Page 38 of Marrying My Ex's Brother
I draw my gun.
Then Anya surprises me.
She stops pulling away. For half a second, I think fear has caught up with her. Then I see her shift her weight, see the anger cut through her panic, see the exact moment she decides she has had enough. She drives her knee up between his legs with everything she has.
Leonid folds with a strangled sound and drops to his knees. “You bitch,” he grunts.
For one brief moment, I’m impressed. She’s shaking. She’s outmatched. She has no training, no weapon, no backup, and no idea how bad this could have become. But she fights back.
When Leonid reaches for her again, I shoot him.
The shot cracks through the corridor, loud enough to punch through the music. Leonid jerks once, shock passing over his face before he falls sideways onto the concrete.
Anya screams. Blood spatters across her dress and one bare thigh. She stares at him, frozen, her mouth open, breath coming too fast.
I stay where the light does not fully reach me.
The back door of the club slams somewhere behind her. Voices rise. She looks once at Leonid’s body, once at the blood on her dress, and then survival finally takes over.
She runs.
I let her.
Viktor appears at the end of the corridor a moment later, eyes moving from the body to me. “Should I stop her?”
“No.”
He waits.
I lower the gun. “She’s scared enough.”
Viktor looks at Leonid. “This will make noise.”
“Then quiet it.”
He nods once and gets to work.
I turn toward the exit Anya used, but she’s already gone into the alley, swallowed by the dark city she still doesn’t understand.
Viktor crouches beside Leonid’s body, checks his pulse only because procedure matters, not because either of us expects a different result. Then he looks toward the door where Anya disappeared. “She won’t get far in those shoes.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to send someone after her?”
I look down the hallway. There’s blood on the floor, a dead man at my feet, and the faint echo of her scream still caught somewhere in my head.
“No,” I say. “Not yet.”
Viktor doesn’t argue, but I can feel the question in his silence.
Why?
I don’t answer it. I’m not sure I can.
The club music keeps thudding through the walls as if nothing has happened. Bass, laughter, glass breaking somewhere in the main room. Venera continues breathing around us, filthy and alive, while Leonid Markov lies cooling on the concrete.
A door opens at the far end of the corridor. One of the club men steps in, broad and tattooed, probably sent to check on the noise. He stops when he sees the body.
