I had been wrong. These weren’t the same men who I’d slain all those years ago in this very building. The Chechen mafia was a different breed altogether I realize as I now lay eyes on the burned man in the room, whose eyes are wide at the familiar sight of me.
My gaze falls momentarily on Olivia, and my heart skips a beat at the sight of her unharmed and alive. We exchange a look of recognition, and I can see every bit as much relief in her eyes as there is in mine, mingled with terror from the firefight around her.
The scarred Russian in the room draws his gun and points it at me just as I whip around to train mine on him. I know the man, and I know he’s smarter than the rest of him, and twice as vile.
“Max,” the man, Boris, coos tauntingly, grinning a toothy grin as we hold our weapons to each other, muscles tense. “Can’t you see you’ve come at a bad time? I was just trying to get to know this young lady a little better.”
“What have you done to her?” I growl back in the Russian he speaks, about ready to pull the trigger despite the danger looking me in the eye down the barrel of a gun.
He tsks, narrowing his eyes. “Suddenly so sensitive, Max. That’s not the man I remember barging into a penthouse and giving me this little makeover. It’s a lot harder to get some action like this, you know,” he adds with a grimace. Neither one of us is willing to move a muscle, and my heart is pounding — we won’t be alone forever, and one of us will be forced to act. “But don’t worry, I don’t let that stop me. Those French girls you think you rescued? I caught up with them, after you thought you’d killed me.” He licks his lips. “So many things they say about French women is true, you know,” he croaks.
Before I have the chance to respond, the door is kicked open behind me, and I take the briefest flash of a distraction to dive out of the way just before Boris’s gun fires, catching one of the two men bursting in in the leg as I hit the ground and roll.
Still on the ground as shouts in Russian and gunfire goes off all around me, I aim my pistol at the wounded man and put two bullets in his head, blood splattering on the man behind him as I roll out of the way and get to my feet.
I let the weapon fall out of my hand. It’s out of bullets.
Before Boris can ready his pistol at me again, I rise to my feet and dive for him, drawing a knife from my side as I hear Liv’s shriek of alarm from my right. My body collides with his full-force, but I’ve caught him off-guard, and the two of us fall to the ground, struggling to grapple with each other.
Boris is strong, but I am stronger. I may have been out of the killing business these past years, but I never let myself grow weak. And nothing lets a man like me forget his killer instinct. His hands struggle to get a firm hold on my wrist as my knife wrenches around him, trying to find a suitable opening to sink into. I feel him wrapping his arm around my neck as he works his way behind me, and instinctively, I raise my knife defensively and slice his forearm.
I hear a scream of pain from him, and as we thrash, I catch a glimpse of the other mobster in the room, training his gun on us, trying to get in a good shot at me. My heart jumps in fear, not for myself, but out of fear that he might think to turn the weapon on Liv.
I know they won’t do that without damn good reason. But I haven’t given them cause to think I value her, and while these monsters might not see her as a living, thinking human being, they do see her as a walking paycheck, and they aren’t willing to risk that without a damn good reason.
Boris’s grip slackens after I slice him, but I don’t let him get away from me. The moment I leave myself exposed is the moment I sign my own death warrant. Instead, I twist with him on the ground, and I feel the cold metal of his gun brush against my arm. It’s still in his hand.
In an instant, I move my knife around and draw it across his hand, making him recoil and drop the firearm. When it hits the ground, to my horror, a round discharges, sending a bullet ricocheting around the room, and I catch a glimpse of Liv ducking for cover out of the corner of my eye.
Wrenching my knee free, I kick the pistol across the room and push Boris off me, using the moment of distraction to charge at the mobster in the doorway. He starts to point his gun at me as I close the distance, but I’m too fast for him. My free hand closes around his wrist with a sickening crunch, and he screams as he drops the gun to the ground, but there’s no discharge this time.
Wasting no time, my knife hand plunges the blade into his throat in two quick stabs, one after the other. My hands are crimson with the blood flowing from his throat as he croaks his last, and I shove him back to choke on his own lifeblood in the stairway.