Page 118 of Cruel Love

“You’ll be all right, Markov,” I say, breathing out.

He yanks a cloth from his pocket and presses his hand over his eye again. “I know,” he says, shrugging with amusement. “This was nothing.”

Luck. That’s what it was. Blind luck.

I sit back, unable to find the same humor in it as my mentor does. My heart won’t stop pounding. I lay a hand on the car door to keep from jerking as Fox takes the corners at high speed. There are no cars around. No police giving chase behind us. Fox is good at getting lost.

And so is Gio.

“Lucy,” Markov says, glancing into the front seat. “Where’s our girl?”

“She was taken,” Fox answers with a cautious eye on Dante. “We caught up to the van, but it wasn’t her inside.”

Markov bows his head.

“Snake Eyes,” Dante growls. “It was them.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“There’s one in the trunk,” he says. “I have a few questions for him...”

“We’ll get her back, Dante,” Fox says, staring straight ahead at the road.

Dante flexes his hard jawline.

I tilt my head in thought. “Snake Eyes and Gio,” I say. “It can’t be coincidence.”

“You think he’s still working with them?” Fox asks, though his tone shows that he already knows the answer.

Of course, he is. After he hired assassins to invade my home, I invaded his. I told his father to his face that Gio was dead to him. Gio had nowhere else to go.

And Snake Eyes would see him as a valuable ally.

I roll my fists, losing my temper as I punch the side of the door three times. No one says a word. I wouldn’t care if they did.

Gio walks the streets a free man. Snakes roam loose in Moscow.

I stare at my torn, bleeding knuckles. My guts aching with regret.

Please forgive me, lyubov’ moya.

I failed you.

Chapter 35

Archer

“One, two...”

Lilah and I toss the body to the ground, resting him beside the long line of also-dead agents.

I insisted on lining them up side-by-side as opposed to just piling them and setting them on fire... as Lilah would have preferred.

Sure, they’re all horrible killers but they were just folk at some point. Someone’s brother. Someone’s son. Maybe even some fathers, if what Boxcar says is true.

“Just one more,” Lilah says, turning back toward the house.

I take a breath and wipe the sweat off my brow before following her inside. She heads straight toward the kitchen, her beady eyes locking on Boxcar at the living room table as we pass by him yet again. His fingers click along his laptop keyboard, concentration deep — yet frayed at the edges. The man came face-to-face with a gun and lived to speak of it. That alone is enough to rattle any man. Add in the identity of the man who held the gun and, well...

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