. Does he get off on watching people getting killed?
A string of gunshots rings out from closer, maybe just behind the door, but they’re faint sounds compared to the buzzing in my ears as Dimitrov continues to choke me. My lungs protest and panic surfaces.
Calling on all my training, I stop fighting his hold, forcing myself to think.
“Not so brave now that you’re on the receiving end,” Dimitrov mutters.
He pins my neck to the bed with his injured hand while reaching for his buckle with the other, giving me just enough oxygen so I wouldn’t pass out. So I’d be conscious for what he has planned for me.
“Are you just going to stand there?” he asks the mousy man. “Or do you want a taste of the traitor’s cunt?”
“I’ll let you go first,” the man replies.
Fuck him. Fuck them.
A loud crack comes from the lounge. It’s followed by the sound of splintering wood.
Dimitrov is occupied with his frantic fumbling, pushing down his pants before wedging his hips between my legs. Blood from his broken nose drips onto my face, and drops of saliva splatter over my lips as he snarls, “I’m going to fuck every hole in your body. Then I’m going to watch my men do it. Then, before I kill you, I’m going to fuck you with that broken bottle.”
I want to spit in his face. I want to sink my teeth into his tongue and rip it from his mouth, but I tamp down the instinctive urge to fight back with anger. I suppress the impulse to go blindly into the battle. I have to fight with my brain, not my body, like Gergo taught me.
The thought of my friend calms me, and the knowledge that Yan is on the other side of that door gives me strength.
When Dimitrov’s cock falls on my thigh, I push off the wig and grip one of the hairpins keeping the net in place. Slipping the curved end around my middle finger, I secure the sharp points between my fingers and make a fist while Dimitrov is shoving up my dress, groping for my underwear. When the bastard grins at me, I stab him in the eye.
His scream is chilling. He tries to jerk away, but I grab his hair in my free hand and hold his face to me. He swats wildly, mostly hitting air. I don’t stop. I stab him in the eye and cheek, everywhere my hand happens to fall. He throws back his head and yowls, stilling a fraction of a second in his strain to escape the assault. It’s enough to take aim. Putting all my force into it, I jab the long, sharp wire of the hairpin deep into his ear.
The piercing cry of a man pushed beyond the threshold of pain rips through the room. It’s not a scream but a thin wail, a sound that goes hand in hand with torture. Nothing hurts like a ruptured eardrum. Nothing makes a person go crazier than a needle in the inner ear.
I pull out my weapon. He lets go of me to slam a palm over his ear. A rivulet of blood oozes through his fingers. It’s the longer pause I need to locate the jugular vein in his neck. The prick from the pin in a vein is nothing compared to the pain in an eye or ear, but his good eye grows large while the bleeding one bulges as the hairpin sinks into his neck. Like all animals, he knows instinctively when the end has arrived. Defeat is written on his face, but like all overconfident men, he battles to believe it. He stares at me in shock. The fight has gone out of him completely. He doesn’t approach death gracefully.
He greets it screaming and crying.
Shoving a slobbering Dimitrov onto his side, I crawl out from underneath his semi-naked body. He’ll bleed out. With Dimitrov eliminated, the mousy sociopath is now my biggest immediate threat. I aim for the door, ready to jump like a tiger, but the man is gone.
Pop! Pop!
I have to get to Yan. I have to help him and Ilya.
My ribs protest when I move. Dimitrov must’ve cracked one or two with his punches. Ignoring the pain, I hobble away from the bed, but stop as something hard presses against my temple and the unmistakable click of a safety being cocked sounds in my ear.
“Not so fast, Mink,” the mousy man says. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Several questions run simultaneously through my mind. Why didn’t he help Dimitrov? Who the hell is he? Why isn’t he shooting me already?
I’m contemplating the answers, trying to piece together a puzzle while searching for a way out of this new dilemma, when my gaze falls on the broken bottle on the floor. I can knock the gun out of his hand and stab him with the bottle before he knows what’s happening.
Another gunshot.
Lifting my hands, I play for time. “Don’t shoot. I’ll do what you want.”
He chuckles. “I doubt that.”
My muscles tense and my body draws tight, preparing to attack. I’m about to move when the wood around the doorknob explodes and the door falls into the room.
A tall figure appears in the frame, and everything inside me goes still, the earth seeming to stop moving. Even time itself stops as Yan stands there with a cold, fierce look on his face. He’s covered in blood and aiming a pistol at the man, perhaps one he took from the guards.
My heart at a standstill, I shift my gaze from Yan to the mousy man and the gun in his hand. His finger is curled around the trigger.
The trigger indents the slightest fraction. The spring being pushed back is amplified in the silence that rings in my head. Maybe it’s imaginary, but what’s real is the bullet in the barrel.
My world starts turning again when Yan speaks.
“Let her go.” His gaze sharpens, his eyes tightening. I recognize the intent in those jade-colored pools as he calmly keeps his aim and says, “Now.”
The man snickers. “I don’t think so. Throw down your weapon or she’s dead.”
“You’re not going to shoot her.” Yan pulls his lips into a thin smile. “She’s your only ticket out of here.”
Yan doesn’t look at me, nor at the now-quiet-and-still Dimitrov, who’s lying on the bed half-naked, his flaccid cock exposed. All of Yan’s attention is focused on the man pressing a gun against my head.
“Let her go,” Yan says again, “an
d I’ll kill you fast.”
The man laughs. “You’re making premature assumptions. I’m not dying today, and I’m not letting her go. As you said, she’s my ticket out of here.”
Yan’s smile turns condescending. “Do you always hide behind a woman’s skirt?”
The man folds his fingers around my upper arm, holding me in a tight grip. “She doesn’t count for a regular skirt. I’ve seen her in action.”
It’s then that Yan looks at me, and what I see in his eyes chills me to the bone. He’s going to shoot the man.
The message passes between us. It’s an unspoken language only two people who are as in tune with each other as we are can understand. There’s the slightest flicker of a smile in Yan’s eyes, a smile that’s meant just for me. With that single look, Yan tells me everything he showed me this morning. The sum of my life is condensed in that look. Everything I’ve ever wanted is distilled into this single moment.
Now.
Moving fast, I shoulder the man hard before ducking. He loses his footing, taking a step to the side. The barrel of the gun swings up into the air as he lets me go and tries to find his balance with flailing arms. The shot goes off, the stray bullet hitting the ceiling. Bits of plaster sift like snowflakes to the ground. Before he finds his equilibrium, Yan fires.
Click.
A blank.
I stare at Yan in incomprehension while horror transforms his face. Cold realization settles in my stomach. The chamber is empty. The man registers the knowledge at the same time. A mocking grin splays across his face as he takes aim again, this time pointing the gun at Yan.
Yan’s body tightens. He’s like a wound-up coil, ready to lunge, but no man is faster than a bullet.
I don’t think. I pounce. I grab the man’s arm and try to wrestle the gun from him. Yan’s voice calling my name reaches me as if from under water. The sound is muddled, distorted. I want to tell him it’s all right, to call for help, to get Ilya, but another shot goes off.
For a moment, I’m utterly confused. I’m not sure why a raw, savage cry tears from Yan’s chest. I’m not sure why the man’s head explodes and his brain splatters over the carpet. Vaguely, I’m aware of Ilya rushing into the room with a shotgun in his hand and sirens blaring in the distance. I’m aware of Yan catching me, easing my body to the floor. I’m aware of his strong hands and the inconsolable sound he makes as he kneels over me. I’m aware of his anguish as he presses his hands on my side and roars, “No. Fucking no. No, no, no.”
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