Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 52062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 260(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52062 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 260(@200wpm)___ 208(@250wpm)___ 174(@300wpm)
I help her slide off the bed and onto the floor, then watch her disappear into the darkness beneath the frame. The gun gleams dully in her trembling hands and the sight kills me. My solnyshko, terrified in the dark. My heart cracks, but my rage quickly follows. Because I will rain down fire and brimstone on anyone who comes after her.
I cross to the dresser by the door and reach behind it to find the handgun right where I stashed it. It’s fully loaded with a silencer twisted into the barrel.
I move through the bedroom door and peer into the hallway. The darkness here is thicker, the moonlight not reaching this deep into the lodge. But I know every inch of this place. Every shadow. Every hiding spot.
Another sound. More movement. A confirmation that my men outside are dead. Because there is no way the intruders would make it past them if they weren’t.
But it doesn’t explain why the security alarm wasn’t triggered. Unless they forced one of my men to disarm it before they shot him.
I slip through the bedroom door.
The hallway stretches toward the main staircase in a river of black. I move along the wall, my shoulder brushing the stone walls, my breathing controlled. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Slow and steady. Because there is more at stake here than I could ever have thought when I came up with this plan months ago.
At the top of the stairs, I stop and listen.
I hear movement below. More than one set of footsteps, trying to coordinate their approach.
I descend one step. Two. My bare feet make no sound on the thick carpet. Below, the great room opens up, the Christmas tree we decorated together standing sentinel by the windows, its lights glowing in the dark.
A shadow moves at the base of the stairs.
Dressed in black, he moves with trained precision. But he's looking the wrong direction.
I raise my gun and put two bullets in him, the sound suppressed by the muzzle. He manages to get two rounds off and the shots crack through the silence like thunder. But he misses. And it’s too late. He’s dead before he hits the floor.
I reach the bottom of the stairs, step over the body and keep moving. The kitchen doorway looms ahead, a rectangle of deeper shadow.
Somewhere else in the house, I hear movement. A rush of feet.
He comes around the corner fast, already firing his weapon.
I feel the bullet kiss the air beside my ear. But I manage to get off three shots and all three hit his center mass. He stumbles, hits the kitchen island, then slides down.
I'm on him in three steps and drive my knee into his chest, pinning him to the cold tile floor. Blood bubbles from his lips, his eyes already going glassy, but there's still defiance there.
"How many of you are there?" I demand.
He laughs or tries to. It comes out as a wet gurgle. "Fuck you."
I press my knee in deeper. "No, fuck you."
His lips peel back from bloody teeth. "You really think..." He coughs, crimson spraying across his chin. "You really think you were going to have a merry Christmas with her?"
Him even referring to Holly makes me see red and I jam my gun into his temple.
"How many of you?" I demand.
He's laughing again but the sound dissolves into a death rattle, and then he's gone, his eyes fixed on some point past my shoulder.
But I'm already moving. Running through the lodge.
Because Holly is all alone in the bedroom.
28
HOLLY
The floor beneath me is cold.
It’s numbing my skin, but I don't dare move. Don't dare breathe. I lie on my stomach with Nikolai's gun clutched in both hands, my elbows pressed into the carpet, my eyes fixed on the sliver of moonlit room I can see beyond the edge of the bed.
Two gunshots cracked through the silence a few minutes ago.
Then another a short moment later.
Then nothing.
The silence is somehow worse than the gunfire. At least when the shots rang out, I knew Nikolai was fighting. Now I don't know anything. I don't know if he's alive. I don't know if he's hurt. I don't know if the men who came for us are dead, or if they're on their way up the stairs right now.
I don't know if I'm about to die.
My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my throat. In my temples. Behind my eyes.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be okay.
I think of my parents.
The memory comes rushing forth, sharp and clear despite the terror clouding my mind. I'm ten years old, standing at a shooting range in Connecticut, my father's hands adjusting my grip on a handgun.
"Again," he said. "Until it feels like an extension of your arm."
I hated it. Hated the noise and the recoil and the way my ears rang even with the protective gear. I couldn't understand why my quiet, art-loving parents insisted I learn to shoot. Why they made me take self-defense classes every Saturday morning when I wanted to be with my friends.