Claim

37

Kira clambered behind the safety of the bar and scooted to the back to give herself cover.

She released the safety on the gun in her hand — her father had shown her how — and pointed it at the opening of the bar as she scanned the area for the man who’d been coming for her.

Her hand was shaking, and she forced herself to take deep breaths. She could do this. She’d never shot a man before, but she’d been surrounded by violence her whole life.

She was her father’s daughter.

She was Kira Antonov, the Lion’s wife.

She would kill anyone who tried to kill her and her baby, would kill anyone who tried to hurt the ones she loved.

She was beginning to think her pursuer wasn’t coming when a blond head appeared at the end of the bar. The man was dressed in black, and she registered the Kevlar vest that would prevent a bullet from penetrating his chest.

He grinned at her as he raised his weapon. “C?´??.”

She registered the Russian word for bitch as she aimed at his head and pulled the trigger.

* * *

“Forward!” Lyon shouted at the men, waving them on.

They had to keep Vadim’s men from reaching the house that shielded the women and children. The Lake Forest property was massive, isolated. There was no telling how long it would take the police to reach them, an eventuality that wasn’t desirable anyway given the nature of the conflict.

“Not one of these men gets through this line!” he shouted at the men.

They looked momentarily confused by the order, by Lyon’s movement forward, as if they’d expected him to fall back, to allow them to protect him.

When they realized he intended to fight with them, a roar went up from their ranks, and Lyon saw their expressions grow hard as they turned again toward Vadim’s men, now only yards away on the massive lawn between the woods and the house.

A series of gunfire bursts split the air and some of the men were drawn into hand-to-hand fighting as weapons were knocked to the ground. Alek had tackled one of Vadim’s men and was positioning his weapon at the man’s temple when Lyon spotted another man behind his friend, his weapon raised.

Lyon fired and watched him drop as Alek fired into the other man’s head.

A few feet away, Stefan was struggling with a man nearly twice his size who seemed to take pleasure in using him as a punching bag. Lyon started toward him but was beaten by Alek, rushing toward them with his gun drawn.

The shooting had accelerated all around him, the lawn turned into a war zone. Lyon made a quick scan of the remaining men — his own and Vadim’s — and spotted a massive figure barreling toward him.

The man moved quickly in spite of his size, his face marked by a scar that ran diagonally across his face from left temple to right cheek. Lyon raised his weapon to fire into the man’s head, but the man was too fast, slamming into Lyon with the full weight of his body.

Then Lyon was down, his gun gone from his hand, the mountain of a man on top of him, punching his face with fists that felt like meat tenderizers.

It took Lyon a second to get his bearings. When he did, he recognized the futility of fighting back from his position under the other man. He couldn’t fight, he didn’t have a weapon, and it was only a matter of time before the hunk of meat on top of him slugged him into unconsciousness.

He had to move fast.

He waited for the split second between the man’s last punch and his next and used his legs to flip their positions.

The man looked up at him now, obviously surprised by the turn of events that had resulted in him being pinned to the ground. Lyon used the time to flip the man onto his stomach, further disorienting him. Then he straddled the man’s back and held the man’s head in his hands, twisting hard and fast.

He heard the snap of the man’s neck breaking, felt his body go limp.

He felt a split second of victory before his feet were pulled behind him.

He fell onto his stomach as someone dragged him off the man’s body. It all happened so fast, he barely had time to register what was happening: the zip ties around his ankles, around his wrists behind his back, a quick slap of tape over his mouth.

And then, the worst thing of all, darkness.

Only one thing came to him then.

Kira. Her name. Her face.

He felt himself lifted into the air and knew they were taking him away from her.

* * *