Page 78 of Killer Love

“Sergei!” he says into the radio. “Boris!”

Nothing but silence. I turn around and throw open the bottom drawer of my father’s desk to retrieve the pistols hidden inside.

Markov sighs into the radio. “Somebody please say something!”

I pass a gun to Yuri and he instantly slides a bullet into the chamber. “We go together,” I say. “Find Ma and Sofia—”

Yuri raises his gun and points it at Fox’s face.

Fox presents his hands in calm surrender.

I grab my brother’s wrist. “Yuri, what are you doing?”

“He’s one of them.”

“No, I’m not,” Fox says.

I try to lower his arm, but Yuri shakes me off. “Put it down, Yuri—”

“He’s been here all night,” Yuri says, his eyes locked on Fox. Markov reaches behind his back for his own weapon and Fox watches with sharp eyes. “He’s seen the grounds. He knows where the guards would be. He could have led them in.”

Fox shakes his head. “I didn’t.”

“Bullshit. You’ve been playing us from the start.”

I look from him to my father’s corpse and I squeeze my gun’s grip a little tighter. There’s logic in Yuri’s reasoning, more than I’d like to admit. No one’s ever breached the Lutrova estate before until now.

Not until a snake slithered inside with a white flag.

“Luka…” Fox says, sensing my shift. “I had nothing to do with this.”

I raise my gun, but he doesn’t even flinch. Only his eyes move, quickly targeting all of our locations. There’s no way he can dodge three bullets at once. I don’t care how well-trained he is.

“You’re making a mistake,” he says, his voice as solid as stone. “Think about it.”

There’s no time to think it through. Fox Fitzpatrick is a loose end, always has been. Whether he’s double-crossed us or not is irrelevant.

Never let a snake loose in Moscow.

Markov takes a wide step closer to Fox, coming within a meter of him, and I inhale a sharp breath.

“Markov—!”

Fox grabs his arm and twists his hand, pulling him around to use him as a shield. He rests the gun’s barrel against Markov’s throat and lays his finger on the trigger before either of us can react.

Yuri panics and fires once but misses them both by a wide margin.

“Yuri, stop!” I keep my gun trained on Fox. “Let him go.”

Fox slides on his toes, inching slowly toward the door, keeping Markov between us and him the entire way.

“There’s no time for this,” he says. “Trust me or not — it doesn’t change the fact that they came in here for a reason.”

Sofia.

“Shoot him, Luka,” Markov growls.

I wrap my finger around the trigger. Even now, there isn’t a hint of panic in Fox’s eyes. He’s in complete control, and we both know it. Either he’s a total sociopath who deserves to be put down or I’m about to lose a very valuable ally.

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