Page 142 of Ivory Ashes

One of the guards lunges forward, his shoulder catching me in the stomach. I slam back against the door, breathless for a second. Then I bring the grip of my gun down on the man’s head as Raoul fires at the other guard.

The man’s arms loosen around my middle. I manage to kick him off and then land a second blow to the center of his chest. He collapses onto the other guard, who is clutching a gaping wound in his throat.

At the same time, Raoul and I finish them.

With his disposable guards wiped out, Yanis presses his palms together and drops to his knees. “Please. Please! I ask for mercy, Mikhail.” His mustache quivers with fear and sweat.

“We have to go,” Raoul whispers.

I haven’t been keeping track of time, but we must be at least halfway through our fifteen-minute window by now and the entire theater knows something is wrong.

That window is closing fast.

It’s fine.

This won’t take but a second.

I press my gun to Yanis’s sweaty forehead. “Even if I had any mercy, I wouldn’t waste it on you.”

I pull the trigger. Yanis collapses in a limp pile of limbs as the woman in the corner screams again and again and again. She is sobbing and shaking, her heels scrabbling against the thin carpet in an effort to get even further away from me. The only way out for her is over the balcony.

It’s an idea.

Then again, it’s not always a bad thing to leave a witness.

“I don’t have anything to do with Yanis’s business,” she weeps. “He tells me nothing. Please. Please don’t?—”

I wave for her to be silent. “Tell Yanis’s niece that she started this war. Her uncle’s blood is on Helen’s hand.”

Then I dip my chin in farewell and leave the woman to deal with the cooling corpse of her lover.

51

VIVIANA

Someone knocks on my door, but I don’t respond. I don’t even move.

Whoever it is, they’ll come in if they want to. Actually, they’ll come in if Mikhail wants them to. That’s what everyone around here does: whatever Mikhail asks.

It’s probably Anatoly or Stella. I swear they’ve drafted a rotating schedule. They’ve been in and out of my room all day, taking turns, trying to wear me down.

“Mikhail is a good guy,” Anatoly said the first time I let him in. “I know he has imprisoned you in this house and isn’t letting you or your son leave despite the fact you have well-documented claustrophobia, but it’s for your own good.”

Fine, maybe that isn’t exactly what he said, but it’s close enough.

Stella focuses her emotional appeals on Dante. “Dante looks to you to see how he should respond. If you seem happy, he’ll be happy,” she explained. “You have the power to make this a fun adventure for him.”

It’s genius, really. If I wasn’t half a second from a mental breakdown, maybe I’d pull myself together and be there for my son.

But Dante is the exact reason why I haven’t left this room since my panic attack this morning.

I’ve spent years of my life pretending things were fine when they weren’t. But that well has run dry. I’m too exhausted to pretend. The best thing I can do for Dante right now is stay far, far away.

There’s another round of knocking and I curl the blankets under my chin and stare at the door. As expected, after I don’t answer a second time, the door slowly opens.

I grab a pillow, ready to hurl it at the ginormous target that is Anatoly’s head. But it isn’t Anatoly or Stella in the doorway; it’s Pyotr.

“Hi, Viviana.”

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