Page 106 of Vitaly

“Like the eye gouge wasn’t?”

“You’re the one who showed up with weapons.” He gestures to the nail, clearly amused with himself.

The ballroom door swings open, revealing two bloodied men who appear to be looking to leave, but when they see us, they freeze.

Nikita raises a brow at them.

Slowly, they slink back inside. The whole thing is so comical that I almost laugh amongst all this chaos. If I knew who was alive and dead in that room, maybe I would.

“All right, tell you what. Why don’t we call it a draw, huh?” He uses his forearm to wipe sweat from his brow, inching closer. “I’ll give you the West Wing, I'll keep the East Wing. What do ya say?”

I don’t reply while he continues to creep closer, that sinister smile of his widening. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

He throws a punch with his left fist, which I immediately register as strange. He isn’t lefthanded, and in the half-second I have to process the peculiar choice, he follows it up with a slash of his right hand.

The blade poking from his sleeve misses my throat by no more than a centimeter as I respond with a jerk backward. The momentum throws him off balance and gives me an opening to shove my foot into his bad knee like I originally planned.

He yells out and stumbles, grabbing onto his knee with one hand while stabbing at me with the knife clutched in the other. The door opens again, pulling my eyes, and the distraction is what Nikita needed to send the knife into my side.

It sticks out of me as I jump back, my eyes lowering to it before taking it with a shaking hand and pulling it out. Blood drips from the tip.

The three men who come from the door aren’t deserters this time. One goes for the box, shaking it furiously while another tackles me to the ground.

“Kill him,” Nikita growls. “Just fucking kill him.”

More bodies flood into the hall, bringing the fight out here. A feminine growl sounds just before a rock slams on the head of the man on top of me. He falls flat on me before Mila rolls him off, her fiery brown eyes searching me for injury. Which can only mean the blood smearing her dress isn’t hers.

Someone takes her hair and shoves her to the ground which makes my hand instinctively fly that way. I glare, grabbing the knife Nikita stuck in me, but before I can push onto my feet, a gun fires.

Make that two guns.

Not hand guns. Machine guns. They spray bullets this direction, digging into every person standing.

This war, uneven as it may have started, was just won by whoever is holding those guns.

I squint toward the end of the hall where two men walk toward us, guns raised. Whether they’ll execute the three of us still breathing—Nikita, Mila, and me—time will tell.

When I make them out, a burst of oxygen rushes past my lips.

I was wrong. They aren’t men.

“Where’s Maksim?” Elira, Maksim’s wife, asks as she approaches, her eyes narrowed even though they’re filled with fear. Olive stands beside her, the timid woman looking not at alltimid. Or afraid. She holds the machine gun steady like she was born to be a killer.

My mouth opens and closes, but I just look toward the ballroom door. When Elira points her gun at Nikita, I brace for the sound of gunshots, but Olive puts a hand on her arm. “I’ve got this. You go.”

Elira nods then goes inside.

The man who shoved Mila fell between us, so I crawl over him to get to her. She takes my hand while we exchange a look of shock.

“Are you … the other one?” Nikita asks Olive. He doesn’t sound worried.

“What do you think, handsome?”

What?

I turn my head that way then peer at Mila. She must see my confusion because she swallows and shakes her head as she mouths,We need to go.

The gun goes off in the other room as executions start. The fighting will be over any minute now.

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