Page 41 of Dark Embers

I’m a little distracted by the soft warm bundle snuggling into me and hardly hear what Sabrina is saying until her angry words bellow across to me.

“You’re fucking kidding me!” Sabrina’s eyes narrow angrily at me. “We don’t have to do that. Oleksi has the men now we’ll be fine where we are.”

Oh, Sam is telling her about her new living arrangements.

Her voice is tight. Controlled. “Fine. But I’m not happy about this.”

She shoves the phone back at me and rips Elena from my arms. “He wants to talk to you.” Sabrina looks at me accusingly. “I can’t believe the length’s you’d go to, to get your own way.”

She storms off.

“I assume you told her?” I ask Sam.

“Better me than you,” Sam says. “She’s pissed and I don’t envy you right now.”

“No shit.”

There's a pause before Sam says, “I owe you, Mirochin.”

“Yeah, well… maybe I’ll collect on that someday,” I tell him. “I may need to disappear.”

“I’ll make sure no one ever finds you,” he promises. “Take care of my girls and don’t make me regret this.”

“I won’t,” I say quietly, and I mean every word.

I hang up and go find her. She’s in the living room—not packing. Sabrina is straightening the mess the two Russian fuckers made of her apartment.

“I’ll send someone to do this,” I say.

“No thanks.” Her voice is ice. “I still don’t believe you had nothing to do with this.”

“I didn’t,” I assure her knowing she doesn’t believe me and that when I realize she’s looking for something not clearing up. “What are you looking for?”

She eyes me warily. “If those men weren’t yours, then they were here for a reason. Something they think Tara had.”

I nod. “You think it’s still here?”

“Did they have anything on them when you arrived?” she asks me curiously.

“No, as far as I could see they were still looking for whatever it was,” I answer her honestly. My eyes land on the little bundle bouncing in the chair secured to the counter.

Sabrina draws my attention back to her as I see her eyes sweep the room, sharp and calculating. “Tara wouldn’t hide it in her own room. That would be too obvious.”

She freezes. Her eyes widening. “Of course.”

She bolts for her bedroom. I grab Elena from the chair, weary to leave her alone for a second and follow, to find Sabrina rummaging beneath the bed. She slams her palm against a floorboard and pops up holding a tin box.

“Son of a bitch,” she mutters, staring at it. “Tara always hid her shit in my room.”

A noise sounds from the other room—it’s footsteps and my heart slams against my ribs.

I hand Elena to her, signal for silence, and step out—

Only to be tackled by a blur.

A woman with her face covered by a balaclava and she’s fucking fast.

I lunge for her but she evades me rushing to Sabrina’s room where she slams the bedroom door behind her and as I get to it my heart nearly stops as I hear the bolt slide into place.

---