Page 61 of The Bratva's Innocent Bride

“I won’t,” I say, leaning down enough that I can hear him breathing. “He’s still alive,” I say, getting to my feet and cocking the gun. “I’m sorry, Olive, but we need to get out of here.”

She nods but doesn’t move.

“Like, now. Is there anyone else here? Are they outside the room?”

“Two guys,” she says, and I nod, taking a deep breath. A second later, with Olive behind me, I kick the door, waiting for the first guard to step in front of me before shooting him in the chest.

“Oh my god!” Olive screams before I swing around the corner and shoot the second. The gun has a silencer, but that doesn’t mean the other guys in this place wouldn’t have heard it go off. Two gunshots will draw attention—if James was going to kill me, it would only take one.

“Which way?”

Olive is sobbing, too hard to hear me or to answer.

“Olive!” I say, shaking her, “Which way out?”

When she doesn’t answer, I grab her by the hand, dragging her with me down the hallway and around the corner. I hit a guy over the back of the head with the gun to preserve bullets, and we continue. I’m trying to find the way out on my own, but it’s like a maze, another underground area with no windows or signs.

“Shit,” I whisper when we turn the corner, and I see three guys down at the end of the hallway. I pull us back before they can see us, but Olive lets out a little sound, and I hear them coming to explore. I swing around the side, firing once, twice, but the third shot is an empty clicking noise.

“Fuck,” I mutter, tossing the gun to the ground and feinting to the right when the guy tries to hit me in the face. Taking control of his arm, I spin, bringing my elbow down on his and forcing it in the opposite direction. My hope is to break his arm, but he’s pretty muscular. There’s a dull pop, and he cries out in pain, but the arm isn’t out of commission.

“Run,” I say to Olive, backpedaling and grabbing her, trying to drag her along with me. I can’t leave her behind. Not after she went up against her dad like that to save me. The guy I’m grappling with is at least twice as big as me. That means, without the element of surprise and with nowhere to run, he’ll have the upper hand if he gets his hands on me.

If he gets his hands on either of us.

When we round the corner of another hallway, there are four more guys heading our way. I turn around, trying to get Olive to run in the other direction, but she’s practically comatose, and we’re suddenly surrounded on all sides by James Allard's men.

***

When I come to again, I actually feel the stinging, sickening pain coming from my arm, and I realize there’s a, there’s a bloodied bandage where the tracker should be. Bile rises in my throat, and I think about the horrible scar I’m going to have there now.

Anton had looked surprised but willing when I pitched the idea to him, and he’d practiced his sutures on fruit for a long time before finally putting the tracker in for me. He was so careful. So precise.

And now my arm is a bloody, mangled mess.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” James says, his words a little slurred. He’s sitting in a chair, and from this angle, I can see a bandage on the back of his head where Olive hit him. He’s got to have a pounding headache from that little blow.

“Do you like my handiwork?” He gestures to the bandage on my arm. When I glance back down at it, it makes my stomach turn. If Anton saw it, he would hate it. It’s definitely not sterilized. “I could take the bandage off and make a few updates to it.”

My stomach turns at the thought of him digging around in my flesh, but I do my best not to show that on my face.

“Have you seen this before?” James asks, leaning to the side and pulling something from his pocket. I think it’s going to be a gun, and I wince, but then I realize it’s a little rubber ducky. Despite everything—the situation and the fact that I might be staring death in the face, I have to roll my lips into my mouth to keep from smiling.

It’s one of the little French ducks Viktor used to get back at Allard. As I look at it, I realize the tie around my left leg is a bit loose—probably the result of James doing it himself, concussed.

“It’s hilarious, right,” James says, tossing the duck onto the floor between us. “So funny. You know, my great-grandpa was a member of the Corsica back in the 1920s when we were at the height of our game. Then, of course, the Russians and the Italians came and ruined everything. There’s a certain finesse to the French way of doing things. The Russians are all brute force, and the Italians are just—well, I don’t have to explain to you why the Italians are less than savory, do I?”

He stands from the chair, moving closer to me. Slowly, as though each movement pains him, he pulls a gun from the holster at his waist and points it at me. It feels like my heart stops like time stops altogether.

A person can pretend to be as fearless as they want, but everyone shits themselves when they come face-to-face with death. Nowhere to go. If Allard had already pulled the trigger, I would be dead on the floor, a bullet in my forehead, eyes staring blankly across the room.

“My grandpa and my dad shared the same dream: to bring the Corsica to its previous strength. And here I am, doing my best to fulfill that wish. To carry on our legacy. All of this is to say that I don’t take people mocking my heritage lightly. To get back at the Milovs, I’ve decided that I’m just going to kill you instead of fucking around.”

Just as James flicks off the safety, I get my foot free. I swing out, knocking my body into him, sending both of us sprawling across the floor. I think I’m going to have a second to scramble away, to do something, grab the gun, get my arms and legs free, but there’s no time—James is on top of me, his hands coming around my throat.

I can’t do anything. My hands are still pinned. I can’t even claw at him.

With my remaining strength, I try to buck him off me, but it’s not enough. He’s bigger and heavier, and he holds me down. I see little black dots in my vision. I realize I am about to die on the floor of this compound somewhere.

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