Torrid (Sordid 2)

I pulled the trigger again—

It wouldn’t budge.

I squeezed, but there was no give and no sound from the weapon. I stared at my extended hand, confused. The safety couldn’t be off. I’d just fired twice.

Gunfire erupted outside, and movement dueled for attention. Vasilije closed in on me, and my father was getting up off the ground. There was something in his hand. Something metallic, and sharp.

Where the fuck had he gotten a knife?

Vasilije wrenched the gun from my hand. He slammed his palm against the base of the magazine, and racked the slide in a fluid movement, clearing the jam, and although he was fast, by the time he turned and fired, the knife sliced at his neck.

40

After the gunshot, something heavy fell to the floor, but I couldn’t see anything beyond Vasilije, or the way he brought his hand up to his neck. Dark red blood slipped between his fingers.

“Nyet!” I screamed.

Or maybe it had been in English. I couldn’t think in a specific language at that point. I threw my hands up around his, squeezing with all the life in my body.

“Calm down,” he said, his tone pained. “I’m all right.” Only his face said otherwise, and he was bleeding like a sieve. I risked a quick glance away to see my father had a disgusting red hole in the side of his face. His glassy eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

Vasilije said he was okay, but I didn’t believe him, and when I took one hand off his, my palm was wet with blood. He slung an arm around my shoulders, keeping us together as I urged us out of the office, grabbed his gun off the table, and hurried toward the front door.

A booming sound came from above, and wood splinted right behind us. I jerked and yanked on Vasilije, pulling him faster than his sluggish legs could keep up. My stepmother was apparently a terrible shot, but we wouldn’t be as lucky with the next one.

I threw open the front door and ran straight into Filip’s chest. It took him a nanosecond to survey the situation, and Vasilije was pulled from my arms. We moved as a blur through the snow, shuffling to the already-running Lexus. I nearly tripped over the body of one of my father’s men. His blood stained the pristine snow in the front yard.

All three of us were squished in the back seat when the SUV launched forward.

It was chaos in the back seat as the vehicle careened through the icy streets, speeding toward the front gate and barreling through it.

“Keep pressure on it,” Filip ordered, although I wasn’t sure which one of us he was talking to. I clamped both of my hands down on top of Vasilije’s fingers. “Anyone following?”

“No,” John answered. The back end fishtailed on the entrance ramp to the expressway and made me queasy.

Filip got out his phone, and when I heard Amit’s name, I knew we weren’t going to a hospital. “I don’t think it’s an artery,” he said to whoever he was talking to, “but he’s losing a lot of blood.”

Every mile in the car, Vasilije turned a lighter shade of gray. His hand beneath mine began to go slack and his eyes dulled. I could tell he wasn’t all there, and it scared the shit out of me.

His head lolled toward me and I had to shift my grip on him. “Aren’t you happy?” he said slowly. “You did it. Why don’t you look happy?”

Because I was worried he was dying, and it was so un—fucking—fair, I wanted to scream. I was a bad person, but I’d only killed other bad people, so wasn’t I allowed to have this evil boy just a little longer?

He wasn’t coldblooded after all. It poured through my fingers, boiling hot. “I will be a lot happier when you’re not ruining the really expensive clothes you bought me.” I tried to sound strong, but wasn’t successful.

His blood was all over the back seat. At one point, John took a turn so hard I had to put a hand on the ceiling to brace myself, leaving a smeary mess. I expected Vasilije to groan about the resale value, but his eyes fluttered closed, and it sent my heartrate into overdrive.

“Vasilije!” I cried. “Don’t you dare leave me!”

The car pulled in, the top barely clearing the garage door as it rolled up, and as soon as we jerked to a stop and John disengaged the locks, Luka was there, yanking the back door open.

“How long has he been unconscious?” Addison asked.

“He’s been in and out the last few minutes,” I rushed out.

I was pushed out of the way as she took over and the men carried Vasilije inside, moving as a team toward the dining room, and he was set down on the long table.