Page 72 of In Her Blood
Grigoriy’s lips lifted in a chilling smile. “Oh?” She didn’t consciously see him move. One moment, he was perfectly still. The next, he’d crossed the space between them and latched his hand around her throat, careless of how close he’d just brought himself to her guard as he lifted her off her feet.
Otto fired almost before her brain processed Grigoriy’s movement. It looked like the bullet tore through the top of Grigoriy’s shoulder, the older man’s momentum havingalready spared him from something worse. The man himself gave no indication of feeling the shot.
Then Evelina was struggling to breathe, her booted toes dangling over nothing.
“Motherfucker,” Otto growled. “I swear—”
“Save your breath, boy,” Grigoriy said, never taking his eyes from her. “I’ll send you over next.”
Evelina swung her eyes around, her brain scrambling. She was clawing at the hand at her throat without having even realized it, but he was ignoring her nails as thoroughly as he’d ignored the bullet. And he’d positioned her between himself and Otto to make sure Otto didn’t shoot again.
She couldn’t fucking breathe.
The men standing behind Grigoriy blurred, doubling in number when she tried to look their way. She’d always thought having double vision was more literal—that the true figure developed a sort of echo or overlapping shadow—but apparently that wasn’t the case. The doubles just popped up in near-ish positions. That was not something she’d ever cared to learn.
She pounded on Grigoriy’s wrist, dropping her eyes back to his in time to catch their gleam. And she swore she could read his mind in that moment.
Still think I missed?
It pissed her off. Everything pissed her off. She was not going to fucking die like this.
So she sank her nails into his forearm, letting them drag as she railed against him, and swung with all the strength of her raging, Russian-Italian temper … and her pointy-toed boot.
Chapter twenty-four
For Family pt II
She really needed steel-toedboots. She never wanted to feel a man’sanythingcrunch under her toes again.
Although, if Evelina were honest with herself, skeevy feeling aside, it had been immensely satisfying to watch Grigoriy’s eyes blow wide a split-second before his grip went slack and his spine bowed as he succumbed to that oh-so-masculinevulnerability. Apparently the big, strong brigadier didn’t go into battle with his boys properly protected.
Evelina fell gracelessly into Otto, gasping for blessed breath and barely cognizant of their movement as he pulled them back and to the side. She assumed, from the tight one-armed grip he had around her, that he was going to shoot Grigoriy again. And she wasn’t going to stop him. She was still angry and light-headed, so she was in no shape to run or even yell sense into anyone.
And, frankly, she didn’t have the impression Grigoriy was the type who listened with open ears. Something about bringing a hit squad full of traitors tended to leave that impression.
It was a moment before she realized that Otto had not fired—she hadn’t felt the kickback of his gun—but he had, instead, gone very still. Yet she was sure she’d heard at least one shot.What?She remembered the backup Grigoriy had sprung on them and urgency chased away the lingering dizziness.
She had definitely heard as many as three shots. She had definitely not felt Otto fire any of them.
No. No, no, no!
Evelina attempted to twist around in his grip, pushing at him and trying to look him over simultaneously. “Otto! Otto, are you—”
“Your bodyguard is unharmed, cousin,” an almost familiar voice said from Grigoriy’s direction.
Evelina felt the air she’d just regained rush from her lungs, her brain processing the words before the unfamiliarity of the voice. But that only turned her disbelief into a fragile mound of confusion.
Otto, however, was looking toward the speaker with building surprise.
Grigoriy groaned as if he were in pain and muttered what sounded like an old curse from the motherland. Something about children and shit.
Evelina adjusted to see the scene for herself, and that mound of confusion swelled into a skyscraping mountain in her chest.
Grigoriy was on the ground, on his back, blood dripping from a hole in his knee that reminded her of the one Otto had put in Viktor only a day prior. And standing over him was not one other man, butthree. The three men surrounded Grigoriy, more or less, and it was clear one of them had stepped forward to take lead.
The next thing Evelina registered was that all three looked alike enough to easily be related, with nearly identical hues of differently styled brown hair and eyes in shades of blue set into similarly structured faces. Had she seen them somewhere before? She felt as if she were looking at faces she’d seen somewhere, but also not.
The closest man lowered his foot—donned in a polished loafer—onto Grigoriy’s wounded shoulder. He tucked his hands into his slacks pockets as he gazed at the man beneath his shoe and spoke, confirming he was the one who’d spoken moments earlier, but this time his words were for Grigoriy. And this time his voice held an edge that chilled Evelina to the core. “You’ve made the regrettable choice to lay hands on a member of my family. Every word out of your mouth from this moment will determine the extent of your suffering beforeyou die. But do not deceive yourself—youwilldie, be it by Evelina’s hand or my own.”
