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And then I would do what I should have over twenty years ago—I would avenge Darby’s death and rid the planet of Alexi Abramov once and for all. I knew I’d never make it out of the Kremlin alive, knew I’d never see Clover’s angelic face again, but I would see the next one she wore, and the one after that, and the one after that. It was a blessing I didn’t deserve, but I was prepared to walk through hell to change that.
The sound of a digital keypad, followed by a mechanical whirring, gave me just enough warning to re-buckle my cuff and shove the rod down next to the mattress.
“Vice President Abramov,” a soldier barked in Russian as he entered my room and stood at attention. “The girl has been located and taken into custody. I have been instructed to tell you that she will not be harmed as long as you—”
The whistle of a bullet being fired through a silencer was the only warning I had before the soldier’s forehead exploded and brains splattered across my bed and hospital uniform.
Curling my fingers around the metal rod, I watched as his body fell to the floor, revealing another man, dressed in Irish camouflage and a ski mask, who was now pointing that silencer at me.
“Come on, prince. Let’s get ya outta here.”
Based on the sound of his voice and the lines around his eyes and mouth, I would have guessed him to be middle-aged or older, but the calmness of his tone and the way he handled his weapon suggested that this was a skilled, experienced soldier. Possibly Special Ops.
“Who are you?” I asked as he holstered his gun and began unbuckling my cuffs.
“A friend of a friend,” was all he said before a series of gunshots and Russian shouting echoed through the hallway.
Shite.
If this had been an official Irish military operation, he would have introduced himself with his name and rank, but he hadn’t.
This was a rebel attack, and from the sounds coming from the hallway, there were plenty of them.
Just then an alarm began blaring, and a red light started flashing in the corner of the room.
“Stay behind me,” he shouted over the siren as he removed the final cuff from my leg.
“Wait! I can’t leave!” Panic flooded my veins as my eyes darted around the room, sizing up all of the objects I’d identified as possible weapons during my hours of escape planning.
Alexi was going to think I was behind this. That I’d betrayed him again. Whoever these rebels were, they were fucking everything up. He was never going to trust me after this.
The man’s weathered eyes widened. “Why the fuck not?”
Hopping over the railing on the far side of the bed, I ducked underneath and unplugged the power cord.
“Hey! We gotta go!”
Just as the rebel dipped his face below the mattress to see what I was doing, I swept my leg out, taking him out at the knees. He fell backward, landing next to the dead soldier. His head hit the tiles with a sickening crack, but he was still conscious when I scrambled over and wrapped the power cord around his neck. Pinning his right hand down with my knee so that he couldn’t grab his weapon, I tightened the cable as he punched me repeatedly with his left hand.
“Damien!” a female voice shouted from the doorway, but I refused to look up until the rebel’s body went limp. “What the fuck are you doing?”
As soon as his balled fist fell to his side, I loosened the cord and glanced up as a short, stocky woman in matching camo marched over and swatted me on the head.
“That’s my best fuckin’ guy!”
“Jack?”
“Yeah, it’s fuckin’ Jack. Jesus Christ.” She knelt beside me and slapped the masked face of the man on the floor. “Paul. Hey, Pauly. Wake up. We gotta go.”
“What are you doing here?” I left her to tend to the rebel on the floor as I slid over to the dead soldier and relieved him of his handgun and boot knife.
“Saving your arse,” she hissed, helping her friend into a sitting position.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, probably not loud enough to hear over the alarm, as I walked along the wall to the door that Paul had propped open with a cigarette lighter in the doorjamb. Glancing into the hallway, I saw another dead body at one end, but couldn’t tell if it was a Russian or a rebel. When the coast was clear, I shouted over my shoulder, “I don’t need to be rescued. I know what I’m doing.”
“Like fuck ya do,” she spat back. “By the time you get close enough to Alexi to kill him, the entire fuckin’ country will be speakin’ Russian!”
“Wait. What?” I spun around. “How do you know about that?”
