"We spoke about this just two days ago," Paxan said. "I asked if you needed help."
That was what they'd met about?
"And I didn't need it"--he nearly spat at Sevastyan--"until he made his move the same day!"
"Then let's fix the situation," Paxan said, drawing Filip's attention away from Sevastyan. "Money is no object. For the memory of your father, I pledge to settle anything you owe."
"You don't understand. I need more." Tears continued to spill; the gun shook erratically as his fingers seemed to cramp. "The bounty Travkin posted is more money than I could ever see."
"Take me." Sevastyan's expression was filled with menace. "I'm a valuable prize for an enemy."
"I'm here for the old man."
Paxan swallowed. "Take your finger off the trigger, Filip, and I'll go with you."
"I give the orders! You send the bulldog away, then we'll talk about your long-lost daughter."
Sevastyan grated, "That won't happen."
"You don't give a damn about yourself, do you? But what if I threaten your precious Natalie?" Filip aimed--directly at me.
I was staring into the barrel of a gun--too terrified to keep my eyes open, too terrified to close them.
The weapon jogged in his weakening arm . . . only a matter of time . . .
"Harm her and your life ends today," Sevastyan vowed in a chilling tone. "I'm giving you one chance to leave this room alive."
Filip's bravado began to dissipate. "I-I don't have a choice." He lifted his free hand toward his forehead, then sniveled at the reminder that he'd lost his fingers. In a wheedling voice, he said, "Just let me take him, Sevastyan."
"Never." Had Sevastyan eased toward Filip? "This won't end the way you anticipated. The news hasn't had time to reach you, but there will be no bounty."
"What are you talking about? Of course there is! Why wouldn't there be?"
"Because just hours ago, I shot Travkin."
I did a double take at Sevastyan. Travkin was dead? That was the good news Paxan had mentioned?
"You're lying!" Filip's gaze darted. "Lying!"
Panicked, I said, "Filip, don't do this. It's not too late. We can still fix this."
Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Sevastyan inching even closer to Filip, until he stood between me and Paxan.
"Freeze, Sevastyan!" Filip cried. "I'll shoot, I swear to God I will!" Another shaky wave of that gun--
Sevastyan lunged at me just as bullets sprayed the room from wall to wall. Clocks exploded, glass shattering, chimes tolling like church bells. I screamed, the sound cut off when I hit the ground; Sevastyan was atop me, hand cupping my head. In his other hand, a pistol smoked.
Plaster dust clouded the air, but I could see Filip on his back across the room. He was shot in the belly, twisting in pain. Though my ears rang as if a siren was in my head, I could still hear his cries. And something else . . .
Paxan's breaths. They sounded thick. No, no, no! I struggled to rise, but Sevastyan had me pinned down.
"Are you hit?" he demanded of me.
When I shook my head, he lunged to his feet, charging for Filip.
As Sevastyan disarmed him, I scrambled to reach Paxan. He lay on the floor, blood gushing from a wound in his chest.
Sevastyan snatched the machine gun from Filip, then stalked around the room, checking the perimeter. "Natalie, put pressure on that!" He slammed the office doors closed, bolting them shut.
Kneeling beside Paxan, I pressed both of my hands over his wound. "You're going to be okay, you're going to be okay." Shock--I was going into shock. And then how could I help my father?
In between grimaces of pain, Paxan looked sheepish. "This is . . . not how I planned things."
"Don't talk, please don't talk." Blood skimmed past my fingers. Lifeblood. He can't lose any more. "You have to save your strength!"
Sevastyan dropped to his knees on Paxan's other side. He put his hands on top of mine, knotting our fingers to bear down with even more force. Sevastyan's expression was so hard, like granite under pressure. About to crack.
Paxan's wound wasn't fatal. It couldn't be. So why were they both acting like it?
What did Sevastyan and Paxan know about shootings that I didn't?
Everything.
Paxan cast Sevastyan a weak smile. "You know I couldn't have borne it if you'd saved me instead of her. Proud of you, Son."
The hazy scene replayed in my head. Sevastyan had been directly between Paxan and me when the bullets had flown. He'd made a choice, tackling me to the ground--instead of Paxan. "Stop this, both of you! Paxan, you have to hold on. You're going to make it!"
"Be at ease, dorogaya moya." With effort, he reached for me, brushing my face before his arm collapsed.
Then his eyes went to Sevastyan. "You are bound to her," he told him in Russian. "Her life is in your care, Son. Yours alone." He covered our bloody knot of fingers with his hand. "She belongs to you."
One sharp nod from Sevastyan. More pressure on granite.
With difficulty, Paxan turned his head back to me. "Aleksei will protect you. He is yours now too." I stared down at our interlaced fingers, awash in crimson--it was like a blood oath. "My brave daughter."
My eyes filled with tears, drops spilling. "Don't do this! Batja, please, just hold on."
"Batja?" He smiled through his pain, somehow still evincing contentment. "I knew you would call me Dad." But the twinkling blue of his eyes was ebbing. Replaced by sightlessness? "I only wish I'd had more time with the two of you. I love you both."
To Sevastyan, he said, "Make her life better . . . for my having been in it."
Blood bubbled from his lips. His eyes went blank, his chest . . . still.
"No, don't go!" I sobbed. But it was too late.
Pavel Kovalev, my father, was dead.
Chapter 26
"Natalie, get up!"
The siren in my head was back. Sevastyan was standing beside me, but his words sounded distant.
He grabbed one of my blood-coated hands and hauled me to my feet.
"This isn't happening," I muttered as I stumbled along, glass from Paxan's beloved clocks crunching beneath my heels. "This isn't happening." My father couldn't be dead.
Sevastyan dragged me over to where Filip squirmed in pain, blood pooling from his gut wound.
In a broken voice, Filip told me, "I-I didn't want this. I came tonight . . . because others were already . . . on their way. It was going to happen. No matter . . . what I did. The bounty is . . . unthinkable."
Hatred welled up inside me, drying my tears. "Goddamn you! How could you do this?"
"Swear to you, I only came for Paxan." He reached his mutilated hand toward me. "If I didn't know about Travkin . . . others won't have heard yet either. They'll . . . be coming."
"What does that mean?"
"Travkin also wanted . . . your head."
With a furious yell, Sevastyan yanked me behind him, drilling a bullet into Filip's skull.
Two dead. Two. Slain before my eyes.
I couldn't catch my breath, my lungs seeming to constrict. I felt like the whole world around me was on fire, flames crackling ever closer. Like if I screamed, no one would hear. I was hyperventilating by the time Sevastyan snatched my upper arm in his punishing grip and started dragging me away. "Come on, Natalie!" Gun raised, he led me toward a door at the back of the office.
"We can't leave Paxan like this." I gazed back at his still body. His lifeless eyes. Why hadn't I closed them? Stupid, stupid. "We have to care for him!"
Sevastyan just yanked me along harder. "I'm taking you from Berezka. We don't know who can be trusted here."
I was speechless. As the siren in my head amped up, he shoved me into a garage I'd never seen, then tossed me into a dark sedan.
Haze.
A car ride down the wet shell drive, rain pouring from the night sky.
Sevastyan's bloody rings digging into the steering wheel.
Mud slashing over the w
indshield, wipers gritty.
The back of the car fishtailed; I remained frozen.
Sevastyan didn't slow until we neared the river, then slammed to a stop in front of the boathouse. "You're going to stay here and lock the doors behind me," he ordered as he reached across me toward the glove box. "The glass is bulletproof. You do not open these doors." He took out a pistol, cocked it, flicked off the safety, then held it out to me. When I made no move to take it, he laid it on the console. "If someone gets in anyway, you use the gun. Aim for the chest and pull the trigger."
Sevastyan was heading out into danger? Already the entire world was on fire; if I lost him too . . . "Where are you going? Don't leave! Can't we just stay in this car and drive away?"
He shook his head. "I don't know who's controlling the gates. Or who's waiting outside them. We need to leave by water." In the Casino Royale boat? "I'll clear the boathouse, then return for you."
When he opened the door, his own gun raised, I cried, "Please be careful."
He cast me an odd look. "Don't worry, your protection will return." He slipped out into the rain, swiftly closing in on the boathouse--
I spied a muzzle flash out of the corner of my vision. Heard a sharp pop, like a lightning bolt cut short.
Half of Sevastyan's upper body was wrenched back, as if he'd been punched in the shoulder.
Not punched. Shot.
Lightning flashed as I screamed. By the time my eyes adjusted, Sevastyan and another man were grappling for a gun.
In the headlights' beams, I could see it was the brigadier Gleb. Sevastyan struck with one of his anvil fists, connecting with the man's face. Gleb tottered, overpowered.
Sevastyan couldn't be hurt too badly if he could move like that, right? He wrested the gun from the stunned man, then pistol-whipped Gleb with it. "How many more are there?" he roared.
Gleb's face split into a macabre grin. Whatever he said sent Sevastyan into a deeper rage, his fist flying.
I scratched at my bloodstained hands as I watched Sevastyan beating a man to death. Another sizzling bolt forked out above, spotlighting a grisly blow.
I'd never seen anyone fight like Sevastyan. Fighting to kill.
This was Sevastyan at his most raw--and real. He was an enforcer, and killing was what he did.
When Gleb collapsed, unconscious, Sevastyan followed him down, dropping to his knees to continue annihilating the man. It was as if some demon had taken Sevastyan over. Gleb's face was a pulp; with each of Sevastyan's hits, blood sloshed up from it as if from a disturbed puddle.
When would this end? I opened the door, stumbling toward him. "Sevastyan, we have to leave!" Freezing rain drummed down. "You have to stop this!"
He peered at me, the headlights gleaming in his eyes. I saw madness--and something more. Like he wanted me to stop him--because he was still beating the man.
Between bouts of thunder, I thought I heard bone crunch.
Then I heard something even more terrifying.
Gunfire in the distance. It sounded like a battlefield. The loyal and the disloyal waging all-out war? Sevastyan heard it too. His expression said he was desperate to join that fray.
If anything happened to him . . . if I lost both Sevastyan and Paxan in one blood-drenched night . . . ?
I remembered Paxan's words: Extreme violence. Extreme vigilance. "You said you keep your promises, Sevastyan. You swore to keep me safe."
He gazed up at me through rain-thickened lashes, his eyes aglow. I was drowning in them. We were drowning together. I held out my tremulous hand.
As if in a daze, he rose, seeming helpless not to come for me.
Chapter 27
"Will you let me look at your arm?" I asked Sevastyan for the tenth time. I figured I'd keep asking until he responded.
His clothes had dried on him, but he refused to move from the yacht's steering wheel. For hours, the engines had hummed unceasingly as he'd guided us upriver, our end destination unknown.
He sat on the captain's bench in the luxurious cockpit, his body rigid with strain. The muted instrument lights illuminated his weary face, those compelling features, his fathomless gaze.
This was the man who'd lunged in front of bullets for me. Who'd killed to protect me. On our first night together, he'd told me, "I will eliminate any threat to you, pitilessly."
He had.
The glow from the dash highlighted streaks of dried blood across his cheek, neck, and the ripped material around his injured arm.
How much of that blood was his? Gleb's?
Paxan's?
"It's just a graze," Sevastyan said at length. "I've had worse."
I knew. I'd seen the scars. Encouraged that he was at least talking to me, I asked, "Can't you take a break? Haven't we run far enough?"
I'd discovered that running was precisely what this boat had been equipped for. In one of the stately cabins below, I'd found new passports--for Natalya and Roman Sevastyan, a married couple--trunks of our clothing, and a trove of cash. Just-in-case precautions.
In case had happened.
Inside another cabin, I'd also discovered some of Paxan's things. After the events of the night, this inclusion had seemed . . . naively optimistic. Tears had stung my eyes like needles, but I'd tried to stem them, tried to be strong.
I'd managed to hold back as I washed off and dressed in slacks and a sweater. But now, imagining Sevastyan's own devastation, my eyes watered once more. Aside from me, he was the only other person alive who understood what the world had lost tonight. "We need to clean your injury and then you can rest."
"Later." Without looking away from his course, he said, "You're not safe."
"Who were you talking to earlier?" When I'd returned to the cockpit after changing, I'd heard Sevastyan on the phone, speaking in terse Russian: "I've never asked you for anything. Secure it." Then, in a lower tone, "Do you understand the importance of what I'm entrusting to you?" Before hanging up, he'd said, "Do not consider this a chance for something more."
What had that meant? And why had his very accent changed? It'd sounded like a different dialect.
Maybe a Siberian one? "Will you please talk to me, Sevastyan? I have so many questions, and I'm so sick of being confused."
He exhaled. "Then ask."
"What will happen to Paxan?" My voice broke.
Gaze fixed on the horizon, he said, "If those defending Berezka win, they will see to . . . they will take care of him." His voice was a rasp. "Once I feel it's safe enough for you to return, we would have . . . the funeral."
I'd never looked at a man and known he was dying inside. But how could I expect anything different? Sevastyan had chosen me to live--over the man he hero-worshipped.
He'd saved me over his own savior.
How conflicted he must be. For myself, I felt a deep welling of grief. But it was pure.
Sevastyan looked like he was slowly crumbling.
I reached for his good arm. "I only knew Paxan for a couple of weeks. If I loved him this much, I can't imagine what you must be feeling. I'm so sorry you had to choose."
"There was no choice," he said, but the guilt was plain on his face. "You heard his last words."
I tried not to think about that. About being given. A decree sanctified by blood.
I changed the subject. "Can you at least tell me where we're going?"
"I don't know. Don't know who we can trust. Everything is different now," he said. "And though Travkin is dead, there will still be danger until all the players know the bounty has expired. The snake still twists even after it loses its head."
Travkin. Just the name made my blood boil. I wanted revenge against that nameless, faceless thug, blamed him so much more than even Filip. My cousin had merely been the deceitful, ungrateful weapon; Travkin had pulled the trigger. "You truly killed him?"
Sevastyan nodded.
Then even from the grave, Travkin had effected my father's death. "How did you get to him? He must've had an army of guards."
&nb
sp; With a menacing look, Sevastyan bit out, "I was unexpected."
"That's all you're going to tell me?" I asked in disbelief. "Did you know that Travkin had put a bounty on me too?"
Sevastyan finally turned to me. "I found out five minutes before I walked into his customary haunt and plugged a bullet between his eyes."
I swallowed, trying to imagine this man striding into the lion's den like that. For me. "You could've been killed."
Gaze back on the water, he said, "You need to rest, Natalie. You were in shock earlier. Go below."
"I don't like below. I've never been on a boat like this." The farther we got from Berezka, the rougher the water had become. Hearing the waves slapping against the bottom of the boat terrified me. Surely it was only a matter of time before the hull cracked like an egg. "I've never been out on the water when there's no land in sight." Strange, even though I had no visual of the shore--no lights shone in the distance--I still felt like the world was burning all around me. Being close to Sevastyan made that feeling recede.
When we hit a larger swell, he muttered, "It's not a boat; it's a ship. And you're perfectly safe on it."
"All the same." I climbed up onto the spacious captain's bench beside him, sitting thigh to thigh. Maybe I needed to be near Sevastyan because of what we'd been through together. Maybe we needed each other because we'd both left pieces of our hearts back at Berezka.
Time passed. I lost my battle against tears. While I silently cried, Sevastyan stared out into the black.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
I woke in one of the cabins, tucked under the covers. I had vague recollections of repeatedly jerking awake against Sevastyan's side, until I'd gone under for good. He'd moved me? And changed my clothes? I was dressed only in one of his undershirts.
It was still dark outside, but I had no idea what time it might be; fall in Russia meant vanishing hours of light.
I could tell we were stationary. Maybe Sevastyan had come down here to rest.
To grieve.
Boom. Boom. What was that hammering sound? I rose to investigate. As I made my way toward the source, I wondered how it would be with Sevastyan and me today. Would he expect us to abide by Paxan's dying wishes?