Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
But between us and the hole were Spartak and his men. They were distracted, trying to grab the people and corral them back downstairs...maybe we can take them. We had to, or Bronwyn was going to die down there. I nodded to Alexei, and we ran.
For the first few seconds, it looked like we had a chance. Some of the guards were looking the other way, focused on the escaping lab workers. But then they looked around and saw us and the bullets started flying, catching us out in the open. I felt one tug at the fabric of my jacket, inches from my chest. Alexei stumbled as a bullet clipped his leg. We couldn’t fire back, not without hitting all the panicked people running back and forth. One of the guards lifted his gun and aimed right at me and I grimaced, bracing myself…
The guard suddenly flew sideways as a man in a suit rammed into him. Gennadiy!
Another guard fell, the handle of a knife sticking from his chest, and I saw Valentin standing in the shadows. A third doubled over as Mikhail swung a baseball bat into his stomach. And Mikhail’s dogs were there, too, two of them latching on to a guard’s arms and pulling him down while a third put his jaws warningly around his throat. I blinked: daylight was flooding into the club through the front door: my brothers must have fought their way in past the bouncers. And now the door was being held open by a flood of panicked people trying to get outside. For the first time since Gabriella killed the power, I could see beyond the reach of my flashlight. Where’s Spartak? I’d lost sight of him.
I ran over to the fight and staggered to a stop. “What are you doing here?” I yelled at Gennadiy. “I told you to stay away!”
Gennadiy punched the guard in the face. “And I told you, you’re my brother.” Another guard ran towards us. “Go and find your wife!” Gennadiy told me. “We’ve got this!”
Alexei nodded to me and joined my brothers. I ran to where the people were emerging from behind the DJ booth. As I got closer, I saw a square hatch had opened in the floor. A stream of people, all women, were emerging. But Bronwyn wasn’t among them. And I could see tongues of orange flickering down there. I raced forward—
A bottle shattered against the back of my head, and I went down hard in a shower of glittering glass fragments. My neck and back were soaked and I smelled vodka. Pain detonated in the center of my brain and throbbed outwards like a nuclear blast cloud, pushing out everything else. I couldn’t think, couldn’t function. I lay there for a few seconds and then tried to stand, but my feet just scrabbled at the floor uselessly. It slowly sank in that I was hurt. Hurt bad.
Spartak’s shoes appeared in front of my face, glass crunching under his shoes like a fresh winter frost. “Oh Radimir,” he chided. “Look what’s become of you.”
I knew I needed to get up, but my brain wouldn’t issue any orders. The pain was so bad it vaporized all thought.
“I’m going to kill you,” Spartak told me coldly. “Then I’ll deal with your brothers and your uncle. When Konstantin hears the Aristovs are gone, he’ll pull his men out.” He placed his shoe on my cheek and pressed. The side of my face started to press into the broken glass on the floor, but I couldn’t move: every time I tried to do something, the pain annihilated the thought, a blast cloud turning houses to matchwood. I was done.
“You make me sick,” said Spartak, pushing a little harder. “You used to be one of us. No one was more ruthless than Radimir Aristov. And now you give yourself up for a woman!”
I’d had to close one eye because it was millimeters away from touching the glass. Through the other, I could see my brothers, Mikhail and Alexei still fighting the guards. I was on my own.
I looked at the hatch. It was blurry...in fact, everything was blurry. I must have a concussion. But I could see that women had stopped coming out of the hole, and flames were leaping up into the club, spreading the fire.
Spartak saw me looking. “Oh, she’s down there,” he confirmed. “I left her down there.”
Fear clawed at my throat. I stared at the hatch, unable to take my eyes off it.
“Look at me!” roared Spartak, and he kicked me in the kidneys, rolling me onto my back. That’s when I heard it in his voice: the same anger that I’d felt all those years ago, when I’d cut Alexei out of my life. When I’d been angry with him for falling in love.