Page 104 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
Brody pivoted on his heel and set off down the service passage with his left hand still grazing the wall. Ren followed a step behind, the gun pressed against his thigh, eyes sweeping the corners.
They didn’t speak.
There was no need for that either.
The passage opened into a wide distribution hall connecting the service area with the east wing of the mansion. Two shadows waited against the opposite wall: one enormous, almost absurd in its size, which could only be Jax; the other more compact, broad shoulders and feet planted in a combat stance, which Ren recognized as Rocco by the way he held his head, always slightly tilted, like an animal listening for frequencies no one else could pick up. Both hooded, both armed.
Jax raised two fingers toward Brody. Pointed at the ceiling. Second floor.
Brody nodded.
They climbed the main staircase in formation. Jax first, Brody behind, Ren pressed close to his back, Rocco covering the rear. The marble steps were spattered with something Ren chose not to identify. A body lay on the intermediate landing, face up, eyes open and staring at the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling three floors above. Ren stepped over it without stopping.
On the second floor landing a guard came through a side door with his gun raised. He didn’t get to aim. Jax intercepted him with a movement that was more mechanics than violence: arm extended, wrist rotation, a dry impact against the wall. The guard crumpled and Jax took his weapon without breaking stride.
The main hallway of the east wing opened before them, long, lit by brass wall sconces casting golden circles on the pearl-gray carpet. Three doors on each side. At the far end, the double doors of Reznov’s master suite. Ren recognized them. He had never been inside but Sergei had once indicated them with a tilt of his chin when Reznov took him from his room to have dinner in the dining room.
A guard emerged from the second door on the left. Brody fired without slowing his pace. The suppressor reduced the sound to a wet crack, like a branch breaking underwater. The guard hit the door frame and slid to the floor, leaving a red line on the lacquered wood.
Another came out of the last door on the right. Rocco dealt with him from behind. Ren heard two muffled shots and the thud of a body hitting the floor.
They reached the double doors.
Brody stopped. He looked at Jax. Jax positioned himself to one side, Rocco to the other. Brody placed his hand on the brass handle and pressed it down slowly, the way you enter your own home.
The doors swung inward.
Dimitri Reznov’s suite was exactly as Ren had imagined it: obscene. A room the size of an apartment, four-meter ceilings, burgundy velvet curtains falling to the floor, a four-poster bed that looked like a monument to something Ren preferred not to think about. A fireplace burning despite the heating being on. Mirrors. Too many mirrors.
And in the center of it all, Dimitri Reznov.
Seated in a leather armchair beside the fireplace. Legs crossed. A glass of something amber in his right hand, held between threefingers as though he were in a private club waiting for someone to bring him the cigar menu. The fire gilded one side of his face and left the other in shadow.
Two guards flanked the armchair. Armed, tense, eyes jumping between the four intruders who had just entered the room.
Jax raised his weapon at the one on the left. Rocco aimed at the one on the right.
Silence.
Reznov took a sip from his glass.
The two guards looked at each other. Looked at Reznov. Looked at the guns pointed at them. The one on the left was the first to raise his hands, slowly, and walk toward the door in sideways steps without turning his back on anyone. The one on the right followed three seconds later. Their footsteps faded down the stairs and disappeared.
Reznov clicked his tongue.
“Good help is so hard to find these days. There was a time when a man could trust that loyalty would last at least until the end of the evening.”
He stood. The movement was slow, deliberate, the glass still in his hand. Tall. Elegant even now, his three-piece suit immaculate, his silver hair combed back without a strand out of place. As though the house weren’t full of his fallen men. As though the broken glass and the gunshots and the blood on the stairs were a minor inconvenience, an interruption to his nightly routine.
Brody pulled off the balaclava with his free hand. His dark hair fell across his forehead again, damp, stuck to his skin. The cut on his cheekbone was still bleeding.
Reznov looked at him. Then looked at Ren. Ren felt those calculating eyes move across him like a scanner, cataloging, measuring, assessing.
“Kovac,” said Reznov, as though pronouncing the name of a wine that failed to impress him. “My contract with the omega’s guardian is legal. Signed, registered, binding. You can play soldier all you like, but in the eyes of the law that omega belongs to me for twelve months, and neither you nor your little band of costumed thugs is going to change that.”
Brody didn’t respond.
He advanced.
