Page 7 of Covert Vengeance

They’d been insatiable, both of them obsessed with the other.

No one had ever touched his ice-encased heart the way Zoya had. She’d been his equal in every way. His perfect match. Cunning. Beautiful. Deadly.

And she’d loved him. Incredibly, she’d loved him, in spite of all his imperfections, in spite of the man he was. All the things he’d done, many of them ugly. She’d loved himbecauseof all that.

But in the end, her love for him had killed her.

He stepped to the railing and gripped the sun-warmed metal with both hands, fighting the tidal wave of despair and grief. The anger was so much easier to bear. This suffocating, crushing pain he was forced to endure on a daily basis was unbearable. He’d become a bitter shell of a man, existing for one purpose and one purpose only.

To kill the woman who had taken Zoya from him.

No one had ever understood him the way she had, and no one ever would. When he’d lost her he’d lost half of his soul.

The bitch who’d killed Zoya would beg for death before he released her from her suffering.

As the opposite bank drew closer, the sight of the familiar skyline caused a suffocating, white-hot pain to fill his chest. A wound as fresh as the day he’d lost Zoya.

They’d been here in a luxury rental house on their last night together. Neither of them had known how final that goodbye would be. He could still remember every detail so vividly. Lying in bed with the sheets tangled around their legs, the spice-scented breeze coming through the window carrying the sounds of the city foot traffic below.

He’d been antsy. Wanting her to come with him when he left for Moscow the following morning. But she’d had one last thing to take care of. One final loose end to secure in order to get the last of the money.

“One last job. Just this one last job to tie up all the loose ends, and we can leave everything behind.” She rolled over to straddle him, naked, her bare breasts bobbing above his face.

She’d laughed when he’d tried to take one ripe nipple into his mouth, clasping his face between her hands. “No, listen. We can go wherever we want. We could even buy a place here. As soon as I get the last of the money we can do whatever we want, for the rest of our lives.” She leaned forward to kiss him, her lips warm, lingering on his. “We’ll be together forever.”

Forever. That had been their dream. And it had all turned to ash when he’d discovered her body in the safehouse he’d secured for them in St. Petersburg, along with the note.

Loyal Unto Death. This is the price of betrayal.

Another Valkyrie had done it.

He’d dropped to his knees, gathered Zoya’s broken body to him and howled like a wounded animal. Then he’d been forced to do the unthinkable and dispose of his beloved’s body as though she was one of his contracts rather than give her the dignity of a proper burial, and run.

But the running was almost over.

Tomorrow, he’d slip over the border and aim for his destination. Damascus. Where Amber Brown was suspected to be. The body of a local gun for hire found in an alley yesterday soon after her purported arrival into the city gave him hope that the trail was still hot.

He didn’t know what she was doing there, and didn’t care. His mission was simple: find her, capture her, then pay her back tenfold in the anguish she’d caused Zoya and him, before killing her.

She was good. Smarter even than Zoya and the others, though it galled him to admit it. For weeks he’d been hunting her. He’d almost had her once, but she’d managed to evade him. That had made him realize he couldn’t do this alone.

So he’d gathered all his money, every cent of his and Zoya’s cut from the fateful joint op that had led to her downfall, to make sure her killer wouldn’t get away this time. If he didn’t capture Amber personally, one of the others would. Three of the best hired killers in the world.

Men whose names sent ice sliding down the spines of people in the business.

Whoever captured her was to bring her directly to him, alive. Only he would have the satisfaction of watching her writhe in agony. Of watching the life slowly fade from her eyes.

Realizing his muscles had drawn tight as cables, Yury consciously eased them and rolled his head from side to side as he drew in a slow, deep breath. The pain inside him remained, sharp and hot as ever.

Zoya was gone, but never forgotten. She was all that kept him going now. Only the deep, burning need for blood vengeance kept his shattered heart beating.

I’m going to kill her for you, he vowed.I’ll make her beg for death and laugh at her suffering.

This time Amber Brown would not escape his wrath.

Chapter Three

At a shrill beep from Lady Ada, Amber tossed the handheld radio aside and quickly moved to the desk where the laptop sat. Surveillance footage she’d managed to hack from CCTV cameras around the old palace showed a convoy of four vehicles leaving the dilapidated building.

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