Page 27 of White Rabbit
“Slava Ukraini,” I said into my com as we parked a block from the warehouse and I pulled my balaclava over my face. We’d go in on foot, our vehicles moving closer only after infiltration. “Slava Kloboucnik!”
“Slava Ukraini! Slave Kloboucnik!” echoed back to me from my men.
Aslan started barking out quiet orders and we were on the move. We positioned on either side of the building. Our force would enter through the secret doors there. Bernardi’s men wouldn’t even know we were there until we were on them.
Like ghosts, we slipped inside and circled the contingent of twenty men handling the shipment. My jaw clenched while I surveyed them. Sloppy. Joking with the delivery crew. Not a single one on the lookout. I would kill my ownboyevikandshestyorkafor such negligence.
“Pakhan,” Aslan murmured then nodded his head to the side.
“Well well well, if it isn’t Radomer Jovanovic,” I growled. “Move in, but I want him alive.”
Aslan gave the order to move, but I now had a single objective. Fulfilling my promise.
Chapter 16
Brecklyn
The explosion rocked the house as I was finishing my walk through the solarium to stretch my legs. I ran toward the foyer and the stairs, unsure where to go or what to do. I could find someone, locate a weapon—
“It’s at the gate! Stay away from the windows. You must get to the safe room,” Zlata yelled as she rushed from the kitchen. I barely heard her over the barrage of gunfire that had erupted after the explosion.
“Safe room? What safe room? There’s a safe room?”
The cook looked at me in disbelief then shook her head. She peered past me.
“Nikita!” she called. I swung around and found Valariy’s stepsister had come into the foyer because of the commotion, too. “Take Brecklyn to the safe room.”
“Why?” Nikita asked, her eyes wide while she looked left and right, her back to the wall closest to the entrance to the mansion’s west wing. She trembled, her hands trying to hold onto the plaster behind her—or maybe to dig through it for escape.
Zlata’s face darkened with rage. “Because she is thePakhan’squeen! Because she is his weakness. She must be safe. Get her to the room!”
Not seeming to comprehend, Nikita slunk closer to the hallway. The blade of a knife flashed at her side, and if not for the continued rapid rapport of bullets outside, I would have snarked that she’d brought a knife in a gunfight. I would have thought she’d be smarter than that.
“Useless,” Zlata swore. Moving next to me, she pulled a gun from her apron.
“You have a gun?” I gasped.
“Of course, I do,” she snapped, matter-of-fact. Without another word, she turned toward the door and braced, ready for battle. She pointedly placed herself between me and it. Torn between running and staying with the kindly cook-turned-warrior, I looked back at Nikita. She kept inching farther away. She didn’t seem inclined to take me anywhere.
“Nikita,” I pleaded.
“No!” Turning, she ran.
Before I could follow or hide anywhere, the front door burst open. I screamed, backing up. There was nowhere to hide here, nothing to get behind.
My blood ran cold with horror. I’d told Valariy to be safe, yet I was the one who’d die.
“Ours!” Zlata yelled to me as a man dragged another inside, the second man clearly critically wounded. “He’s one of ours. Piter! Oh, Blessed Mother!”
“Slava Kloboucnik!” the uninjured man yelled then ran back out.
“Fool!” Zlata muttered and slammed the door he’d left open.
My eyes were on the bleeding man. I didn’t stop to think or consider my situation. I raced for him and dropped to my knees at his side, evaluating his injuries. His skin was ashen, breathing shallow. Blood streamed from a shot to his leg, but didn’t spurt. Another bullet had his his neck above his Kevlar, and the blood from it already puddled on the floor.
“Give me your apron,” I yelled to the cook, thrusting out my arm. She whipped it off. As soon as I had the fabric in my hand, I swiftly wrapped the ties tightly above the leg wound. Then I pressed my hands to the wound on the man’s neck.
“Call 911!” I yelled as I desperately tried to stave the flow of blood from the soldier’s wound.
