Page 141 of Immaculate Corruption (Romanoff Bratva)

The house is burning.

As Gennady and I park out front, the smell of smoke hits my nostrils. I can see the flames licking at the front windows, too.

My heart throbs painfully in my chest. “Is Dima in there?” I cry out to Gennady.

“I don’t know!” he roars back.

I’m torn. Do I run in? I can’t leave Lukas alone out here, but I can’t let Dima die in there. The flames are growing hotter and hotter with every passing second. Time’s wasting. I have to decide.

Before I can make up my mind, I see motion out of the corner of my eye. Turning, I notice a pair of feet sticking out from beneath a massive hedge bordering one side of the property.

I race over and kneel down next to the body. It’s Eduard, one of Dima’s lieutenants. He’s badly wounded and slicked all over with drying blood. But at the sound of my approach, he coughs and shoves himself upright with a pained grimace.

He’s alive.

“What happened?” I beg.

“Ilya… Ilyasov came,” he murmurs. He coughs again and spits up blood. “He got the jump on us. Took out me and a few of the… the others. They’re… dead, I think.”

“You need to rest,” I say, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re hurt.”

He knocks my hand off. “I can’t. Dima is in there.”

He struggles to his knees, then presses a fist into the dirt and wobbles up until he’s standing. He’s wincing and scowling in pain the whole time, but he manages to right himself—barely.

“You can’t go anywhere,” I order. I hand him Lukas. “Stay here. Watch my son. I’m going in.”

I don’t wait for his protests. I just turn and run into the fire.

The smoke inside is even worse than I thought. The world has gone red and gray and black. I can’t see a thing.

I bend into a crouch and try not to take deep breaths, but adrenaline is pounding through my veins and my heart is racing. I’ve only been inside for a few seconds and already my body feels starved for oxygen.

Dima needs me.

It’s that thought that propels me forward.

Flames are tearing through the doors in the hallway now, filling the area with smoke, and the floor feels unstable beneath my feet. The fire is eating away at the foundation. One wrong step could send me plummeting through.

The smoke clears enough for me to get a glimpse of the foyer. In the center of it is a burning pit from hell. The hardwood is getting chewed up by flame and giving way to this yawning chasm, rimmed with licking fire and emanating thousands of degrees of heat.

I ease myself around the hole, sticking as close to the wall as I can. Everything is brutally hot. Sweat is pouring off my face and my arms are coated in so much ash I can’t even see my skin.

When I’m almost all of the way around the circle, I trip over a dark mass on the floor. I think it’s debris—until it moves.

“Dima!” I know I spoke, but I can’t hear the sound of my own voice over the roar of the flames.

I drop down next to him, fear shooting through me as the timbers beneath us crack slightly. I lay a hand on his back and pull it away to see that he’s covered in blood and ash. “Dima?”

I’m worried I’m too late. That he’s already dead. But then he lifts his head and looks around.

He has soot smeared on his cheeks and burns on his arms, but Dima is alive. He’s still breathing. There’s still a chance.

“Dima, you have to get up. We can still get out of here, but we have to go.”

His lips move, but I can’t hear him. There’s no time for talk, anyway.

I wrap an arm through his and do my best to help lift his large frame to his feet. Dima stumbles sideways into me. It’s only when he pulls away do I realize that all the blood on him is pouring from a horrific-looking wound in his chest.

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