Page 59 of In Her Blood
The other group of men straightened and shuffled backward, revealing several faces she recognized—the on-site staff—and more she did not. Their movement also revealed thedeliverythat had pulled the scream from the maid inside.
Sitting on the lawn, facing forward with obvious intention, was the decapitated head of Ivan himself. His expression was frozen in a perfect balance between shock and terror.
Evelina hadn’t known Ivan any better than she’d ever known Viktor or Artem before her father’s passing, but she knew he’d been the longest-serving of her father’s brigadiers. The sight of his head on her father’s lawn, delivered by men who should have been his brothers, filled her with anger. The whole point of a ‘bratva’ wasbrotherhood. Men who’d sworn to the same name were supposed to have each other’s backs, not fall apart so goddamn easily.
She turned her gaze to the men from Ivan’s crew. “Pick him up and find a sheet or something to at least wrap him in. His next of kin needs to be notified before we proceed. But we can at least send him off well.”
They inclined their heads, and she thought she saw one man’s jaw tremble.
One of the gunmen scoffed. “Who said you give orders,suka?”
Evelina snatched the gun from Otto’s hand before he could finish raising it and squeezed the trigger, dropping the asshole where he stood. She’d technically only shot him in the clavicle area because she hadn’t taken the proper time to aim, but that was fine. He wasn’t going to be getting medical attention.
On either side of him, his compatriots shifted their weight, visibly debating their options.
Behind her, guns went up in warning and gravel rolled beneath heavy footfalls as some of Artem’s men joined them.
Evelina lowered her arms to her sides but kept hold of the gun. Otto had a second, after all. “Don’t youdarespeak to me about respect, you miserable, short-sighted cowards,” she snapped, her voice nearly a hiss, as she let her glare slidebetween the five remaining soldiers. “Ivan served this clan for decades—since before any of you were born, I’d bet—and still you stand there and hold your heads high like you’ve donewellby delivering a portion of his desecrated corpse in plain view of our home? You’re all bastards! You should all be ashamed!” She gestured toward the men visibly struggling to put their respected leader’s head into what appeared to be someone’s coat. “We, within the Nikolaevs, are supposed to be family. Whether we share blood or not. And that is how you treat your kin? Where is the brotherhood in that?”
A couple of Viktor’s men exchanged long looks. One dropped his gaze to the grass.
Evelina kept going. “You want to know who decided I’m giving the orders now?” She smacked her free fist into her chest. “Ifucking did.” She drew a breath. “And do you know who has the right to challenge me for that title?” She paused, waiting for each of them to find the balls to look at her, and then raised her gun. “Not the traitorous coward who hides behind our enemies and slaughters his own soldiers for sport. And sure as fuck not the fools who support him.”
One of the gunmen glanced back to watch Ivan’s men finally peeling away, their cargo gathered. His expression contorted and he released his grip of the weapon hanging from his chest. The men next to him swung their attention to him as he raised his arms up, palms out and fingers splayed in a universal gesture of surrender, and took one large step forward.
Evelina arched a brow. “Have something to say?”
The man dropped hard to his knees and dipped his chin to his chest. “I don’t … I don’t support this,” he said, voice choked. “I didn’t even know what was in that cooler until we got here, but—fuck—I didn’t join the bratva to get stabbed in the back by the men standing next to me!” He swallowed hard. “Viktor … he drilled it into us that we do our jobs like soldiers, or we die like pigs. But this … this isn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up, coward!” one of his cohorts snapped, swinging his gun forward.
In the next instant, the front yard became a warzone. Bullets erupted all around her, exploding from every side until Evelina couldn’t hear herself think much less hear a damn thing someone might have said. She saw flashes of light from muzzles in front of her as if in slow-motion, saw bursts of red as bodies dropped. Then she was on the ground, her vision narrowed to the darkness of a single color and her body pressed almost too tightly against another.
Otto’s scent filled her lungs, becoming an anchor in the insanity.
Her brain finally caught up. The angrier gunman from Viktor’s crew had shot at his kneeling colleague. In her mind’s eye, she remembered watching the man who’d surrendered drop before the blood had finished spraying from his head. Bile rose in her throat. But instead of guilt, it was anger that followed.
That shooting had triggered a chain reaction. Artem had opened fire. Viktor’s gunmen shot back. The other men on her side joined in. And amid all of that, she’d simply stood there, watching men fall and their freshly spilled blood stain the earth red.
It hadn’t needed to end up that way.
But she was a fool for thinking it would ever have ended up any other. Even if Pyotr hadn’t ordered them to kill her, he had to have assumed she’d say something that might provoke someone. That heads would clash. These wereViktor’smen. They were probably predisposed to hate her. The whole incident may as well be labeled yet another sloppy attempt on her life.
Then, as quickly as it had started, the shooting stopped, and a deafening silence hung overhead.
Evelina sucked in a breath and pressed her hands into Otto’s chest. “Let me up. You had better not be shot, or so help me—”
Otto sealed his lips over hers in a firm, demanding, short-lived kiss. “At this rate, it’s the heart attacks that’re gonna get me.” He hauled them both upright without waiting for her to formulate a response, helping himself to the task of brushing gravel dust from her clothes.
Evelina tried not to get too flustered, allowed herself a moment to look him over anyway, then finally swept her gaze outward. Only to find both Kirill and Artem watching them with variations of the same knowing, silently laughing grin on their vastly different faces. Kirill’s looked a little smug, too. In her attempt to look away from their awkward but thankfully non-judgmental expressions, Evelina almost missed that both men were also bleeding.
Kirill held one hand over his opposite arm, where rivulets of blood soaked into the fabric of his shirt and dripped off his fingers.
Artem had blood spreading across the lower portion of his shirt.
Evelina frowned. “You need treatment. Both of you.” She looked past them, toward the men who remained standing. “Let’s all get back inside.” Viktor’s men were all down, but not all of Artem’s had made it through the brief burst of violence. And that was on her.
No one objected, and Evelina led the way through the halls until they reached the in-house infirmary. The room itself was little more than a semi-sterilized office space, but it served its purpose all the same. With the men lined up in order of need, she paused to make clear to Artem that she expected him to heed doctor’s orders before stepping into the hall. She’d only be in the way if she lingered.
