ROWAN
Iforgot just how fucking miserable London in December is. Drizzle soaks into my all-black attire as I wait in a hidden spot, watching the Harley Street building that we suspect is where Sergi is planning to take Iris if he gets his hands on her.
It’s cold too, the air I breathe puffing out in front of me as I wait. For what, I’m not fucking sure, but apparently Nik has a plan. I guess at least the fog provides excellent cover, though it’s making it a bitch to see what’s going on.
I think nothing would have been better than my plan of just blowing up the entire building. I seem to have developed an appreciation for explosives recently, and just so happen to have some stashed about my person tonight. A few minor charges, for just in case. I thought they might come in handy, even if Nik didn’t like my idea to just rig the entire building.
Don’t get me wrong, nothing can beat the feel of warm blood flowing over your skin from someone whose throat you just slit. Or watching as their entrails leave their body and they have a second to watch it happen before they go into shock.
But sometimes an old fashion bomb is pretty fucking effective. Sends a real pretty message too, all that fire lighting up the sky.
My earpiece crackles. “Perimeter sweep complete,” Dima’s deep voice comes through, his accent thicker in the cold. “Two additional guards on the east side. Motion sensors as expected.” Always efficient, our Dima. While Nik and I take the direct approach, he’s handling comms and surveillance from a parked van two streets over, making sure we don’t get any unwelcome surprises.
Nik is round the back, watching in the pissing rain just as I am. We have to be careful. There are security cameras, motion detection sensors, and timed guard rotations. All a bit much for a building that’s not in use and supposedly under renovation, if you ask me.
I watch as the latest guard rotation passes the service entrance, and from our research, we know Nik has his opening now too.
“That’s our cue,” Nik tells me via our encrypted earpieces, but I’m already moving. We’d discussed the plan at length before we left, so I stick to the shadows just like our gang name, avoiding all the security, and make it to the door in less than twenty seconds.
It takes mere moments for me to disable the alarm and sensors, and then I’m inside, pulling the door shut behind me.
“I win,” I whisper, my smirk lifting when Nik curses. We may have placed a little bet on who could get in first, just some friendly competition.
“Bloody competitive bastard,” he hisses. “I’m in.”
“If you two are quite finished,’ Dima’s dry tone comes through the comms, “security rotation changes in four minutes. Third floor guards moving to second position now.”
I roll my eyes even though he can’t see me. Typical Dima, all business.
Pausing, I listen in the dark. Silence greets me. The lights are off and the internal CCTV is looped so Sergi won’t know we’re here. I’m tempted to set one of my charges now, but as Nik argued, we don’t know for sure and it would be a real shame to blow up someone else’s business.
Sighing, I make my way along the dark corridor. We’re here to confirm whether Sergi is planning to use this place to hold Iris and the baby. My jaw clenches at the thought, and I have to count backwards in my head to calm my breathing. There are still guards inside, and we know less about their movements, so I have to remain calm.
“Approaching RVP,” Nik whispers in my ear just as I’m about to say the same.
“Same,” I confirm and round the corner carefully in time to see him at the other end of the corridor.
With a nod, we join up and head to the stairwell. Our intel suggested that all the medical equipment is on the third floor, so we jog up the stairs, our breathing and footsteps quiet.
We reach the third floor quickly, and Nik goes ahead, pausing to look through the small glass panel in the door, and then seeing that it’s clear, eases it open. I keep watch on our backs, one of my knives in my hand. I could use a gun, that’s what the guards have after all, but it would alert others to our presence, and I’m a dab hand at throwing knives.
Nik uses a hand signal to show the coast is clear, so I follow him through the door. My nose wrinkles as soon as I step through, the scent of antiseptic and hospital assaulting me.
“Sure smells like a medical facility,” I whisper, and Nik nods. We slowly creep down the corridor, towards a door which has a small window in it. I cast a glance around us as Nik steps up to it, his entire body stilling at what he sees inside.
“Rowan,” he breathes out, and I take his place as he moves aside.
What I see beyond the glass has my blood simultaneously freezing and boiling. The emergency lights highlight a room full of clearly specialised medical equipment of the kind for pregnancy complications and a premature delivery. There’s an incubator, several heat lamps for jaundice, as well as monitoring systems. I only know this because of research I’ve done into what Iris might need if she goes into early labour.
“Motherfucker,” I hiss, my hand clenching around the handle of my knife so tightly I can feel it digging into my skin.
“Let’s go in, see if there is anything else,” Nik says under his breath. His voice is low, controlled, and full of violence that I know he’s keeping on a tight leash. It reminds me now is not the time to lash out. Though, those charges I brought will most definitely not be leaving with me.
Silently, I reach out and grasp the door handle, carefully opening the door just enough for Nik and me to slip inside. Nik shuts the door behind him as I walk over to the incubator, my stomach roiling at the thought of our baby needing such care and receiving it from that fucking monster. Over my dead body will he ever get his hands on Iris or our child. I don’t care if he’s the father; he is fucking nothing.
“Rowan,” Nik whispers, and I turn to find him looking through some paperwork, a small torch in his hand. I take a few steps until I’m next to him. “It’s a patient chart with her recent vitals on it.”
My teeth grind together, making my jaw ache, but the pain grounds me. Fucking cunt has been keeping tabs on her, even when we thought she was safe. How?
“Transmitting images now,” Nik murmurs, activating the camera in his tactical gear. Dima’s low curse in Russian comes through our earpieces.
“Preeclampsia medication dosages. Blood type information. Even projected fetal weight,” Dima confirms, his voice tight with controlled rage. “He’s been monitoring her through someone.”
“Looks like he also has specialised obstetricians on staff too,” he continues, his nostrils flaring. “He’s got the whole setup.”
A noise outside the room has my head snapping up. I can just make out shadows in the corridor beyond, and I curse under my breath, the light of Nik’s torch going off instantly.
“They’re heading towards us,” I hiss as Nik takes the files and tucks them into his tactical vest.
Nik looks around the room, and we both see the other door, one that wasn’t on the plans we found, but our options are limited as a beam of light comes closer. We head towards it, just slipping through and closing it as the door to the other room is opened.
My heart pounds inside my chest as I scan the room, looking for another way out. It takes a moment for my mind to register what I’m seeing; a nursery. Complete with a crib and mobile, painted elephants on the walls. It’s creepy as fuck.
“Rowan,” Nik hisses, and I find him on the other side of the room at an open door. Even in the dark, I can see his face is ghostly white, and once I’m by his side, I see why.
The room beyond is a complete contrast to the wholesome nursery. It’s more like a holding cell, completely empty apart from a bare bed that even has cuffs on the head and footboard. There’s also one of those machines that is used to extract breastmilk, and a flash of Iris cuffed to the bed, hooked up to that machine, has me seeing red.
I cannot hold back my inner demon, no longer want to, and spinning on my heel, I stride through the nursery and back into the incubator room.
“What the—” The guard doesn’t get to finish his sentence before my knife has slit across his throat, covering me and the medical equipment in crimson. I briefly register the Russian style tattoos I’ve just ruined. So he was one of the bastard’s men. Good.
He drops to the floor, and the second guard barely has time to raise his gun before I’m on him, snarling as I stab, and stab, and stab. All I see is red, and I taste copper, but I don’t stop, not even after he’s stopped moving.
“Fuck’s sake, Rowan!” Nik shouts, dragging me off the now dead man. It’s only then that I hear the alarm blaring and register that the space is bright with light, as all the overhead lights are now on. “We need to move!”
He all but drags me back through to the nursery, which only increases my bloodlust for the man who I really want to tear apart. Sergi fucking Petrov. Just as we exit, four more guards come running down the corridor.
Without thinking, I throw my knife, and it finds its mark right in the eye of the one in the lead. He goes down, the others stalling, but then a shot sounds out next to me, making my ears ring. I glance at Nik, gun in his hand as he dispatches two of the others with cold efficiency.
The last guard ducks behind a dark shape, a nurses’ station maybe, and a piece of the plaster to the side of Nik flies off the wall with the shot the man just fired.
“Best make sure you don’t get shot, Niky boy. Iris will be pissed,” I joke, a manic laugh falling from my lips.
Nik pulls me around the corner, both of us breathing hard as we hear multiple sets of boots come from where the remaining guard waits. I catch a word or two shouted in Russian, and it takes everything in me not to charge back into the fray and kill every last one of them. Might also be because Nik has a tight grip on my vest. Arsehole.
“Let’s save the jokes and get the fuck out of here,” he hisses, and I pout.
“But I didn’t get to finish killing them,” I whine, and his eyes widen before he shakes his head.
“You’re fucking crazy, you know that?” he asks as I rummage in one of the pockets of my tactical vest. I really should wear one more often. They have so many pockets which are really fucking useful.
“Aww, you’re too kind,” I coo, pulling out what I was looking for with a triumphant smile.
“Ro— No. Absolutely not! You cannot throw a fucking grenade at them. It’ll blow us up!” he whisper yells, though I don’t know why because that alarm is loud enough to wake the dead.
I pull the pin. “Oopsie.”
