much I love Matvei, he isn’t going to come for me.
If I do nothing, Rogers will permanently scar me for no reason, something I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life—however long he decides to let that last.
I’m not going to give the bastard the chance to do that.
I grab the stool and test its weight, pulling it back and swinging it down into thin air.
It’ll take a moment to connect, but if I time it right when Rogers steps into the room, I can knock him down and take him out. The second I do, I know that I can’t stop hitting him. I have to kill him, right then and there.
It’s either that or let him slice off one of my fingers. I’ll go down swinging if that’s the case.
It’s what Matvei would do.
I slip into the corner of the room and press myself tight between the two walls, going through my plan over and over again.
The door will swing inward, blocking me from view.
For a moment, I’ll be invisible.
That’s when I attack.
My heart beats a million times a minute, and I struggle to keep my hands from shaking. It only gets worse when I hear thudding footsteps down the hall. I step forward and bring the wooden stool above my head, waiting. Every second seems to draw out ten times as long.
The door swings open.
Rogers steps inside the room, looks around.
Frowns when he doesn’t see me.
That’s when I bring the chair down on his head.
CRASH.
“Fuck!” he shouts, collapsing to the floor.
I bring the chair down again, cracking it against the back of his head.
While he’s down, I begin to kick him as hard as I can, swift shots to his kidney and his stomach. He reaches for the bag of fallen tools and I stomp on his hand, kicking the bag away.
My breaths are ragged as I dive for the bag that he bought. There’s a sharp blade inside, and I scramble to pull it from the packaging.
Before I can, Rogers tackles me to the floor, rolling me onto my back.
“Get off me!” I scream, clawing at his face and digging my nails into his skin. I draw blood, my fingers slick with crimson, and Rogers grabs my hair. He slams my head into the floor. A flash of light crosses my eyes and I feel everything become dizzy.
He slams me again, and then a third time.
Black pain lances across my eyes. I struggle to keep conscious.
Breathless, Rogers wraps his hands around my throat, squeezing tight.
“I should fucking kill you,” he huffs, his face slashed and bleeding, like something out of a horror movie.
The edges of my vision become fuzzy, and my lungs scream for air. I thrash violently, weakly slapping at him and pulling at the fingers wrapped around my throat. It’s an automatic response, my body refusing to go this long without oxygen.
But it doesn’t do anything.
I’m dying.
I hallucinate the sound of voices outside, the sound of car doors slamming shut.
I hallucinate someone coming to save me.
Then I see the look of panic cross Rogers’s face.
And I realize: it’s not a hallucination. He lets go of my throat and I greedily suck in air, coughing violently. If it weren’t for his weight pinning me to the floor, I’d curl into a ball, tears streaming down my face.
“What the hell is that?” he asks, and for the first time, Rogers sounds afraid.
“It’s Matvei,” I say without even having to look, though truthfully I’m almost as shocked as him. “It’s Matvei. He came.”
29
Matvei
This is it.
When we approach the neighborhood, there’s only one car parked outside of the house. There isn’t another car for miles.
“This is the place,” I tell them. Timofei nods and places his hand on his gun, fingers twitching in anticipation.
I can’t stop thinking about Dmitry. The way I criticized him for blindly rushing into that factory to save Brianne. At the time, I told him to leave her, to wait for backup. He wouldn’t listen, and I didn’t understand.
But now I do.
I know that determination, the drive to protect what is his. Victoria is mine, and I have to save her. I’m the reason she’s in this mess in the first place.
My family. My sins.
Timofei steps on the gas and we park half in the middle of the road. I climb out before the car is even fully stopped, my gun drawn. Timofei is right beside me, slamming his door as we head to the house.