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Nastja, my darling sister. One of the toughest women I have ever known, and she took a bullet for me during our escape.
I can still feel her… stumbling under the heavy weight of her body in my arms. I can still hear the scared gurgles of her drowning in her own blood as she begged me for help. I had stabbed her as a mercy, and yet the action carries the heavy weight of guilt.
I was supposed to protect them. They were my baby siblings, and now they are nothing but memories.
I reach the bottom of the stairs. Both doors are blown wide open and the entrance foyer is littered with corpses. Priceless paintings are now splattered in blood, and ornate vases worth more than most can dream up in a lifetime are scattered in shards between the dead.
Someone told Aleksander that Alena was in my care, that she was here.
Someone betrayed me. And my siblings died for it.
The Irish are my only suspects. Whatever alliance I struck with Seamus is clearly dead in the water ever since Seamus and Aleksander met in person to discuss a ceasefire. Seamus must have revealed that he and I have been working together. It wouldn’t be much of a leap to connect that to Alena’s disappearance.
A white-hot band suddenly tightens around my chest as I reach the front door, a force so powerful that I double over with a strained gasp. Clutching at my thigh, I fight with myself to regulate my breathing and fail.
I can’t breathe. The grief is too consuming, and the loss of Alena… it’s a pain worse than death.
“Fuck,” I gasp out into the hollow silence of my home-turned-graveyard. Heat prickles behind my eyes, so I screw them up and try to count in my mind on each inhale.
I don’t make it past three.
I can’t. I’m tearing apart at the seams, and with no outlet for my pain, the anger swells in my mind.
I’m going to kill Aleksander Orlova.
No building, not here in Russia or back in the States, will keep him safe. No number of men can hope to stand between me and that man.
He’s taken everything from me, everything I hold dear, and I’m going to make sure he dies feeling even a fraction of the agony consuming me.
He killed my brother. Killed my sister. Attacked my home and stole my Alena from me.
I want to believe that she’s alive, but even a flicker of that hope is too daring.
Anger is easier.
I’m going to burn down his life and wipe him from existence if it’s the last thing I do.
I couldn’t protect Alena. I couldn’t even protect my siblings.
Revenge is the least I can do.
I stand on the top step, panting harshly as my chest constricts and my guts somersault. My head swims, and I stumble forward, ending up sitting on the top step, trying to regulate my breathing.
Closing my eyes, Alena’s face floods across my mind. Her sweet, sexy smile. Her bright, sparkling eyes. She really became an incredible person in her time with me. If she is alive, being forced back into Aleksander’s cage is surely a fate worse than death.
I allow myself to panic, just for a moment. My old regulation techniques do nothing to calm me down, so I let it flow. All the anger and grief surge through me, and tight, hoarse gasps of air escape past my lips.
I allow myself to feel it for exactly six seconds.
Crushing pain and upset, a sense of complete hopelessness and the guilt of failing everyone I care about.
I shudder and turn my face skyward as a frozen breeze steals across the grounds, rustling bushes and making the clothes of the dead men around me dance for a moment.
“Suck it up,” I growl to the darkening sky. Panicking won’t help anyone, and it won’t get Alena back. If there’s even a sliver of a chance that she’s still alive, I need to act on that first and then get my revenge immediately after.
Find her, save her if I can, and then I’m going to kill Aleksander with my bare hands. No one hurts my family and no one hurts my girl.
Not when there’s still air in my lungs.
