Page 176 of Kingmakers, Graduation

“Yeah. I know.”

We’ve barely begun unloading the truck when lightning cracks, apparently opening a rip in the clouds. Freezing rain pours down, leaking through the roof onto our heads.

“Couldn’t have found a warehouse with shingles?” Vlad grouses.

Yuri hears him.

“How many warehouses doyouown?” he sneers.

His organization is hierarchal—he dislikes when the Wolfpack even speak in his presence.

I clap Vlad on the shoulder. “We’ll be done soon, brother, you’re working fast.”

This is as much for Yuri as for Vlad—a subtle fuck off.

Yuri rolls his eyes and walks away. He hasn’t unloaded shit, or done anything else useful. He’s the worst kind of boss, barely present. Allowing a slimeball like Rafail to speak and act in his name.

Vlad doubles his pace.

We’ve unloaded almost all the product when I hear the sound of tires in the back lot. I straighten up, motioning for Vlad and Andrei to flank the bay door. They obey at once, grabbing their rifles and taking up a position on either side of the opening.

A car door slams, followed by a spray of gravel as a second vehicle speeds in the lot. Rapid footsteps crunch against the rock as someone sprints toward the warehouse.

I pull my gun, barrel trained at the ramp.

I’m expecting Krystiyan’s men, or maybe the cops.

Instead, a girl bursts into the warehouse.

She looks around, wild-eyed, sweating and panting.

For a moment, I almost don’t recognize Sabrina. The entire side of her face is a bruise so swollen and dark that I can barely see the slit of that eye. Her lower lip is double its normal size, with a nasty gash that’s barely scabbed over. Her right arm is wrapped in bandages, the fingers splinted. Some of her hair is singed, the rest of it a matted mane around her head. Her clothes are filthy and burned—I can smell the smoke from here.

The sight of her injuries fills me with a rage so all-encompassing that the muzzle of my gun shakes.

If Cujo were still alive, I’d rip the flesh off his bones with pliers, piece by tiny piece.

Sabrina catches sight of me and goes still. She stands there, unmoving, hands limp at her sides.

No one quite understands what’s happening, until Boris Kominsky and Ippolit Moisey run up the ramp behind her.

Then Yuri hisses, “That’s Sabrina Gallo …”

Boris and Ippolit are equally surprised to meet a dozen guns pointed at their face in what they must have hoped was an abandoned warehouse. They pause on the ramp, feet from their quarry, but unable to take a step further.

Rafail Wasyl waggles the barrel of his gun at thekachkilike a ticking finger,saying in his high, thin voice, “Ah, ah, ah … this is our catch, boys.”

He wants the bounty.

Boris and Ippolit are panting, red-faced, furious. They have guns of their own, but they’re more than outnumbered.

“We found her first!” Boris snarls.

Rafail thumbs the safety off his Glock.

“You can leave now, or you can join Cujo in hell,” he says, softly.

Ippolit is already backing down the ramp. It’s the realization that his friend is no longer behind him, as much as the bevy of weaponry, that convinces Boris to do the same.

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