I pull my scarf over my mouth and nose, snap the canister open, and roll it in.
I slam the door and bolt it.
There’s no time to wait to see what happens. I start down the hall.
I unbolt the door of Natasha’s room just as the shots start. Natasha is one of the most capable of the women here. “There’s a black SUV and an idling van outside,” I tell her in Russian. “We free them and send them out. Don’t wait for me if there’s trouble.”
“What’s the shooting?”
“The shooter’s with me. We locked the guards in the break room.”
She gets going. Next I free Mavis, the most bossy of the women. I give her the same speech and lead her to the back, propping the door open. “Two vehicles. Fifteen in each. You figure it out with Natasha.”
She nods.
I go back in. There’s a faint smell from the gas, but not so bad with the front and back doors open. My old brothel mates are surprised to see me, frightened of the shooting, but everybody’s orderly. Ten minutes it takes. A quick operation.
The first van rolls off, then the second. The women are out just like that. Easy.
Or so I think.
Not all of the guards were in the staff room, as it turns out.
I didn’t know that.
I go back in and hear something in the TV room. I think maybe a woman is hiding there, and I go in.
That’s when they ambush me.
I take two without killing—both knocked out against the refrigerator. This is the beauty of the nun’s outfit—the element of surprise.
When they stop treating me as a nun, I pull out my weapons, one in each hand.
By the end, I hold two men at gunpoint. And they hold me.
A double Mexican standoff. One of Viktor’s and my worst nightmares. There was no good solution for such a situation. No Rubik’s Cube way out.
Only crazy ideas.
And I haven’t yet called the police, told them all these culprits are locked in a room. I should’ve done it.
Shots from the front of the building. Nikki. How are the guards in there still awake? But I have worse problems here in the TV room.
The rules of a double Mexican standoff are obvious, but it never hurts to state them. I want the guards to understand this situation as I do. “If you so much as move, I pull both triggers,” I say. “If you shoot, I pull both triggers. If one of you drops, I pull both triggers.”
All bluffs, of course.
“Open your hands and we won’t hurt you,” the guard with freckles says. He’s on my left.
“If I open my hands, I’m dead,” I say. “So then, why not take both of you with me?”
No good solution. We all know this.
I take a deep breath.
I’m shaking deep inside, but I know how to conceal it. So much information pouring back into my head. Banishing the peace I once felt.
“If you open your hands and drop your guns, I’ll let you live,” I say.
“Fuck that,” the other one says.
They don’t believe me. They look at me, and they see a killer. They would’ve been right once. Did they not see my refusal to kill? I hurt a few men. I did not kill.
Viktor is wrong about many things. But he’s right about one thing: This takeover couldn’t be accomplished without bloodshed. I wouldn’t be in this standoff if I’d killed carelessly and easily, as the old Tanechka would have.
All of the possible moves and outcomes run through my mind. Most end with Nikki and me dying. A few end with just me dying.
That’s the option I choose. I call out to Nikki. “Get out, Nikki!”
The two men watch me warily.
Nikki’s voice: “I’m good where I am.”
“Nikki!” But the argument takes precious attention.
I need her to go. At this point, not much changes if all of the guards get out. I’ll still have a standoff with all the guards. Me against all the guards.
Two is only a little bit better than that.
There was a time, back when Viktor and I were so wild and free, that we would’ve felt excited by such a thing.
The standoff goes on.
I stare straight ahead, keeping them both in my sight with what peripheral vision I have. Monitoring people on either side of you is part concentration and part relaxation.
More shots. I calculate the shots she has left across the three weapons I left her with. Not so many.
At one point the guards look at one another.
They could coordinate. I don’t have the sense that they’ve worked together long, but they could find a way. They’re in a far better position than I am. Do they understand that?
Viktor and I used to spend hours dissecting scenarios like this. We always assumed everybody did, until we learned otherwise—that we were nerds about it, as the Americans might say.
I remember everything now.
I remember everything I knew as Tanechka and everything I knew as a novice nun. I contain all of it.
I’m stronger for it. I might die because of it, but I wouldn’t trade it.
Another gunshot rings out from the break room. Nikki. Holding them in. She doesn’t understand that she won’t survive this if she stays. She can’t see ahead the way Viktor and I can. Viktor and I trained ourselves to think ahead about all of those Rubik’s Cube moves. Every move affects another, unseen and seen.
A double Mexican standoff like this was the worst. Neither of us had ever been in one, but we’d heard of them.
And now here I am.
We’d heard of one in Vladivostok that lasted hours. It ended from muscle failure. The older fighter couldn’t hold his weapon up any longer. Standing here with my arms out to either side, all the tension and adrenaline pumping through me, I can see how that would happen.
Viktor and I decided that you could never win such a standoff alone. You could only win such a standoff with an external helper, and that helper would die. “The replacement move,” we called it.
I think of the diagrams we used to scribble.
There was such beauty in what we had. I remember every kiss. I remember everything we dreamed. I remember that picnic in Gorky Park. I remember Red Square and my Taylor Swift outfit. I remember his face as he choked down the sweet Manhattan. I remember walking around Moscow with no money in our jacket pockets. I remember the pink champagne and being bloody together and being happy together.
And I remember his eyes the day he threw me over the cliff. Like my own heart, cast from my body.
And I remember the peace I felt when I didn’t remember it.
I sigh, clearing my mind. Alone in a double Mexican. I wish Viktor could see, so he would know, considering this was such a topic of interest for us. Look at me, you kozel, I’d joke. I’m going to die in a double Mexican standoff. So much more glorious than your gorge. Your paltry Daliani Gorge.
I smile.
“What?” one of the guards says.
I laugh. “My nines weigh half what your .357s weigh. One of you will tire first. One will move. One jerk and we go. We do this.”
A creak from the back door. It could be another guard, but I don’t think so.
I stare straight ahead, watching both of them and neither of them. My pulse races.
He’s come.
I always feel him. Everything in the world shifts. Gravity itself seems to shift.
Viktor.
Another creak. My heart pounds as he nears.
He appears at the door, eyes burning into mine. Instantly, he sees all. He smiles, Glocks in both his hands. “Imagine this, lisichka.”
“Put them down, on the floor!” the one on my right yells. He’s agitated, and an agitated man will sometimes shoot when he doesn’t mean to.
Viktor puts his hands up, still holding the guns. He addresses me in Russian. “One solution.”
I widen my eyes when I realize what he’s proposing. “Nyet,” I whisper.
“What did he say?” one of the guards
asks. “No Russian.”
“The replacement move. We’ve thought this through,” Viktor continues in Russian.
“This is my operation,” I say. “My operation, my decision. Go find Nikki and take her away.”
“Are you crazy? We’ll finally see if it works.”
My blood races. As the fourth person, he would dive at me and replace me. We worked it out precisely. It’s true.
There are certain mechanical eye-hand principles you understand when you are us.
One of them is how to draw men’s hands this way and that. The motion of the one who dives in draws the gunfire away from the center person. It’s the diver who gets the bullets.
In one of our imaginings, the external helper wore a vest and helmet. A suit of armor. Viktor, of course, wears neither of these.
Another more advanced idea was that he, as diver, could fly at me, spinning in the air, shooting. The three of them would shoot each other. He takes the bullets, shoots the bullets as he flattens me to the ground, protecting me with his body. Or vice versa, if I were the diver.
In Russian, he says. “You don’t have a choice. I’m the diver. I’m going to replace you with myself. Go back and find your peace, your Jesus.”
“Viktor.”
“I tried to kill you. This is right. It couldn’t be better.”
I look at him—really look at him. I look at him with my whole heart, feeling my love for him.
My love for him is sweet and bright. In a flash, I feel something beautiful come over me—forgiveness.
I forgive him. Jesus has taught me how to have a big heart, big enough to forgive.
I couldn’t have forgiven him before—the old Tanechka couldn’t have forgiven him. Oh, I used to hold such terrible grudges!
But Jesus showed me his shining face. He showed me he loved me and made my heart big enough for this. He made my heart whole enough.
“Ya tebe proshchayu, Viktor.”
He looks stunned. His whisper is hoarse—“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”
“Of course you deserve it. I love you.”
He looks stunned. Uncomprehending. “I am a killer. What about Jesus?”
“I have room for both Jesus and you.”
“Jesus is just fairy tales to me.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’ll shoot if you say one more word in Russian!” the older guard says. An empty threat. The guard won’t shoot unless he has to.
“You forgive me?”
“Yes, pryanichek!” Gingerbread man, it means. A name I used to call him when he was being a baby.
“I tried to kill you!”
I smile. “Yeah, you really fucked it up.”
He blinks, speaks in a voice so soft. “I love you so much. But look where we are. We can’t have all things now.”
“No.”
“Remember how we visualized it? Like the Olympic team, we visualized this over and over. Remember?”
I shake my head. “Don’t do it.”
“Don’t you see what a gift it is? I threw you off the cliff,” he says. “I didn’t believe in our love, and I killed you. You remember how you clung to me?”
“But I forgive you, Viktor.”
“Do you know how that feels? To have your forgiveness? To take your place? I am complete now.”
“Save Nikki and let me handle this. Respect my choices for once,” I growl in Russian.
“I am respecting your choices. I didn’t have faith in you before, but I do now. Having faith in you means supporting you in all that you choose for yourself, even your Jesus.”
I shake my head, fighting the tears.
“We used to wonder whether the two might even shoot each other,” he says. “Remember?”
“Fantasies.”
“Lisichka—”
I begin to laugh. “We’re arguing over who dies. We promised never to do that, pryanichek.”
He smiles. “You said, ‘Shoot me if we ever argue about who dies in a standoff.’ And then I said, ‘No, shoot me if we argue about who dies in a standoff.’”
In Russian, I say, “You’re going to make me cry and destroy my peripheral vision, you jerk.”
“Tell Kiro I love him, and that I wish I could have met him, and tell Aleksio I love him. He always says we Russians are so fucking dramatic. What would he say about this?”
“Viktor.”
His face goes serious. “I never stopped loving you.”
“Ya tebya lyublyu,” I tell him. “I love you.” There’s a lump in my throat. I have him back, and now he’s going to do this.
He doesn’t telegraph—he flies at me.
It’s as if he comes in slow motion.
I see everything. His beautiful boxy face with his big jaw, clenched and determined. The sweet little dimple. The twist of his shoulders as he begins the spin, midair. Arms out. I see the flash of the gun barrels as they reflect the ceiling light. The blast.
The weight of him knocks the air from me. I go boneless, arms out. I feel the bullets hit him, feel the violent impact of them on his big body before we hit the floor.
Everything goes quiet.
Except for Viktor, a great weight on my chest, breath labored.
“Viktor!” I ease out from under him. My chest is wet with blood—his blood. Blood on my hands. Blood everywhere. The two guards are down. Everyone’s down.
I kneel over him. He looks up at me hazily.
“Pryanichek.” I rip apart his shirt.
There’s a big hole in his chest. Too big. Too big for his heart. Too big for life.
I press a hand to his chest. “Don’t you die on me, Viktor!” Maybe it’s his heart. Maybe not.
“You love me still,” he whispers. “You forgave me.”
Shots. “Nikki!” I call.
He’s losing so much blood. “I forgive you, yes, but only if you fight. Only if you stay alive.” I adjust my hand on his chest. I press a hand to his cheek, keep contact with his gaze. He’s sweating. But his skin is cold.
He still sees me, though. It’s good—when they don’t die immediately, there’s hope.
Nikki arrives. “Fuck.” I hear her call 911.
Viktor needs help sooner.
“Can you walk? Do we move you or wait? What happens if we help you to the car?”
Sometimes you can ask the wounded such things. Sometimes when life is on the line, they get such clarity.
“Yes. Let’s try.”
Nikki and I pull him up and get him down the hall. It’s slow, and his breathing doesn’t sound right. A collapsed lung.
We get out of the building, down two steps that didn’t seem so bad before. I spot Viktor’s car. “There. The Navigator.”
“Keys, right pocket,” he gasps.
Nikki grabs them and opens the back door for us. Viktor stumbles in and flops sideways, taking the whole seat. I wedge myself into the little space between the back seat and the back of the front seat, crouching between. I press my hand to his chest. “You think you can take the whole seat?” I joke.
Viktor groans as the car peels out. Nikki drives like hell to the hospital.
“Will he make it?” she says, screaming around a corner.
“He better. He owes me,” I say.
He stares up at me. Anguish in his eyes. He wants to apologize again.
“Shhh,” I say. “They shot each other like we imagined. Can you believe it?”
Soon enough, his eyes start getting unfocused. He tries to help me press his chest.
“I have you,” I say.
I press his chest like it’s my own heart.
Because it is.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Viktor
She’s there like an angel, holding my hand. Everything around her is bright and hazy. I think she is an angel.
I try to smile, but tubes going out of my mouth stop me. I lift my arms to take them out, but she has my wrists. “Be still, pryanichek.”
She calls out to Ale
ksio. He’s here?
I try to say her name, but my mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.
“Shh. You’re going to be okay.”
I’m alive? How can it be?
But I am.
I’m alive, and she’s sitting at my bedside. She drizzles a bit of water into my mouth. I swallow it down. I search her beautiful face. She drizzles some more.
“You forgave me,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
I try to sit up, but the pain twists through me.
“Stop it. The doctor says you’ll have to stay in bed for two weeks straight, and already you’re trying to leave. Once we move you out of here, maybe I’ll chain you to the wall by your ankle. What do you think? A nice ankle cuff?”
“I should’ve let you go. You wanted so badly to go.”
“I did, yes,” she says.
“You need to go. The convent is your heart’s desire.”
“It’s okay.” She strokes a hand over my forehead. “The best parts I carry with me.”
She won’t go back?
“I want to go back,” she says, reading my face. “But I want to go back with you. To bring you, to show you. Maybe after we all find Kiro?”
After we all find Kiro.
I don’t know if the tightness in my chest is from the bullet ravaging me or from Tanechka forgiving me. Joining us.
She leans down to kiss my cheek. Figures loom behind her. I squint as Aleksio comes into view.
“The bullet just missed your heart.” He kneels at my side. “You scared us.”
Yuri’s there, arm in a sling. “They shot each other. You and Tanechka are officially insane.”
My laugh feels like it rips my chest open.
“Stop,” Tanechka say softly.
My awareness expands out, and my mind clicks back online. Armed men stand around the edges of the room. I remember the war. We’re in a hospital, but it’s not safe here. A doctor muscles through.
“Kiro,” I try to say.
“We’ll find him, don’t worry. We’re on it. The Dragusha brothers will be together. Even you can’t fuck that up with your insane choreography. Have I ever told you fucking Russians are way too fucking dramatic?”
Wicked Mafia Prince: A dark mafia romance (Dangerous Royals Book 2) Page 21
