He pulled the trigger for the first time when he came face-to-face with a stranger who simply walked out of the game room, gun at his side. Alek’s bullet entered dead center in the man’s throat. He’d never seen him before so he was an enemy. He took the guy’s Glock and kept going. He could hear shit happening in the kitchen. Four shots went off. Fuck. Where was Anton?
He inched along, needing to get to the foyer where he’d have the best view of what the fuck Sergei had brought with him. Where the hell had he found the men to wield this firepower? Hired hands? Or were they his cousin’s new friends from the Baikov Bratva?
Didn’t matter. None of it did. The main question now; where the fuck was his uncle?
♦ ♦ ♦
Sacha stood in the silent room, holding tight to her daughter, and watched what seemed like an action movie play out on the two large screens above her, Grigori, and Yuri. When she’d seen Alekzander in the corridor coming from the back of the house, heading directly for the man leaving the game room, she’d nearly screamed. Watching her Russian calmly shoot first had been a beautiful thing.
But now, the screen had switched to a view of the kitchen to show Anton behind the island. While Yuri cursed and tapped into a keyboard to stop the feed from jumping from camera to camera, she saw a man burst through the back door with two others. Anton’s gun was ready where he was partially hidden from sight, and each man fell. The last one managed to shoot once, but Anton wasn’t hit. Though, if the little burst of dust that plumed from the counter next to his head was any indication, it had come close. He was up and heading toward the front of the house in the next second.
The screen once more switched to a view of what had once been the foyer. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, looking at the hole where the front door had been. Broken glass and jagged chunks of wood littered the floor.
“You should not be watching this. Take the baby and sit.”
She didn’t even respond to Grigori. Not after she noticed the bodies. Four of them. Two by the entrance to the living room where Vasily’s men had been, one to the side of the hole in the wall, and another one. She went cold as she looked at the man laying motionless at the mouth of the hallway Alekzander had been traveling. He was wearing black slacks and a black shirt…
“No, no, no…not him. Please. Oh, my God.” He couldn’t be gone. “No. Do not do this to me.” She hugged Lekzi closer. “To her. You cannot take him from us,” she whispered.
Just above the body, a head poked out from around the wall almost too fast to see, but Sacha would know that too-long shock of dark blond hair anywhere. Relief was a sob that got stuck in her throat. She dashed at the stupid tears that immediately blurred her vision so she could see that exact place on the wall get shot to bits. Obviously, someone had been waiting. Alekzander’s arm popped out, lower this time, and two small flashes came from his gun. When he stuck his head out again, nothing came at him. It was evident he was shouting. Calling for his uncle, she knew without having to hear him.
“Where the fuck is Vasily?” Yuri growled.
“He was in his office with Dmitri,” she managed to supply as a view of the driveway came onto the other screen. There were three black SUVs parked at odd angles at the foot of the stairs. Just before the scene changed again to show the kitchen, Sacha saw Sergei jump to the ground from the rear of one of the trucks.
She cried out in alarm when she saw who he roughly dragged out behind him.
♦ ♦ ♦
Still stuck on the second floor, Vasily met Dmitri’s eye and pointed at him then the ground. He then pointed at himself then the ceiling. He put up three fingers and counted down.
They silently stepped out of Alek’s bedroom, and even though it went against everything in them, they pulled the trigger to take out the two men they’d sent toward Vasily’s office by tossing a vase down the hall a few seconds ago. The thud of it hitting the floor and rolling into the wall had been enough to draw attention.
Before they could even lower their weapons, a third man popped out of what had become Grigori’s cubby and got one shot off before he was struck in the face by two bullets; one from Vasily’s gun, the other from Dmitri’s.
“Fuck me,” Vasily muttered when he saw a hole in the shoulder of Dmitri’s shirt.
“Skimmed me,” Dmitri whispered as he rolled his arm in a circle to prove the bullet hadn’t entered him.
“Wasn’t expecting him.”
“Foolish of us.”
“Very foolish. Alekzander!” Vasily shouted, answering his nephew’s calls now that he wasn’t worried about drawing immediate attention.