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I jump in the open back of the Jeep, followed closely after by Efrem. As he leaps over the tailgate, he’s shot from behind. He falls heavily onto my lap, a dark stain blossoming on his back with awful speed.
My father fires twice more, hitting the man who shot Efrem, then he jumps into the back with me.
“Go!” he shouts to my mother.
She floors the accelerator, speeding not toward the front of the house, but over the grass and through the lemon trees toward the side gate.
Freya takes my mother’s rifle so she can cover our right side, while my father watches behind us. I try to prop Efrem up, ripping off my shirt so I can use it to apply pressure to the wound.
“I’m sorry,” he says to my father.
“It’s not your fault,moy drug,” my father says with surprising gentleness.
It’s the kindness in my father’s voice, more than the horrible waxy color of Efrem’s face, that tells me my uncle is going to die.
I press harder against the wound, the wadded shirt already soaked through with blood.
Efrem pushes his Beretta into my hand. His dark eyes meet mine for a moment, and he tries to say something through colorless lips. Instead, he lets out a long, rattling breath and his head falls back, his glasses slipping askew and eyes staring blindly upward at the night sky. Each bump of the Jeep jolts his limp body.
“Nine o’clock!” my mother barks, wrenching the wheel to the left to give my father and sister a better angle. They fire at the three soldiers guarding the side gate.
The gate is chained shut and padlocked. Gripping Efrem’s Beretta tight, I roll out of the back of the Jeep and crouch behind the tire. Once my father and sister have dropped the first two soldiers, I shoot the third one in the chest, then I run to the gate. I empty the clip at the padlock until it’s destroyed, ripping away the chain and shoving the gate open.
My mother drives forward, only pausing long enough for me to leap in once more before she roars down the dark, winding road that leads along the sea cliffs.
I’m about to say, “We made it!” when two black SUVs screech out onto the road behind us, speeding after us at a reckless pace. A heavily tattooed man in tactical gear leans out the passenger side window to fire at us.
“Stay low!” my mother shouts back at us.
With its wide-open back, we’re poorly protected in the ancient Jeep. Worse, the newer and better-maintained SUVs are gaining on us.
“Who are they?” I ask my father. “Bratva?”
Their tattoos look like my father’s.
He shakes his head.
“Malina,” he hisses through his teeth.
My skin freezes.
The Ukrainians are every bit as ruthless as the Bratva—maybe even more so. They’re our dark twins, our twisted doppelgängers. Never have they been more dangerous than since Marko Moroz solidified his control of Kyiv by stabbing a pen through the eye of his own former mentor.
“Look!” Freya calls back to us, pointing up into the sky.
Our helicopter swoops up over the villa, passing over the stone walls in our direction.
“Who’s flying it, though?” my father mutters.
The radio on Efrem’s hip crackles.
I snatch it up.
“I’m coming to get you, boss . . .”a familiar voice says.
I grin. It’s Maks, my father’sAvtoritet,and a close friend to me, despite the twenty years between us. I’m almost as pleased to hear that he’s still alive as I am to see him flying to the rescue.
Until I hear a booming shot ring out, and I watch a bright flare arcing across the sky, from the top of the villa directly toward the helicopter.
