by Lara Adrian
Cain’s body vibrated with the low rumble of his fury. Marina brushed her fingers against his, a subtle signal that she was okay, that Anatoly’s words didn’t hurt her. He didn’t have that power anymore. And she wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to be standing next to Cain as his lover.
“Your crudeness doesn’t mean anything to me,” she said, shrugging. “What else should I expect from a man who values nothing but himself?”
He chuckled, smoothing a hand over his balding head. “Unfortunately, it seems you’ve inherited your poor taste in bed partners from my sister. But you are still my blood, and I can be forgiving. So, if you’re done slutting around with this subhuman, you may come home, Marina. In fact, I insist.”
She scoffed. “I hate that I have even a drop of your blood in me. I’m not your niece anymore. I was never anything to you. I know that now. I’ve seen through you, finally.”
“What you were, and are, Marina, is a constant reminder of Ekaterina’s mistake. You, with your blond hair and odd-colored eyes. You look nothing like a Moretskov. I was always aware that you were other.” He leaned back, considering her now. “And I did care in the beginning, when you had no one else. But then you used your abominable gift on me. You dared to manipulate me, and at that moment I knew you were dangerous.”
No. She shook her head, rejecting the twinge of guilt that still pricked her over that incident. She had been wrong to do it, but she was not going to allow him to excuse anything he’d done now by blaming a single, impulsive action of a teenage girl.
“If you felt I was so dangerous, then why not kill me that day? You were angry enough.”
“Yes, I was. But you were so upset, begging me to forgive you. It was obvious that you loved me, even after I had that animal put down. It was your remorse that saved you, Marina. Your desire to earn back my trust.” He blinked at her, his expression lacking any feeling whatsoever. “I knew eventually that depth of devotion could be useful to me. I just didn’t know how, until I obtained the information on that disk.”
Her stomach roiled at the admission. She glanced at Cain. He stood unmoving, the hardness in his features intensifying as he absorbed everything Anatoly said. Dark energy pulsed off his body. If not for her gentling stroke of his hand, Marina knew he would already be in motion, leaping onto her uncle and tearing him to pieces.
Which would only unleash the foursome of Vory killers armed and waiting for the order to attack.
Anatoly leaned forward, placing his forearms on the edge of the table. “Show me the data drive, Marina.”
She reached in her pocket and took out the device. Holding it in her fingers, she made no move to hand it to him. His deep brown eyes locked on to the disk with satisfaction, even relief.
“Good girl.” He rose then, sliding his chair back with a scrape. “Now, come with me. Let’s go home so you can help me open it, and we can talk some more in private.”
“She’s not going anywhere with you, asshole.” Cain snarled the statement, moving himself protectively in front of her. “If you have copies, you don’t need Marina to help you open this one.”
“He doesn’t have copies.” How had she not seen that until now? The truth astonished her, although she should have guessed as much. “He lied to me. Again.”
Anatoly chuckled as if she’d just told the richest joke. “What can I say? My niece has always been a clever girl. Moretskov genes are hard to water down.”
Cain reached behind him to move her farther back from Anatoly’s table. Her uncle seemed unfazed by the Breed male standing menacingly in front of him.
“Time to go now, moya radost. The bloodsucker can stay behind.”
“Like hell, I will,” Cain muttered. “You think four Vory will be enough to keep me from ripping your head off?”
“No,” Anatoly said. “No, I don’t expect they would be.”
At that same moment, from all directions inside the restaurant, men stood up with semiautomatic weapons in their hands—every one of them trained on Marina. Men who until that instant had been ostensibly enjoying their dinners with dates or wives, even a few tables containing groups of chattering children. All a ruse. All a twisted game orchestrated by the monster who was her uncle.
Shocked, she gaped in horror as the remaining diners all got up from the tables and silently left the restaurant.
“Cain,” she whispered, unable to count the number of pistols aimed at her head from every corner of the dining room. Easily more than a dozen, possibly twenty or more.
Then, even worse, peeling away from the shadows of a darkened hallway came two hulking males with arms the size of tree trunks and eyes glowing with amber.
Breed males.
Anatoly laughed. “Tell me, Hunter. Do you think you can move fast enough to keep a hundred rounds from blowing Marina’s pretty skull to pieces? More to the point, do you think you can do it before these two vampires tear you in half?”
Cain’s stillness communicated his concern . . . and his doubt.
Marina had never been so terrified. Not only for herself, but for the sheer outnumbering of Anatoly’s personal army against Cain.
The gunmen closed in gradually, tightening their ranks on her.
“Come now, Marina,” Anatoly said. “Move slowly toward me. Your Breed friend here doesn’t want to see your brain splattered all over this room. As for me, all I need is that tattoo on your arm. You can either come along willingly, or defy me and I’ll use your corpse.”
CHAPTER 24
Complete and brutal annihilation.
That’s what the killer in Cain wanted more than anything else—to give his rage its head and unleash holy hell on the room full of Bratva soldiers and the pair of mercenary Breed males taking orders from Anatoly Moretskov.
But he couldn’t risk it.
Not when Marina’s worried gaze held on him and her uncle’s four Vory guards moved in to take her away.
“Stay alive,” he whispered to her, leaning close and breathing in her sweet scent. “That’s all you have to do, love. Stay alive. Leave the rest to me.”
She nodded, but he could see the doubt in her burgundy eyes. Two of Moretskov’s men grabbed her wrists while another bound her hands in front of her.
And all the while, those two dozen semiauto guns stayed trained on her from all sides.
Cain told himself this wasn’t the way he was going to lose her. It couldn’t be.
In the back of his mind he took cold comfort in the vision that had been haunting him for the past days. A bullet wasn’t going to be her end. As horrific as the vision of her drowning death was, he clung to it now as he watched Moretskov take her away from him at gunpoint.
Fury ran like black acid in his veins the instant she was gone from his sight.
The muffled sound of vehicle doors closing outside the rear of the restaurant reached his heightened hearing like gunshots. It took all the self-control he had not to follow her now.
Twenty-plus Bratva men could fill him full of rounds and he could probably still make it long enough to rescue Marina from Moretskov’s hands. He could move faster than any human. He could be gone in mere seconds and none of the gunmen would stand any hope of catching up to him.
But the two Breed males were the larger threat—to his chances and to Marina’s ultimate safety. To get to her, he needed to take them out first.
Cain bared his fangs at the pair. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
The bigger of the two smirked. “For the limo to leave.”
Yeah, fuck that. Cain had a dagger concealed in his hand. He’d retrieved it from under his loose shirt during the instant Moretskov’s thugs took hold of Marina. Now, he leaped on the smirking Breed male who stood closest to him, plunging the blade into the vampire’s chest as bullets began to fly from all around them.
He and the male crashed into a server’s station on their way to the floor. Deafening gunfire and splintering tables, chairs, and dishware created an instant explosion of chaos in
the room. Cain ignored it all, focused on the thing he was born and raised to do.
Coldly, swiftly, he dragged the blade across the Breed male’s throat, all but severing the head from the vampire’s body.
Meanwhile, the second male attacked. He jumped Cain from behind, trapping his skull between massive, powerful hands.
Cain roared as the pressure in his temples turned his vision gray. He reached back with the dagger, stabbing his assailant in the eye. The male let go of him on an anguished howl.
But Cain wasn’t finished with him yet. He flipped around in a blur of movement, grabbing the bulky body and holding it in front of him as a shield while Moretskov’s gunmen closed in with weapons blazing.
More than a few hit the Breed male’s head, enough to prove lethal.
Cain heaved the limp corpse at the swarming human shooters.
Then he flashed out the back door of the restaurant and took off at the full velocity of his Breed genetics to save the woman he loved.
He only prayed fate would be on his side.
~ ~ ~
Marina sat silently in the backseat of the chauffeured black limousine that had been her ride to countless dinners and social events over the years. Tonight she crowded against the soft leather seat and window, her bound hands in her lap and her gaze fixed on the pistol her uncle held on her from his seat across from her.
She knew why her hands were tied. All she needed was the opportunity to touch Anatoly for a few moments. Then she could bend his will and make him release her. But he was out of reach, and if the tight bindings didn’t thwart her, the gun he brandished certainly would.
He had taken the flash drive out of her pocket before they got in the car. His fingers caressed it idly as he stared at her in the dark of the limo while his driver sped along the fast-moving stretch of multi-lane Ivanovskaya Street, heading east through the city.
“How could you do it?” Marina shook her head, glancing at the device. “Those are real people you’re exposing, hundreds of innocent lives on that disk.”
“Innocent?” He scoffed. “JUSTIS has been sniffing around me for years. Their agents infiltrating the Bratva and other organizations like an infestation. I’m glad to help root the traitors out.”
“It’s you who’s the criminal,” she reminded him. “You and your friends like Ernesto Fuentes and Boris Karamenko. All of you are in the wrong, not the other way around.”
“Please.” His face twisted with anger. “Spare me your self-righteousness, girl. Bratva money paid for your pampered lifestyle—and my sister’s. It paid for her musical education in America, which she squandered by spreading her legs for anyone who said a pretty word to her. You were a product of that flaw of hers.”
At the cutting disregard, Marina glanced out the window at the buildings and storefronts they passed in a blur of lights and speeding cars. “You speak as if you hated her.”
He chuckled. “Hate is a strong word. I didn’t feel that deeply for Ekaterina. She was a silly, idealistic girl. And she was only too happy to spend Bratva money on fancy holidays and expensive clothes—all while condemning me for how I earned it. I should have dumped her on the street instead of giving the ungrateful bitch a home she didn’t deserve. I suppose I finally reached my limit with her after she took up with that activist professor from Moscow.”
Marina knew the basic details of her mother’s final few months of life. She had read the news reports about the accidental deaths of both her mom and her boyfriend while the pair was on a boating holiday in Spain. Drugs and alcohol had played a factor according to the coroner . . . but now she wondered.
“What do you mean you reached your limit?” Her blood chilled. “What did you do?”
But she knew. God, she was beginning to see the true depths of her uncle’s evil now.
“You killed her.” Marina’s voice rose with the force of her pain and outrage. “You took my mother from me, you bastard.”
And in Anatoly Moretskov’s utter lack of reaction, she knew another truth.
She was as good as dead too.
He couldn’t let her live knowing what he’d done. All he needed her for was the key to open the disk. Then he was going to kill her as easily as he’d killed her mother.
Marina turned her head to gauge their location—and how slim the odds were for her escape from the speeding vehicle. There was only one chance to break out and hope to survive the leap.
Up ahead, before they would reach the Volodarsky Bridge that spanned the Neva River, was a wide green space. If she could tumble out and onto the soft grass, she might make it.
Heart pounding in her ears, she bided her time as they approached. The gloom inside the limousine concealed her movements as she inched her fingers toward the door handle. All she had to do was wait another few seconds . . . almost there.
Sucking in a breath, she hit the unlock button. The click seemed as loud as a gunshot.
“What the—” Anatoly’s gaze snapped to her scrambling fingers as she hurried to grasp the door’s release. He shouted to the driver in Russian, demanding he speed up. “Marina, damn you!”
The vehicle lurched forward, tossing her against the seat. The green space lay behind them now, the driver flooring the accelerator as they approached the bridge.
She had no choice now. She had to get out of the car, no matter what.
With her bound hands, she swung them forward, knocking her uncle’s weapon off its aim on her. His arm flew up and back in the struggle.
Three shots fired wildly, sharp pops that sparked in the darkness.
One shattered the passenger window. Another tore into the ceiling of the limo.
The third hit the driver in the back of the head.
Blood and brain matter exploded against the windshield. He slumped forward. The car careened onto the bridge and out of control.
Marina screamed, still struggling for purchase on the door handle. She couldn’t get it open. And even if she did, the tumble onto the pavement was all but certain to kill her.
“Oh, my God!”
In terror, she watched the bridge guardrail loom closer and closer in front of them as the limo veered across the lanes.
It slammed into the low barrier . . . and crashed right through.
The impact shattered the cracked windshield. The sound of groaning, twisting metal seemed to go on endlessly. And so did the slow-motion plunge toward the dark, rippling water of the river far below.
Water gushed in through the broken glass and crumpled seams of the doors and hood. It was frigid cold, so dark it was black. Marina scrambled to open her door as the front of the car tipped forward and began to sink.
“Marina!” Her uncle clawed at her from the other side of the backseat as the water rose up to his face. He grabbed the hem of her skirt, dragging her away from the door. “Marina, help me!”
He was going to pull her down if she didn’t get free. But her tied hands were of little use to her. The door wouldn’t open against the pressure of the water outside the vehicle. Finally, she found the button for the window instead. The glass slid down, bringing in a massive wave of dark, briny water.
It hit her face, pushing into her nose and mouth. She choked, fighting against the incoming force of the river.
She couldn’t drown.
She couldn’t let Cain’s vision come true.
She wanted to live.
Please, God. Let me live.
She tried to swim out the open window, but her uncle’s grasp held her back as he tried to use her body as a ladder for his own escape. Marina kicked at him, her face completely submerged now.
She screamed Cain’s name in her head as the vehicle descended under the waves.
CHAPTER 25
Allowing Marina anywhere near Russia was a mistake he’d regretted the instant they stepped off the plane.
But the even bigger regret—the one that had Cain’s heart caught in a vise as he raced on foot through the middle of Saint Petersburg—was the fa
ct that he’d allowed her to leave the Everglades Darkhaven without first offering her his blood bond. He should have fucking demanded it.
If he had, that blood connection to each other would have led him to her like a beacon. He would have felt her location with a thrumming in his own veins.
Instead, he chased through the streets as good as blind, trying to guess where she was.
He knew Moretskov’s estate lay east of the city. Before leaving the States, he and Raze had gone over the mansion’s location and the property schematics in case Cain needed the information. But knowing where Moretskov was likely taking her didn’t tell Cain where she was now. And he didn’t want her spending another minute in the bastard’s hands.
Cain paused at the corner of a wide, six-lane boulevard, searching for any sign of the black limousine. The busy city pulsed all around him, crowding his senses. The din of ceaseless nighttime traffic on the street in front of him. The blare of car horns and the intermittent, marrow-shaking thump of music playing over vehicle sound systems. Restaurant smells competing with the belch of exhaust . . . and something else.
Water.
A large body of water, rushing somewhere in the distance. Probably only a couple of blocks from where he stood. Dread sank cold talons into his chest when he recalled the wide river that cut a snaking path through part of Saint Petersburg.
And now he heard the scream of sirens on the approach.
Emergency vehicles.
No. It can’t be for her . . .
Cain bolted into a run, nothing but a blur of movement as he dodged vehicles and flew over the pavement, following the freshwater smell of the Neva River. Brake lights glowed up ahead. All three lanes of traffic onto the bridge were stopped, no cars coming from the other direction either. Cain’s nostrils filled with the stench of scorched rubber, pulverized concrete, and twisted steel.