Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144908 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Anton turned to watch Titus and then Helena strut into the room. Her dark eyes moved over him with her usual expression, somewhere between lust and amusement, a combination that drove him half-crazy with need for her. Titus kept walking straight across the room, ignoring him the way he did, as if Anton were beneath his notice, taking up a position behind the Gusev brothers. Anton didn’t care if Titus never noticed him. The Russian was a psycho.
The last guard entered and carefully closed and locked the door, peering through the small glass window to ensure no one had followed them before he moved around to the side close to Nil Gorkey.
“Helena,” Anton greeted. “We’re all here. What’s the emergency?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Titus move. The man was a blur of speed so fast it was like lightning. It looked for a second as if he’d simultaneously slammed knives into the back of Filip’s and Mark Gusev’s skulls, severing the spinal cords. Could anyone do that? Before either man could drop, Titus pulled another knife out and slashed Stas Krupin across his throat.
Helena stepped up to Timothy Garin and, staring him straight in the eye, shoved a knife through his heart and a second one in his throat. At the same time, the guard next to Nil Gorkey slammed a knife into his kidney, twisted and then cut his throat.
Everything happened so fast Anton didn’t have time to process. Seconds. Maybe three. Five at most and Helena’s elite assassination team was down in a bloodbath. He tried to back up and stepped in a pool of blood. His immaculate brown Italian leather shoes were coated with the substance, and his stomach lurched. He turned to the guards behind him. They were lying across the metal table where they’d been sitting with their throats cut, and blood ran toward him in long streaks of red.
Anton found himself staring at Helena and her Russian bodyguards. They were looking at him as if he were nothing at all. Not the powerhouse at the prison. The man who could make things happen for her.
“Helena, what are you doing? I’ve always helped you. Always.” He held up his hand to ward her off as she approached him slowly with her runway walk. “Anything you wanted, I gave you. You wanted to kill a prisoner, he was gone.”
“Yes, you did do that, didn’t you, Anton,” Lana agreed. “And you made so much money agreeing to kill whoever Helena wanted dead.”
Anton reached behind him for the table, looking more confused than ever. “You’re Helena.” He looked around the room at the others. Titus. The guards. They had moved to the door. The guard looked out the window to ensure no one was close.
“I’m not. Helena is doing her best to kill my friend’s family right now. She’s not going to get away with it. You shouldn’t have taken her money, Anton.”
“The warden . . .”
“She slept with him to get his cooperation and then you got involved. You got very greedy, didn’t you?” Lana continued to stalk him, careful of her shoes. “The warden went to you to try to get out from under her, but you wanted money. And you liked sleeping with her.”
Anton couldn’t deny it. Lana looked just like her. She was close to him now. Looking him right in the eye. He didn’t feel the knife until it was too late. Until he looked down and saw blood running down his chest. He shook his head.
“Helena, no. You owe me. I allowed you to work out of the prison. Your men stayed here and had every luxury. We brought women and booze in for them. We protected them.” He told her. He was certain he spoke aloud, but she didn’t seem to hear him. She was walking away, her ass swaying the way it always did in the tight skirts she wore deliberately to arouse men. To arouse him.
The metal door opened, and the two guards passed through first. Anton found himself on his knees, watching them curiously. He held his hand over the blood spurting out of his chest. It was weird, like a geyser. Helena went next. She didn’t even look back at him. She just kept walking. None of them seemed to have blood on them. That was impossible. He looked around the room. There was blood everywhere. There should have been shoe prints at least. Tracks. He needed to get out his cell phone and call for help. Call someone. Tell them that Helena had gone completely insane and murdered everyone. That Titus, the big brute who had paused in the doorway and watched him with cold, dead eyes, had helped her. Titus seemed to fade. Anton couldn’t stay on his knees. He slumped over and fell face-first into that red pool. He wanted to scream but was afraid to open his mouth. It was too late to do anything but breathe the blood in. Then there was nothing at all.