Page 22 of Collapsed

“Mmmm, I’m going to feast on that cunt as soon as we kill all these fuckers, and I don’t think I’ll be the only one,” I tell her as I once again start returning fire.

“These drums aren’t usually here, Andrei never had drums full of product,” Luci tells me as she starts to pry one open as I cover her back so she doesn’t end up shot again. I already planned on killing Ivan but seeing my woman with a gunshot wound? Yeah, I’m going to remove every nail and take his fingers knuckle by knuckle until there’s nothing left. I’m filled with rage that he hurt her, and that’s only the damage I saw right away. Fuck knows what horrors she endured while with that monster.

“Fuck, King, we need to get out of here right fucking now!” she yells, and I turn to see what has her so frazzled. My eyes widen when I see that the drums are filled with explosives, and there is a transmitter but no countdown. That fucking psycho is probably somewhere watching and ready to hit blow whenever his black little heart decides.

“We knew this was probably a trap, Luci. This just proves it.” I try BJ on the comms. “BJ, come in. I have the package. BJ, I repeat, I have the package.” Nothing but static. Fuck someone is jamming our comm system. “We need to find the others and get the hell out of here,” I tell her, and she nods in agreement.

“Stay close, I can't have you out of my sight right now. I know you can handle yourself, but I can’t risk losing you again. So stay close… please?” I beg, knowing I sound like a lovesick, pitiful bitch. For Luci, though, I don’t care. I just got her back, and it was a pure stroke of luck we were here at the same time she was. I won’t risk her getting lost again.

We move out of the loading dock area and head along the wall to the bunk room. Once we are in front of the door, we each stand on one side of the frame, and I grab the knob, pushing it open. We aren’t met with immediate fire, so I nod to Luci and enter the room first. The kitchen area and bathroom are empty, continuing to the entrance to the sleeping area, we notice the door is already open.

I step in first once again and swing my body left to right with my arms out in front of me, holding my gun ready to fire in an instant. The room appears empty, but taking no chances, I make my way toward the back with Nat on my heels, checking in between each bunk to make sure no one is hiding in between them. We make it to the back of the room and turn to head out when pain radiates in my left foot.

Snapping my head down to see what the hell I just stepped on, my view is blocked as Luci drops down to her knees, quick as fuck, and brings her knife down with the force of both hands like lightning. I hear a groan, and she laughs as she stands, ripping her knife from the skull of the man whose knife is still impaled in my foot. “This is gonna hurt, King,” she tells me as she grabs the knife and rips it from my foot.

“Fuck me, woman! A little warning next time. Yeah?” I bellow, and she winks at me before handing me the knife.

“Did you wanna keep it as a souvenir?” She giggles, and I grab it from her hands, throwing it over my shoulder.

“Enough with your sassy little mouth, we need to find the others and go home. Let’s go,” I grumble and move past her, heading back to the main part of the warehouse. The others have to be in the thick of it among the shelves; that’s just perfect.Just what I want to do, take my girl into the middle of a gunfight after I just got her back.

We exit and are back in the main layout of the building when Luci grabs my hand. “There.” She points, and I follow her finger, seeing Stryker positioned behind a shelf and taking heavy fire. “I have a plan, you’re not going to like it, but it will work, so just say yes.”

“You’ll be mad at me if I say no, so let’s hear it,” I tell her.

“I want you to take cover behind this shelf and shoot the bags of powder on the shelf in front of Stryker, the explosion of it will give them a shitty view, and we can pick them off one by one,” she tells me. “I’m going to get Stryker, bring him back here to you, then we can move as a trio to find the others.”

She’s right, I don’t fucking like it, but like the good boyfriend I never knew I could be, I take my position and fire. The bags of white powder explode in the air around Ivan’s men, Stryker tries to look to see who is giving him aid, but the cocaine is thick in the air around him. Luci starts to slowly make her way toward him, but a man sneaking up behind Stryker with his knife at the ready has our woman letting out a battle cry as she lunges toward him, wrapping her legs around the man’s waist as she stabs him repeatedly in the neck.

Stryker spins around with eyes blown, whether that’s from seeing our woman or the snow, we’ll never know. He is on her in an instant, grabbing her and pulling her to his chest. I get to them just as Stryker pulls her back by her hair. “Little Fox, you can’t leave me again.”

“Ease up, Stryker. She’s been shot… twice,” I bark at him, and he snaps his attention back to her.

“I’m fine, both are taken care of. Stop treating me like glass, we have to find Alexie and Conrad.” She rolls her eyes at us.

“And Marcela,” Stryker giggles.Great, he's feeling the effects of the cocaine.Nat doesn’t say anything, just grabs Stryker’s hand and pulls him behind her as she moves further into the shelving.

We run into Marcela next, and I mean that literally. She wasn’t far from the cocaine explosion. She couldn’t see clearly and rammed into Stryker from the side. They went down hard, and just as Marcela was about to land a punch to Stryker’s face, Luci grabbed her arm. “Fancy seeing you here, Marcela,” she sassed. Marcela is off of a laughing Stryker and embracing Luci in a heartbeat.

“Fuck! Girl, I’m so glad to see you,” Marcela cries as they embrace. “What’s with Stryker?” she asks, looking at Stryker, who looks spaced out.

“I missed you too, Marcela. Stryker inhaled some cocaine. Grab him, and let’s go. We need to move, Ivan has this place ready to go kaboom, and we still need to find Alexie and Conrad,” Luci tells her, and Marcela releases her quickly, falling in line with us.

We’ve cleared the entire drug section of the warehouse and are about to cross the aisle into the weapons sections. Starting with AR15s because who doesn’t need a whole fucking arsenal of automatic rifles at their disposal? As we make our way through the shelving units, we shoot at anyone who isn’t Alexie or Conrad.

Just as we round the corner into the third aisle –Is that a fucking cannon? Who the fuck needs a cannon?– We hear a familiar voice, “You pieces of pigeon shit. You thought the smart choice was to fight against me? I will peel the skin from your bodies, sew it together in a pretty jacket, and wear it for others to see. You don’t stand against Alexie Volkov!”

Luci rushes forward, leaving us behind. “Alexie!” she screams, and the minute I have eyes on her again, I see the Russian bastard abandon his hand-to-hand battle with four men and whirl around, his eyes locking on our woman.

“Malyshka,” he breathes and storms toward her, the enemies behind him totally forgotten. Stryker, Marcela, and I aim and fire, taking down three of the men in the blink of an eye. The last man is running toward Alexie’s back with a machete in hand. Luci reaches down, pulls a dagger from her boot, and hurls it through the air, where it finds its target in the man’s throat.

Alexie slams into Luci, and his lips smash into hers as he grabs her, picks her up, and shoves her back into the wall. She wraps her legs around him as they continue battling with their tongues. “I failed you,Malyshka. I was weak and let him take you. Never again, I swear. I will kill him for you and give you his eyes to wear as a necklace around your delicate little neck,” he growls.

“We need to find Conrad, Alexie. Put me down so we can get out of here. Ivan has this place rigged to explode at a moment’s notice,” she tells him. He releases her but keeps a hold of her hand as we continue to search the shelves of weapons.

Finding nothing after we’ve reached the end of the weapons section, we head back toward the offices we entered what feels like hours ago. Alexie kicks open his dad’s office door and finds it empty, just as we left it. I follow his lead, but with the other office door and am met with the same sight; nothing. “Where the fuck is he?” I yell.

As I turn to look at my teammates when I see movement from the corner of my eye. “There are people outside. Maybe he is out there already?” The team agrees with me, and we head out the doors in formation, praying our lost tech guy is out there.

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