teeth behind me. “But I must be sure I can trust you.
We must proceed very carefully. The first step—”
“You can’t trust him,” said Mikhail from behind me.
Vasiliy looked around at him, frowning angrily at being
interrupted. I noticed the car had lit up with a soft pink
glow, coming from the rear seat.
“Here,” said Mikhail. And passed something to Vasiliy. A
smartphone. Now Vasiliy and I were both frowning.
Vasiliy brought the phone into the front seat with him
and stared at the screen and I stared with him. It was a
porn picture. A naked guy entwined with a naked
blonde, up against a mirror—
Oh Jesus.
I realized a split-second before Vasiliy. I guess my mind
had been full of nothing else but Irina naked, ever since
I first saw her. And you don’t look at a picture like that
and even consider, at first, that it might be your beloved
niece.
In slow motion, I saw Vasiliy’s jaw start to fall. I could
actually see his face flushing, all the tiny blood vessels
swelling as the scarlet spread.
“He seduced her,” said Mikhail from the rear seat.
“Fucked her. Used her. To get to you.”
Vasiliy’s head slowly turned to look at me. The look in
his eyes wasn’t the Vasiliy everyone fears, the cold,
calculating businessman who’ll murder to get what he
wants. This was hot and human and very, very
personal. This was betrayal and outrage and fury. There
would be no reasoning with him. Not on this.
I was going to die.
I felt for the door release. Found it and pulled...but even
as the door opened, Mikhail’s sweat-damp hands
slapped onto either side of my neck, heaved me back
against the headrest and squeezed. He was a fat fuck
but he was strong—I was pinned in place and his fingers
were digging deeper and deeper, crushing as much as
strangling. I clawed at them, making choking sounds in
my throat, but I couldn’t pry them loose. My windpipe
narrowed, narrowed...and then I couldn’t breathe at all.
Vasiliy pulled a gun from a shoulder holster. A second
later I felt the cold kiss of the metal against my temple.
I met his eyes and saw an anger I’d never seen in all
my years. He practically raised me, I remembered Irina
saying.
Shit.
There was a metallic click as Vasiliy cocked the gun.
32
Angelo
There was a boom, but no pain. Maybe you don’t feel
the one that kills you. My head didn’t hurt and even the
crushing of my windpipe had stopped. Is this heaven?
For a second, I just sat there, dazed. Then I started to
become aware of things. Mikhail was no longer gripping
my neck and I could hear him screaming in the rear seat
behind me. Vasiliy was trying to hunker down low in his
seat, his gun still drawn but not pointed at me. And his
pristine suit was sprinkled with glittering diamonds. I
looked down. My suit was the same.
Then I saw the hole in the windshield. Not diamonds:
glass.
I twisted and looked behind me. Mikhail was clutching
his left ear, blood dripping from between his fingers.
Behind him, there was a ragged hole through the
leather seat at roughly head height.
I looked out of the windshield just as a flash of lightning
lit up the construction site. Up on the second floor of
one of the half-finished buildings was a dark shape: a
man, lying full-length. Rico, with his favorite sniper rifle.
He must have seen me staring at him through his scope
because he lifted an arm and pointed frantically to the
side. Go! Go!
I looked across at Vasiliy. He was still trying to hunker
down beneath the level of the windshield, but he was
swinging his gun around to point at me again.
I dived out of the car and staggered across the gravel
road. Immediately, gunshots cracked the air around me,
some close enough that I could hear the hiss of the
bullet. Not Vasiliy and Mikhail, the Russians who they’d
brought with them. They were all around me. Shit!
The road was brightly lit by the Mercedes’s headlights:
staying there was suicide. I ran into the darkness,
panting with adrenaline, rain slicking my face. Almost
immediately, I slipped and went full-length in the mud.
That saved my life: a bullet aimed at my chest zipped
over my head.
I started to crawl, but each time I put my hand down, it
sank into the thick, black mud to the elbow. I gritted my
teeth and forced my way onward, wincing as more
bullets whistled overhead.
The ground was churned up by construction machinery,
with countless ditches and potholes, some of them a
few feet deep and many of them filled with rainwater.
The storm had darkened the sky so much, I couldn’t tell
what was mud, what was shadow and what was water.
Every few steps, I’d suddenly find there was no ground
and I’d lurch down into a hole with a bone-jarring
thump. Only the softness of the mud saved me from
breaking something. Other times, I’d suddenly find
myself chest-deep in freezing water, desperately trying
to free my legs from the mud so I could lift my face
clear.
And the bullets never stopped coming. The only blessing
was that my overcoat was black and, as long as I
stayed low, I blended in with the darkness and the mud.
With the rain still hammering down, the Russians must
have been guessing where I was. But that didn’t mean
they wouldn’t get lucky. Some of the bullets hit the mud
horribly close to me. And over the hammering rain, I
could hear running footsteps: the Russians were
spreading out, searching for me....
I tried to crawl faster, but powering through the thick,
sucking mud was exhausting. Already, my limbs felt like
lead. The mud coated every part of me and it had oozed
through my cashmere overcoat and thousand dollar suit
to squish against my skin. The rain was flowing down
my face and into my ears. I had no idea where I was or
where the Russians were. I just had to keep crawling,
crawling—
A foot caught me under the chin and sent me sprawling
backwards in the mud. I tasted blood. When I looked
up, I saw Yuri, Vasiliy’s personal bodyguard. A flash of
lightning lit up the scars on his cheek—someone had
really done a number on the guy.
He was gazing down at me with cold fury. Shit. I could
tell immediately that he knew about Irina. How?
As if in answer, he tapped his ear and I saw the radio
earpiece he wore. “I listen,” he grunted. His English
wasn’t as good as Vasiliy’s. “Car is bugged. I want to
know what is going on. I want to be ready if you cross
Vasiliy. But instead, I hear you use Irina. Irina!”
Shit. This got worse and worse. There are bodyguards
and bodyguards. There are the hired guns who don’t
give a shit who they protect as long as they get paid
and then there are the loyal ones, the guys who stay
with one family so long they become part of it. Yuri was
the second kind—I could hear in his voice that Irina was
like a little sister to him. “No!” I shouted over the rain.
“It’s not like that!”
He growled and grabbed my foot, then spun and
heaved me through the air like he was throwing the
hammer. I crashed down on my back on the concrete
floor of a part-finished building. Pain shot through my
spine and I wondered if I’d broken something. Certainly,
I wasn’t getting up anytime soon.
Yuri came over to stand at my feet. The rain was
pounding down on my upturned face and I was panting