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)
Answer: my brothers. I peeked out and saw Valentin and then Gennadiy returning fire. Where are my security guys? I’d had three men stationed outside but there’d been no warning: they must have been slaughtered before they even got a shot off.
The amps started to spit blue arcs of electricity and I flinched as one of them singed my jacket. “We’ve got to move,” I told Bronwyn. When the gunfire stopped for a second, I pulled her to her feet and ran for one of the doors.
Time seemed to slow down. For the first time, I could really see the devastation. People lay bleeding, perhaps dead. Tables around the edge of the room had been overturned as people fled and the exits were still clogged by the crowds. Spartak had disappeared as soon as my brothers fired back but his gunmen were still there, reloading their weapons to fire again.
Suddenly, Bronwyn tore herself out of my grasp and veered off to the side. I grabbed for her but missed. Where the hell is she going?
Then I saw him. In the middle of the room, stumbling through the glittering snow of glass shards. Shit! A kid, no more than six, forced by his parents into a little three-piece wedding suit. He was red-faced and bawling, blind with tears.
Bronwyn was running straight towards him, sprinting. I raced after her, skidding a little in my dress shoes. The floor was polished wood, slick with spilled champagne, and she was in heels: it must have been hell on her joints, just staying upright. Chyort, my little librarian was brave. But the gunmen were going to fire again long before she could get the kid to safety. She scooped him up and looked desperately around for cover but there wasn’t any: we were right out in the open. I picked her up and spun around, clutching her and the kid to my chest and putting my back to the gunmen. Then I closed my eyes tight and waited for the bullets to tear into me.
There were three heavy thumps behind us and then screaming. A machine gun fired but it hit the ceiling, not us. I tentatively uncoiled from around Bronwyn and the kid and looked behind me.
The three gunmen were on the floor, rolling and sobbing. Two had a dog’s jaws locked into their arms and had dropped their guns. The third had been foolish enough to keep hold of his gun. He had a dog on his chest, its jaws on his throat, and he wasn’t moving anymore.
That’s the thing about Mikhail’s dogs. They’re adorable bundles of floof...right up until the moment they see one of the family in danger.
Mikhail, unflappable as ever, collected up the guns and then recalled the dogs. They trotted over obediently, wagging their tails, one of them with its jaws dripping red.
“Baba!” said Bronwyn suddenly. “Where’s Baba?”
“She’s fine,” said Gennadiy, reloading his gun as he walked over. “I got her out of the room as soon as the shooting started.”
Bronwyn put the kid down, ran over and wrapped Gennadiy up in a hug. Gennadiy grimaced and pouted, unused to affection.
We reunited the kid with his parents and checked the guests. One man was dead. Three more people had been hit by bullets but would survive, several more had cuts from flying glass and two had been hurt in the crush at the doors. The three security guys I’d had stationed outside were all dead and that hit me hard: they were all good men who’d always been loyal to me. But I knew it could have been much, much worse.
The police arrived and started asking a million questions, but between Mikhail’s smooth diplomacy and a phone call to the police commissioner, who we had an understanding with, we managed to smooth things out. No, officer, we have no idea who these men were, or why they shot the place up.
But in reality, I knew exactly what had happened. Spartak had somehow found out I killed his brother. How?
The guests started to leave. Bronwyn was just hugging her friends goodbye when Gennadiy took me aside, saying there was something he needed to show me. He rounded up Valentin and Mikhail, too, and we slipped away from the police and out into the house’s gardens. It was very still and very quiet, and so cold that the snow that covered the tops of the hedges had frozen into a thick, sparkling crust.
“Spartak just sent me this,” Gennadiy told me, pulling out his phone.
At that second, Bronwyn ran out of the house and over to our group, still in her wedding gown. “What is it?” she asked, seeing our faces. “What’s happened?”
Gennadiy looked shifty.
“She’s family, now!” I snapped.
He sighed and showed us a video on his phone. It was shot from a low perspective, maybe waist height. I recognized Borislav’s apartment immediately. The camera showed the living room but in the background, I could see the open door to the bathroom. And I could see me, slamming Borislav’s head against the tiled step of the shower, and Bronwyn standing in the hallway watching.