Ultimate Vengeance (Wanted Men Book 4)

by Nancy Haviland

  “Will Yuri do a full check-up?” Sacha asked as she played catch-the-soother with Lekzi.

  “He said there is no need for more blood work, but he’ll do everything else. If something worries him, he’ll send us back to Dr. Uvich.” At Yuri’s insistence, they’d visited a specialist the day after Lekzi had been poisoned, and a pediatrician the day after that just to be sure no one had missed any possible side effects.

  Sacha paused and looked over her shoulder. “The last time he checked her, she became fussy. I should grab some fruit to occupy her.”

  Alek nodded and changed direction, leading them to the kitchen.

  No sooner had they passed Anton when the spectacularly loud boom of an explosion came from behind them. The noise was deafening, the force of it propelling Alek into Sacha’s back and Grigori into his. They went with it and kept going with Alek snatching the baby and dragging Sacha at a dead run toward the stairs at the end of the corridor. Through the ringing in his ears, he could hear debris raining down behind them.

  “Grigori?”

  “Panic room, I know.” The byki shoved at Alek’s back to get him moving faster.

  Alek took the rest of the steps two at a time and in seconds was all but throwing Sacha into a huge room hidden in the corner of the basement that no one and nothing was getting into. It was reinforced to the tits and had enough supplies to keep alive any inhabitants for at least a month.

  “What the fuck happened?” Yuri demanded as he came skidding in from the direction of the other set of stairs. He was still dressed in surgical scrubs from a trip into the city early this morning.

  “Sergei is here,” Alek said. “It has to be him. You two don’t leave my fucking family. Promise me, right now!”

  “Alekzander.” Sacha was shaking her head, looking petrified as he handed Lekzi over. “You can’t go back up there.”

  “My uncle is up there, Sacha.” The second Grigori and Yuri gave him their word he was heading for the steel door. Without focusing on what he was leaving behind, he pointed to the screens. “Turn the cameras on, Grigori, and let only those we trust inside.”

  He slammed the heavy door and burned through the open concept basement that was one-part living space one-part laboratory. By the time he heard the sound of gunshots, his girls were safely tucked away in the back of his mind, and getting to Vasily was his only thought. With a focus he’d never before had to utilize, he got himself up the stairs they’d just come down. He didn’t go out that door but locked it and raced through the basement and up the other stairs to come out in the waiting area outside the infirmary. He traveled the corridor, heading for the foyer, and kept his ears, which had thankfully stopped ringing, peeled for all those little sounds one knew to listen for in their own homes. Sounds which alerted him to the presence of men walking or opening doors. There was a lot of cursing, sporadic firing, and footsteps crunching over debris.

  He pulled the trigger for the first time when he came face-to-face with a stranger who simply walked out of the game room, gun at his side. Alek’s bullet entered dead center in the man’s throat. He’d never seen him before so he was an enemy. He took the guy’s Glock and kept going. He could hear shit happening in the kitchen. Four shots went off. Fuck. Where was Anton?

  He inched along, needing to get to the foyer where he’d have the best view of what the fuck Sergei had brought with him. Where the hell had he found the men to wield this firepower? Hired hands? Or were they his cousin’s new friends from the Baikov Bratva?

  Didn’t matter. None of it did. The main question now; where the fuck was his uncle?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Sacha stood in the silent room, holding tight to her daughter, and watched what seemed like an action movie play out on the two large screens above her, Grigori, and Yuri. When she’d seen Alekzander in the corridor coming from the back of the house, heading directly for the man leaving the game room, she’d nearly screamed. Watching her Russian calmly shoot first had been a beautiful thing.

  But now, the screen had switched to a view of the kitchen to show Anton behind the island. While Yuri cursed and tapped into a keyboard to stop the feed from jumping from camera to camera, she saw a man burst through the back door with two others. Anton’s gun was ready where he was partially hidden from sight, and each man fell. The last one managed to shoot once, but Anton wasn’t hit. Though, if the little burst of dust that plumed from the counter next to his head was any indication, it had come close. He was up and heading toward the front of the house in the next second.

  The screen once more switched to a view of what had once been the foyer. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, looking at the hole where the front door had been. Broken glass and jagged chunks of wood littered the floor.

  “You should not be watching this. Take the baby and sit.”

  She didn’t even respond to Grigori. Not after she noticed the bodies. Four of them. Two by the entrance to the living room where Vasily’s men had been, one to the side of the hole in the wall, and another one. She went cold as she looked at the man laying motionless at the mouth of the hallway Alekzander had been traveling. He was wearing black slacks and a black shirt…

  “No, no, no…not him. Please. Oh, my God.” He couldn’t be gone. “No. Do not do this to me.” She hugged Lekzi closer. “To her. You cannot take him from us,” she whispered.

  Just above the body, a head poked out from around the wall almost too fast to see, but Sacha would know that too-long shock of dark blond hair anywhere. Relief was a sob that got stuck in her throat. She dashed at the stupid tears that immediately blurred her vision so she could see that exact place on the wall get shot to bits. Obviously, someone had been waiting. Alekzander’s arm popped out, lower this time, and two small flashes came from his gun. When he stuck his head out again, nothing came at him. It was evident he was shouting. Calling for his uncle, she knew without having to hear him.

  “Where the fuck is Vasily?” Yuri growled.

  “He was in his office with Dmitri,” she managed to supply as a view of the driveway came onto the other screen. There were three black SUVs parked at odd angles at the foot of the stairs. Just before the scene changed again to show the kitchen, Sacha saw Sergei jump to the ground from the rear of one of the trucks.

  She cried out in alarm when she saw who he roughly dragged out behind him.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Still stuck on the second floor, Vasily met Dmitri’s eye and pointed at him then the ground. He then pointed at himself then the ceiling. He put up three fingers and counted down.

  They silently stepped out of Alek’s bedroom, and even though it went against everything in them, they pulled the trigger to take out the two men they’d sent toward Vasily’s office by tossing a vase down the hall a few seconds ago. The thud of it hitting the floor and rolling into the wall had been enough to draw attention.

  Before they could even lower their weapons, a third man popped out of what had become Grigori’s cubby and got one shot off before he was struck in the face by two bullets; one from Vasily’s gun, the other from Dmitri’s.

  “Fuck me,” Vasily muttered when he saw a hole in the shoulder of Dmitri’s shirt.

  “Skimmed me,” Dmitri whispered as he rolled his arm in a circle to prove the bullet hadn’t entered him.

  “Wasn’t expecting him.”

  “Foolish of us.”

  “Very foolish. Alekzander!” Vasily shouted, answering his nephew’s calls now that he wasn’t worried about drawing immediate attention.

  “Fuck sakes! It’s about time!” Alek shouted, obviously perturbed. “Anyone else up there?”

  “Just me and Dmitri.” He moved down the hall. “What about down there?” Before they’d ducked for cover, they’d taken out four others. Hopefully, there weren’t any more.

  The response that came to his inquiry had him freezing mid-step.

  Debris crunched underfoot, and then, “I’m down here, Dyadya! You interested in a meet and greet with the man who cr
ippled the organization that killed my family?”

  Sergei Pivchenko.

  When Vasily heard Alek make a pained sound, his heart almost shattered. “Alek?” He was nearly choked to death when Dmitri grabbed him by the scruff and jerked him back when he would have flown down the stairs to save the boy he’d once secretly smuggled a cap gun past his older brother for. Vasily had waved an Atari game in front of Evgeny’s face on his way by, but when he’d made it into the basement with nine-year-old Alek, he’d produced the small silver gun and a handful of paper cap rolls that they’d snapped until Evgeny had stomped down and confiscated. Vasily had pretended to cry as his brother yelled at him and Alek had laughed as only a nine-year-old could.

  “Stay there,” Alek called, his voice tortured. “Aw, Jesus Christ, Sergei. What the fuck happened to you? How could you do this?”

  “Dyadya! Come down here! Now! But behave or I will not introduce you to my new pet.” His voice went quiet but Vasily still heard, “What is your name again?”

  He met Dmitri’s eye and they both tipped their heads, but they were too far away to hear a response.

  “Yes, of course. How could I forget?” Sergei murmured, sounding sarcastic. He shouted up, “Does the name Yana Kurbatov ring a bell?”

  An image of his housekeeper hugging Sacha and kissing Lekzi goodbye filled Vasily’s head. He’d told her to take some time, and he would call her when he wanted her back. The worry that had marred Yana’s wrinkled brow had told Vasily she knew something was happening. And she should. Her brother was one of the family’s oldest members. He was still in Moscow, but Yana, because she was trustworthy and had grown up in their world, had been brought to the U. S. and had been proudly taking care of Vasily and his home for over fifteen years. Sergei knew her value.

  Vasily straightened and stepped out from around the wall with Dmitri two feet in front of him. Always.

  He thought nothing of his destroyed home but was glad he’d chosen to live so far off the beaten path. Hiring a private company to plow the road throughout the winter was well worth the privacy. Unless there had been hunters in the forest behind the house, today’s ruckus would remain their business.

  Alek was across the way, unharmed. A disheveled Sergei was in the opening that used to be the front door. He had Yana, a fifty-nine-year-old woman, on her knees, with a grenade duct-taped to her cheek. His pinkie was curled through the pin.

  “There you are, Uncle. The captain who keeps this ship afloat.”

  As they made level ground, Vasily ignored the cold air pouring into the house and looked into the vacant eyes of his sister’s son.

  “I had hoped for a more dramatic end to my time in the United States. I wanted your daughter to be here. I wanted his daughter to be here.” Sergei pointed at Alek, who wore a fierce frown as his gaze zipped from Vasily to Sergei to Yana…then back over his shoulder. It had better be Anton he was looking at. “Anyone with Tarasov blood running through their veins was supposed to be present,” Sergei continued. “But I have realized you are not about to let that happen so we will end this now.” He raised the hand that was down by his side and pointed a gun at Dmitri. “Stop moving toward me. I am not finished yet, and if you interrupt by making me shoot you, which will cause all sorts of panic, well, you will be dead and my moment will have been ruined. Chain your dog, Uncle. Tell him we will all be dead in a minute so there is no need for him to play hero.”

  Vasily tried to block out the bullshit and think. “Yana doesn’t belong here, Sergei. Be the man you once were and allow her to walk away.”

  Sergei shook his gun in a no-no motion as he lowered it again. “I’m afraid she is going to be more of that collateral damage that has been trailing behind me since this began.”

  “Is that what Kathryn was?” he said before he could stop himself.

  Sergei came a few steps closer, forcing Yana to scramble after him, neck extended. He paid her no attention as he scrutinized Vasily. “It kills you that she is gone, does it not? Does it?” he shouted.

  Vasily kept his feelings on the subject to himself by not answering. He got a careless shrug in reaction.

  “That is okay. I do not need to hear it. I see the difference in you since last summer. Oh,” he paused and turned back when he would have reclaimed his position center stage. “She was not collateral damage; she was a target. I lost what once brought me happiness, so I had my friends take what once brought the elusive emotion to you.”

  It was the malicious enjoyment in Sergei’s voice that got Vasily. That incomprehensible feeling of loss blazed through his veins, burning and destroying, forever reigniting the fury that had been born the day he’d lost Eva’s mother. Or what little he’d had left of her. Those special moments he’d looked so forward to, the ones where he’d watch her, unnoticed. The ones where he’d ache for her. The masochistic ones he’d gone back for month after month, year after year. Gone. Forever.

  “Your friends?” he questioned, hoping to keep Sergei in place until he could figure out how the fuck to get that grenade off Yana before the pin came out. If only she’d look this way so he could better see it’s position, but she was staring at Alek. Or rather, behind Alek.

  “Yes. You must know by now that I have become quite close with a few members of a rival Bratva. Boys? You might as well come out, so I do not appear so outnumbered.”

  Three men, including one Vasily recognized as his enemy’s eldest son, stepped out to flank Sergei.

  “You remember Artur Baikov, don’t you, Uncle?”

  It had been Baikov soldiers Sergei had brought in to commit Kathryn’s murder. Vasily had followed the ones responsible to Russia and had killed every one of them.

  Before he could answer Sergei by spitting in the face of that name he abhorred, Alek was speaking.

  “After seeing them, I suppose it’s only fair for us to show our hand.”

  Vasily frowned and looked over in time to see Maksim and Anton appear behind Alek while Gabriel and Quan entered the scene through the archway of the kitchen. Vasily would have bet the last chance he wasn’t sure they had that Micha and Jak were somewhere in the house. And even though he loved each one of them as a brother, he was not happy to see them. He glared at Gabriel. Where the fuck was Eva?

  “And so come the sheep,” Sergei mused, unconcerned. “I don’t know about these odds.” He patted Yana’s exposed cheek with the barrel of his gun. “How are you doing, Yana? I imagine you would like me to wrap this up. Let me see what I can do for you.” He raised only his eyes and locked them on Vasily. “You missed one, by the way. When you took your trip to Russia last summer? You thought you got them all. You didn’t. He did not go there to hide. He is still around. In fact, he recently told me how they laughed when they ran your little blonde off the road. I think he said he was the one who threw the match.”

  Vasily shoved by an unsuspecting Dmitri and lunged. He needed a piece of this fucking sniveling pussy who’d targeted their women and children.

  The shot sounded, and he felt the familiar burn of a bullet enter his body just below his ribs on his left side. He kept moving as his boys sounded off in shock and outrage.

  Or he would have kept moving had Dmitri not banded a heavy arm around his waist and jerked him around so he was facing in the opposite direction. His byki gave Sergei his back so any shots that followed would go through him before they reached Vasily.

  “You fuck! What are you doing?” Dmitri shouted in Russian. He was looking over his shoulder. “What the fuck have you done here? Women and children, Sergei? Innocent people? This man?” The roar of his voice blocked up Vasily’s ears. “And all because you feel guilty for being inside a whore while your wife and son were snatched? You should have manned the fuck up and owned what you did!”

  Vasily shook Dmitri off and had to bite back a groan when the effort chewed into his wound like a hungry lion.

  “And you,” Dmitri continued, pointing at Artur. “Did you look into his history at all before you offe
red your aid? Are you even aware it was your whore he was fucking at the time?” Maksim had come across that tidbit yesterday.

  While Sergei’s “friends” turned livid eyes on him, Vasily met Yana’s terrified stare and tried to communicate how sorry he was that this was going to happen.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  As Alek looked on in disbelief, watching a dark spot spread on his uncle’s black shirt, he remembered a time a neighborhood dog had taken his legs out from under him as he’d run to Vasily’s car that had pulled up to the curb in front of their house. He’d torn his knee to shreds in the fall, and by the time he’d gotten up and carried on, there’d been a stream of blood running down into his sock. Vasily had scooped his ten-year-old ass up and kissed both his cheeks before looking at his leg. You are not crying. Why? Alek had shrugged, biting his lip as hard as he could to hold back the tears he wouldn’t let fall in front of his hero. You are a better man than I will ever be. If that was my knee, I would be calling for my mama by now. He’d tucked Alek’s face into his neck and taken him into the house to patch him up.

  He met that navy stare across the demolished foyer. In Alek’s eyes, there was no better man. Back his focus went to Sergei. He cataloged the new position. Yana’s new position. The position of the men flanking them who Alek was pretty sure wouldn’t help Sergei now for any reason.

  “Alek.”

  He glanced to his uncle when he heard his name then came back to his task. The boys had to get Vasily out of there. They had to take him down to Yuri. Then he wanted his best fucking friends to take his wife and child out of there. It didn’t matter that he and Sacha had never exchanged vows, she belonged to him just as he belonged to her. Life partners. And his best fucking friends were right fucking idiots to have shown up here instead of staying with their women. Man, he loved them.