Page 73 of Defiant Devotion

There.

Footsteps sounded outside the hallway. In the stretch of the corridor that connected this great room with the foyer, the sound of softly placed footsteps on the polished marble reached me.

I heard it, straining to keep listening and not lose it. Without turning my head, staying perfectly still, I narrowed my eyes and relied on my senses to lead me.

Again.

Someone was definitely walking in here. An intruder had gotten past the guards to be walking in the house. I hadn’t imagined it. I heard it. Someone was definitely sneaking further inside.

Releasing and re-tightening my fingers on the gun, I mentally charged myself to be ready to act. Steeling my spine and steadying my breath, I waited until I could aim and end this danger.

No one stirred on the couch. The other women were just as quiet, and I knew without looking that Eva had to have her gun up.

Then movement entered my vision. As I locked my stare on the open doorway, I watched as an object came into the room.

A slim, dark object flew through the air, dropping on the floor and rolling. The short cylindrical item stopped when it collided against the leg of a side table.

Mist hissed and escaped an opening at the end of it.

Gas.

A stark sense of terrible déjà vu hit me.

It was just like before.

Someone slipping in and using a gas bomb to render the guards unconscious.

The Ilyins? Again?

I clamped my teeth together so tightly that my jaw and teeth ached. Knowing the same assholes who’d taken me before would try to do this again was too much to handle.

“No.”

One of the women whispered it, spotting the rising fumes.

Without risking too much movement before the trespasser could see us and know where to fire, I stayed still even as one of the women rushed forward.

Irina. I saw her long hair as she dove forward. With her shirt pulled up over her mouth and nose in a makeshift mask, she lunged down to the floor, grabbed the gas bomb, and ran.

Reaching the windows, she flung one open and lobbed the gas bomb out into the yard. Before she could fully spin and face us in the room again, my mark made himself visible.

“I wouldn’t,” the Ilyin said neutrally.

He placed one foot, then another. Slowly, he entered my line of sight. He crept closer, hands up, until he was fully in the room.

“I wouldn’t shoot,” he warned.

Numerous thick packs and devices were strapped on him. Over his chest, his abdomen, and onto his back. As he stepped completely into the room, turning slightly in order to face me, the sobering and horrifying realization of what we were facing dawned on me.

Bombs.

He was covered with bombs. The shapes and wires connecting them were too damn obvious.

And in his hand, raised with his fingers up but his thumb down to hold something in his clutch, was a slim stick with a blue button at the top.

He held the detonator.

“If you shoot, I’ll press this button.”

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