7
Manya
Dmitry’s face was like the serrated edge of a knife, sharp and jagged in all of its plains and angles as we pulled up to the dot on the GPS map. The way that his expression had closed up as he drove had forced me into a silence that not even his father’s caustic remarks could pull me from. No one was questioning things any longer, no one discussing the impossibility of it being Shura who had betrayed them.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to angrily remind Dmitry that it had been Shura who had driven around with me for hours looking for him when he had gone missing, that it had been Shura who had helped patch him up after he had nearly been killed, and Shura who had shown up to check on him who knew how many times since I’d moved in.
I did not have to have known Dmitry and Shura their whole lives to know that the bond between them was something nearing sacred. It went beyond Bratva, beyond their families, and beyond whatever the hell was going on here.
Shura was a piece of Dmitry’s humanity that I was far from okay with him carving from himself. I had seen what happened in this life when it was all that a person had. It was not an eventuality I wanted for my husband.
Not that anyone was asking me.
Dmitry parked the vehicle, turning to face me as he usually did before telling me to stay put, but I didn’t give him time. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what his direction would be. It was why I all but hauled my door open, sliding the rest of the way across the backseat and out of the vehicle without so much as an ‘I’m coming with you’ beforehand.
He meant to kill Shura and I meant to stop him.
The doors from the front of the vehicle opened as I pulled Dmitry’s shirt down over the curve of my ass, trying like hell to pretend that I wasn’t standing out in the open in only a baggy shirt and some dried lace panties.
“Tigrenok,” Dmitry warned from the driver’s side. His blue eyes flashed, the alarm within them clear, but I was not given time to answer back.
“Dmitry!” Shura’s hulking frame was striding out of the large house we had stopped at, the door left ajar behind him.
I could see Dmitry’s indecision, plain as day, on his face in front of me. His hand hovered around his hip where I knew him to be keeping his gun. As Shura approached, I knew only I could see the pain shattering inside of the green flecks of his eyes.
His hand twitched, his jaw setting and the muscle in the corner of it flexing so hard, but his hand fell from his hip, his shoulders sagging, and I knew that he had lost the nerve he thought he had worked up in the car to end his best friend’s life.
“Dmitry,” Papa Koalistia warned from the other side of the car.
I turned, fury igniting my tongue that he could be so cruel to disapprove of his son’s choice. Facing the old man though, I realized it wasn’t Shura that Papa Koalistia was staring at, rather a convoy of vehicles coming our way.
Four large SUVs with tinted windows were barreling down the drive, picking up speed with every inch they drove. They were nondescript in every aspect but their tires, which were larger than normal, and I could barely make out the make of the vehicle before I was being jerked back by the arm.
“How in the hell,” Dmitry growled in my ear, his fingers like a vice grip around my arm before he all but threw me in the direction of the front door. “Get inside!” he yelled, spinning around to face Shura once more. Shura wasn’t paying attention to the war across Dmitry’s features though, instead racing towards Papa Koalistia.
He grabbed the older man, all but hauling him off of his feet and hefting him in the same direction I was headed.
Whatever question there might have been to Shura’s loyalty was sealed as gunfire sprayed from the encroaching vehicles and he spun his large body to shield Papa Koalistia. He forced me forward as well, our line disorderly as we avoided the bullets being aimed at us. It was like a haphazard comedy, all of us tripping over our feet as we rushed into the safe house that we hadn’t so much as taken a half look at yet.
“How in thefuckdo they keep finding us?” Dmitry yelled out as the front door slammed behind us, echoing off the walls and carrying throughout the nearly empty entryway and living room.
Shura didn’t let us stop there though. He shoved a meaty palm into the small of my back, forcing me to stumble forward again until we had several walls between us and the outside world.
“You checked car for bugs, da?” Shura breathed, setting Papa Koalistia down on the couch. “And phone they gave you?”
“I checked everything,” Dmitry growled, his hand grabbing my shoulder and his eyes running over my frame as if to check for any injury or problem. “Didyoucheck the house as you promised?” he snapped, his eyes narrowing.
An unrestrained tension vibrated between the two of them, until the sound of squealing tires outside sounded through the silence.
A shrill ring broke out even over that. Their eyes, like mine, flashed to the source of the noise, narrowing as Papa Koalistia withdrew a cell phone from his pocket.
“You had a phone?” Dmitry hissed, his voice dangerous in its near silence.
“Of course, I had my phone,” replied Papa Koalistia, waving his hand as if to dismiss the condemnation there. “Even in safe house, I still needed rule. I am Pakhan.”
I could feel Dmitry’s rage practically pulsating in the already tense air. Suddenly everything outside seemed to be relegated to a mere distraction, the conflict that the two men were locked into now taking center stage, forcing even Shura to take a step back. Both men began speaking over the other in furious Russian, their voices getting louder until Dmitry snatched the phone from his father.