ROWAN
Nik’s so shocked his grip on me loosens, which is lucky because I lean around the corner and throw before they even fire a shot. “Best run fast, Niky!”
With another manic laugh, I grab him this time and head for the stairwell, which is at the end of this corridor. Gotta love having options. We make it through the door just as an ear splitting boom echoes behind us, throwing us forward and down the first flight of stairs.
“Crazy fucking psycho!” Nik thunders as he lands on top of me, and I giggle.
“But it’s kinda fun, right?” I huff, pushing him off me and getting to my feet with a groan. The blood from the two guards is sticky on the skin of my face that my balaclava exposes, and I use the back of my hand, which isn’t much better, to wipe at my eyes.
“Alarm triggered all sector protocols,” Dima’s voice cuts in, tense but controlled. “Local authorities diverted. You have approximately six minutes before private response team arrives. Moving to extraction position now.”
Nik just curses in Russian, grabbing his handgun from the floor next to us, checking it, and then with another rant in Russian, he walks down the stairs.
“Jeez, you were the one that wanted to send Sergi a message,” I comment, following behind, palming another of my knives. I’m too pumped to use my gun. I need to feel my kills tonight or blow them up completely. I don’t have any more grenades though. Sad times. “And I couldn’t leave that room standing, Nik.”
He pauses in front of me, his shoulders rising and falling. “I know.” He sighs audibly. “Just make sure when you blow shit up in the future, we’re far away. I think I cracked a rib.”
He continues down the stairs, that fucking alarm still blaring, which isn’t helping us to hear if we have company or not.
“Silver lining though, Niky,” I muse, looking around us and back up the stairs to cover our backs. “At least you weren’t shot, so you still get Iris’s pussy.”
He huffs a laugh as we reach the bottom of the staircase. “How many of those charges did you bring?”
“I’ve got four, why? You gonna help me blow this place to smithereens, Niky?”
He looks over his shoulder. “First, stop calling me Niky.” I smirk, fully intending on just calling him Niky from now on. “Second, who the fuck uses the word smithereens?” He shakes his head. “But to answer your question, yes. We will blow this place up. Show my sperm donor that he may think he has the upper hand, but he will never win.”
My grin is nothing short of gleefully evil, but what can I say? It’s nice to find a new honey I can fully indulge, you know?
“We need to split up, cover both sides to fully destroy it,” I tell him, taking two of the packages I made earlier—“Blue Peter” eat your heart out—and handing them to him. “They’re able to be triggered remotely, so just get them in place and meet me back out front, on the corner. We want a good view, so don’t want to go too far.”
He takes the bombs from me, gives me a nod, and then we exit the stairwell, him heading right back towards the staircase we came up. Guess I’m going left then.
I set one just outside the doors of the stairwell—always good to blow up possible exits—then turn right and silently move down the corridor towards what I know is the guardroom and CCTV station.
“Stop!” the deep, accented voice yells from behind me, and my pulse races, but not in fear. Nope.
“I was hoping I’d get to dance with some of you again,” I say as I twist around and count six dark figures, all with guns pointed my way. “Fair warning, I have a bomb on me, so if you shoot…pow!” They flinch, clearly not appreciating my mime of an explosion, which I thought was rather artistic, and a laugh escapes me. It’s just too easy. “We’re going to have such fun.”
NIKOLAI
Setting my second charge at the main entrance to the building, because the game is up, and it’s now a case of getting the fuck out of here, and as Rowan so eloquently put it, blowing it to smithereens. I have to approve of the tactical victory, and can’t argue with his reasoning that Sergi won’t be able to bring Iris here if it no longer exists. Though a fissure of worry runs up my spine because this is declaring open war on him, and I know my father. He won’t take it lying down.
Exiting the building, I head to the corner, expecting to see Rowan already there. Though my steps slow when I see it’s empty, no hint of anyone in the shadows either.
“Where the fuck are you?” I bark into my earpiece.
“A little busy, Nicky!” he huffs back, the sounds of a fight clear in the background.
Fuck.
“Location?” I yell, turning and heading back into the building. There’s no question of going back for him. He’s the brother of my lover, the soulmate of my soulmate. Plus, we are a family, and family doesn’t leave anyone behind.
“Ground floor, towards the guardroom.” His answer is cut off with a grunt, and I speed up, taking out my gun and heading in that direction.
I hear the fight before I see it, curious that there are no sounds of gunshots.
It’s carnage as I round the corner into the hallway outside of the guardroom. Rowan is facing off against four men, all with those Russian style tattoos that my father makes his men get. There are two bodies on the floor, and Rowan spots me before the remaining guards do.
“They know about the bomb I’m carrying!” he hollers, laughing when one of them gets in a punch and his head snaps to the side. “I’ll take your hand for that!”
I watch as he pulls out a fucking short sword from who the fuck knows where, raising it and bringing it down on the man’s hand, cutting it clean off. I don’t have time to think how crazy that is, as two of the guards see me and rush towards me.
Holstering my gun—I don’t want to accidentally shoot Rowan either and set him off—I just have time to grab my hunting knife before they’re upon me. I catch one across the throat, his blood spraying across me until I no doubt match the crazy bastard I’m here with.
He goes down, but the second one is on me before I can raise the knife again. He punches me in the head, so fucking hard I see stars, but I’m used to working under these kinds of conditions. It’s what I spent my life training with after all. My father made sure of that.
So it doesn’t take me long to bring up the knife and stab, slipping in under his armpit. He screams as his arm goes limp, giving me the opening to stab him in the neck, his scream cutting off with a gurgle. Yanking the knife out again, I watch, feeling nothing other than a little disappointed at how quickly it’s over.
“Red suits you, Niky,” Rowan compliments, and I look up to find him breathing hard but mostly unharmed. My cheek aches, and will no doubt bruise by tomorrow, just in time for Iris to scold me.
“Did you set the last charge?” I ask, wiping my knife on my pants before sheathing it again.
“Yeppers,” Rowan answers, his crazy fully unleashed as his eyes gleam.
I chuckle as I shake my head. “Let’s get the fuck out of here then.”
We make our way back the way I came, still looking out for any more guards, but by my reckoning, we got most of them. We’re unchallenged as we exit the building. No sounds of sirens either, which is not surprising. My father wouldn’t want the authorities involved if they didn’t have to be.
I turn to look back at the building once we reach the corner, Rowan pulling out his phone and navigating to an app. There’s something surreal about having an app that can blow up a building, but I guess this is modern times.
A sleek black van slides silently to the curb half a block away, Dima behind the wheel, engine running.
“Ready to see the fireworks?” Rowan asks, practically bouncing with excitement as he casts a glance my way. His eyes practically sparkle, and I feel my lips tug upwards.
“Do it.”
Seconds after he presses the big red button, the building explodes, glass flying out onto the street, a wave of heat hitting us, but luckily we’re far enough away that none of the debris gets us.
“It’s even prettier in the rain,” Rowan muses, pocketing his phone. “Let’s head back, I wanna rid myself of this scum’s blood before Iris lands.”
I nod, letting the flames sear into my retinas for a moment more before turning my back on the nightmarish place, and with my found brothers by my side, we head off into the London night. Dima is waiting, car door open, face impassive as always, but I catch the satisfaction in his eyes as he watches the flames behind us. He slides back behind the wheel without comment as we climb in, covered in blood and smelling of smoke and death.
Your move, Father.
