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 windshield, 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.
Half of Sevastyan's upper body was wrenched back, as if he'd been punched in the shoulder.
Not punched. Shot.
Lightning struck 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 launched 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 glaring 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?
At length, Sevastyan said, "It's just a graze. 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."
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.