Page 38 of Savage Reins
Still, the idea of her choosing another man makes something dark and possessive rise in my throat. Something that has no place in a business arrangement. Something that could get us both killed if Vadim suspects I've gone soft.
I clench my fists and force myself to stop pacing. This is madness. I'm an enforcer, not some lovesick boy chasing after a woman who's too good for him. I have a job to do here. Orders to follow. A family to serve.
But the knot behind my ribs tightens anyway.
Orange light flickers across the wall, and I stop mid-thought. The warm glow seems wrong for this time of night—too bright, too wild. I cross to the window and my blood turns to ice as I see the south barn engulfed in flames.
Fire licks up the sides of the wooden structure, turning the night into hell. Smoke billows black against the stars, and the heat reaches me even through the glass. This isn't faulty wiring or a knocked-over lantern. After the way those sick fucks tried to beat me senseless and the altercation I saw between them and Vadim, I know this is either the work of the Karpins or Vadim is heating things up.
My phone is in my hand before I think. Vadim answers on the second ring, his voice thick with sleep.
"What the fuck did you do?" I snarl into the receiver.
"Renat? What are you talking about?"
"The barn is on fire. Don't play games with me." I'm moving, angry and charging toward the door already. I can't save the barn, but we may be able to loose a few of Mira's horses. Thankfully, Rusalka isn't in that barn.
"I didn't order any fire." His voice carries confusion, not guilt. "This isn't from us."
The Karpins. Those bastards couldn't wait for orders or negotiations. They came to finish what we started, to make sure there's nothing left worth fighting over.
"Renat?" Vadim's voice crackles through the phone. "What's happening?"
Yuri's scream cuts through the night air with raw desperation. "Mira! Mira, where are you?"
My blood turns to ice water. I drop the phone and bolt down the stairs, taking them three at a time. The steps groan under my boots as I race toward the horror unfolding outside.
The heat hits me as soon as I burst through the door, waves of burning air that steal the oxygen from my lungs. The flames tower above the barn roof, reaching toward the sky with hungry fingers. Sparks rain down around me, hissing when they hit the damp earth.
Yuri stands in front of the inferno, his face twisted in anguish. Soot streaks his cheeks, and his hands shake, fisted in his hair, as he stares at the burning building. When he sees me, his eyes are wild with panic.
"I don’t know where she is!" he shouts over the roar of flames. "She's not in her room."
His panic becomes my own, punching me in the gut and triggering my fight or flight. Mira is in there, in that furnace? Because she couldn't leave the horses to burn… Of course she couldn't. She'd rather die than abandon them.
I don't even hesitate for a second. The flames roar around the main entrance, but I lower my head and charge through the wall of fire. The heat sears my exposed skin, singeing the hair on my arms. The thick smoke fills my lungs immediately, tasting of burned wood and some sort of chemicals.
Inside, the world has become a maze of orange light and black smoke. I can barely see two feet ahead, but I hear her voice—weak, coughing, somewhere deeper in the building.
"Mira!"
"Here!" She sounds close to collapse. "Renat! I'm here." Her voice is weak and hoarse, and I move instinctively toward the sound, following her voice through the nightmare, dodging falling debris and walls of flame. The smoke burns my eyes, makes them water until I'm nearly blind. But I keep moving, keep calling her name, because the alternative is unthinkable.
I look frantically but see nothing. The stall doors are closed, but Anton and Boris are at the side door guiding a few colts out, faces covered with the collars of their T-shirts. The smoke is heavier near the back of the barn but the flames are fewer, and I hear the whimper again.
"Help me! I'm scared!" she chokes out, and the coughing fit feels like a knife in my chest. I race that direction, and still seeing nothing, I start unlocking stall doors.
I find Mira in the last stall, curled into a ball with her shirt pulled up over her face. " Fuck," I grunt, scooping her up without another word. She weighs nothing in my arms, all muscle and bone and stubborn determination. "Hold on to me."
Stepping out to meet Boris, who's turned a few more horses out, I guide the panicked horses toward the main entrance with my free hand, slapping their flanks to get them moving. The flames have grown higher, but there's still a gap we can push through if we move fast. The heat is unbearable now, turning the air itself into fire.
The horses bolt past us into the night air, their hooves thundering against the earth as they flee the burning building. I carry Mira through the gap just as a section of the roof collapses behind us, sending up a shower of sparks and burning timber.
The cool night air welcomes us like salvation. I stumble away from the barn, my lungs screaming for clean oxygen. Mira coughs against my chest, her body shaking from smoke inhalation and shock.
Her father meets us halfway to the house, tears streaming down his weathered cheeks. "Is she…?"
"She's alive," I manage, my voice hoarse from smoke.
