The Bully (Kingmakers)

by Sophie Lark

  Efrem’s opponent swings his gun around. Efrem is forced to drop his knife so he can yank the man’s hand away from the trigger.

  My mother readies her rifle, barrel pointed directly between the soldier’s eyes.

  Then an arm darts out from under the chaise, stabbing a letter opener down through the top of the soldier’s boot, pinning his foot to the floor. My sister rolls out from under the chaise, leaping to her feet. My father snatches up Efrem’s knife and finishes disposing of the second soldier.

  My mother cracks the French doors, hissing, “Come on!” to the others.

  Freya joins us on the balcony, followed close behind by Efrem and my father.

  “What the fuck is happening?” she whispers to me.

  Unlike my mother, Freya’s hair is pin-straight, barely a strand out of place despite her exertions. It gleams blue-black in the moonlight, a dark cap around her pale face.

  My mother motions for us all to stay silent.

  I can still hear fighting down on the grounds, on the west side where the helicopter is located, and also at the front of the house where we would have gone to access the garage. My mother was right—she’s always right.

  Meanwhile, shouting and thundering feet seem to be coming from every direction inside the house. They’re searching for us, room by room.

  My mother is already descending down the trellis. She’s light and nimble, as is Freya. I’m not sure the spindly wood will hold my weight. I hesitate, wanting to let the women get down first, but my father pushes me forward.

  “Go, son,” he murmurs.

  As soon as my mother’s feet touch the ground, she’s sprinting for the gardener’s shed, Freya close behind. She keeps her rifle ready. A soldier rounds the corner of the shed, and she shoots him between the eyes.

  He falls backward, his finger jerking convulsively on the trigger of his AR. A burst of bullets fire up to the sky.

  “Blyad,” my father hisses behind me.

  Now I hear more shouting, and more men sprinting toward us. My father drops to one knee, calling to me, “Keep running!”

  One of the soldiers points his gun at me, before being blasted off his feet by my father.

  The doors of the shed burst outward as my mother drives right through them, bumping over the grass and screeching to a halt directly in front of me.

  I jump in the open back of the Jeep, followed closely after by Efrem. As he’s leaping in, he’s shot from behind. He falls heavily onto my lap, a dark stain blossoming on his back with awful speed.

  My father fires twice more, hitting the man who shot Efrem, then he leaps into the back with me.

  “Go!” he shouts to my mother.

  She floors the accelerator, speeding not toward the front of the house, but over the grass and through the olive trees toward the side gate.

  Freya takes my mother’s rifle so she can cover our right side, while my father watches behind us. I try to prop Efrem up, ripping off my shirt so I can use it to apply pressure to the wound.

  “I’m sorry,” he says to my father.

  “It’s not your fault, moy drug,” my father says, with surprising gentleness.

  It’s the kindness in my father’s voice, more than the horrible waxy color of Efrem’s face, that tells me my uncle is going to die.

  I press harder against the wound, the wadded shirt already soaked through with blood.

  Efrem pushes his Beretta into my hand. His dark eyes meet mine for a moment, and he tries to say something more through colorless lips. Instead, he lets out a long, rattling breath and his head falls back, his glasses slipping askew and eyes staring blindly upward at the night sky. Each bump of the Jeep jolts his limp body.

  “Nine o’clock!” My mother barks, wrenching the wheel to the left to give my father and sister a better angle. They fire at the three soldiers guarding the side gate.

  The gate is chained shut and padlocked. Gripping Efrem’s Beretta tight, I roll out of the back of the Jeep and crouch behind the tire. Once my father and sister have dropped the first two soldiers, I shoot the third one in the chest, then I run to the gate. I empty the clip at the padlock until it’s destroyed, then rip the chain away and shove the gate open.

  My mother drives forward, only pausing long enough for me to leap in once more before she roars down the dark, winding road that leads along the sea cliff.

  I’m about to say, “We made it!” when two black SUVs screech out onto the road behind us, speeding after us at a reckless pace. A heavily-tattooed man in tactical gear leans out the passenger side window to fire at us.

  “Stay low!” My mother shouts back at us.

  We’re poorly protected in the ancient Jeep with its wide-open back. Worse, the newer and better-maintained SUVs are gaining on us.

  “Who are they?” I ask my father. “Bratva?”

  Their tattoos look like my father’s.

  He shakes his head.

  “Malina,” he hisses through his teeth.

  My skin freezes.

  The Ukrainians are every bit as ruthless as the Bratva—maybe even more so. They’re our dark twins, our twisted doppelgängers. Never have they been more dangerous than since Marko Moroz took leadership by stabbing a pen through the eye of his own former mentor.

  “Look!” Freya calls back to us, pointing up into the sky.

  Our helicopter swoops up over the villa, passing over the stone walls in our direction.

  “Who’s flying it, though?” My father mutters.

  The radio on Efrem’s hip crackles.

  I snatch it up.

  “I’m coming to get you, boss . . .” a familiar voice says.

  I grin. It’s Jasha, my father’s Avtoritet, and a close friend to me, despite the twenty years between us. I’m almost as pleased to hear that he’s still alive as I am to see him flying to the rescue.

  Until I hear a booming shot ring out, and I watch a bright flare arcing across the sky, from the top of the villa directly toward the helicopter.

  Like a deadly firework, it hits the tail of the chopper and explodes outward in all directions. The helicopter whirls around and around, the body now wrenched along by the blades. It crashes down to the ground where it erupts into a fireball so immense that I feel the heat blast hit my stunned face moments later.

  “NOOO!” I shout.

  My father shoves me down as more gunfire whizzes over our heads from the pursing SUVs. Still, I catch a last glimpse of the lone man standing atop our villa, an MK 153 resting casually across his shoulder.

  Even at this distance, there can be no doubt of the identity of that goliath figure. It’s Marko Moroz.

  My father fires back toward the SUVs, keeping them at bay. He hits the tire of one, and the Escalade fishtails back and forth across the road, but it doesn’t roll. The driver recovers, still following after us.

  “Get ready!” My mother shouts.

  She yanks the wheel to the left again, pulling us into the overlook above the marina. Directly below us a dozen boats are moored, including our own cruiser.

  She grabs her rifle back from Freya and she and my father take cover behind the Jeep, firing toward the approaching SUVs.

  “No time to climb down!” She shouts at me and Freya. “You’ll have to jump!”

  “Go with them!” my father tells her. “I’ll cover you.”

  “No!” she says fiercely, her dark eyes glinting in the glare of the Jeep’s headlights. “I’m with you until the end.”

  My sister is already climbing over the sea wall while the SUVs screech to a halt in front of us, their headlights blinding, their doors opening. My father fires toward the windows, driving the men back inside.

  Then, teeth gritted, he seizes my mother’s rifle and wrenches it out of her hands.

  “I’m sorry, my love,” he says.

  He picks her up bodily and chucks her over the wall.

  I hear her howl of fury as she falls.

  “Go!” he says, shoving me after her. “Make her lea
ve!”

  As I leap over the wall, I catch one last glimpse of my father firing in several directions at once as the Ukrainians close in on him. I see his body jerk as he’s hit in the shoulder and the leg, but he won’t stop shooting.

  I fall down, down through the black night toward the freezing water. I plunge into the sea, sinking so deep that I have to swim upward with all my might to break the surface again. As soon as my head pops up, I stroke hard for our boat.

  Freya has already climbed in. She casts off and starts the engine.

  I see my mother’s dark head. She’s not swimming for the boat—she’s trying to reach the pier so she can climb back up to my father.

  It will never work. He’ll be dead long before she gets there.

  I seize a handful of her hair and haul her backward.

  “LET GO OF ME!” she shrieks, twisting around in the water.

  The last person in the world I would want to fight is my mother. And not out of respect—because she’s fucking terrifying. But I have to obey my father.

  “IT’S TOO LATE!” I bellow. “You’re going to get us all killed!”

  I see the wild look in her eyes, that savage determination that I’ve never seen falter, never once in my life.

  Then reality hits her harder than any hammer.

  Her face slackens, and she looks back toward the cliff with pure misery instead.

  “Come on,” I say, grabbing her hand and swimming for the boat.

  I’ve barely managed to haul her in before the Malina reach the edge of the cliff and begin firing down on us. Splinters explode off the railing. A bullet hits the deck an inch from my foot.

  Freya opens the throttle, speeding us out of the harbor.

  I look back at the flashes of gunfire still lining the cliff.

  My father can’t protect us anymore.

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