Page 158 of The Darkness is Calling

No. I refuse to be the one who kills him!

I start repeating the prayers I’ve been invoking since all of this began, begging Divinity to spare him. Let me be the one who dies when it’s his turn to shoot at me, not the other way around.

God, save him this time too!

“Faster!” the bastard beside me yells, growing more nervous.

“It’ll be over soon, dusha moya. Come on, pull it,” the man in front of me urges with the same calm voice. “It’s going to be fine.”

I want to believe him. I almost do, and that’s precisely why I slowly pull the trigger.

Only this time, there is no hollow, dry click to calm my heartbeat for a split second.

This time, the deafening sound freezes me completely, and the blood that splashes across my face and touches my lips, the lips he once tasted, destroys the last shred of my sanity.

Chapter 28

Artem

If I could have done it sooner, I would have, just so she wouldn’t have to go through something like this. I was supposed to wait few more minutes, but I couldn’t be patient anymore. I gave in to the voices that lost control when they heard her love declaration and... I gave my men the signal.

The next second, a symphony of bullets explodes around us. Cormac shoots Serioja, and his partner starts eliminating the others, then I hear Oliver screaming in pain. I was clear when I told them I wanted those two alive, but I didn’t specify in what condition. As for my former subordinate, I don’t think I was too precise about the state of his pulse either, but I did specify that Oliver is mine.

Ours .

I’m going to have so much fun with him, but for now I’m too focused on the woman I rush toward the second the first bullet is fired.

And I don’t mean the one from the gun between her fingers. The man infiltrated by the Irish made sure the revolver was loaded with a blind bullet, which is why I allowed myself to be so calm and tried so hard to make Ekaterina understand that she had to trust me.

Of course she didn’t, and she forgot the words I told her not even a week ago.

I wrap my arms around her and lift her from the chair, carrying her out of the room like a bride.

“Extraction, now!” I yell at the two men whose mission is to get anyone still alive out.

Meaning Oliver or Serioja. The ones I’ll become very good friends with as soon as my queen is safe.

Her fingers are still locked around the gun now trembling against her chest. She’s in shock, and I try to get her out of this nightmare as fast as possible, so I can calm her down.

“You’re with me, dusha moya. You’re safe. It’s over.”

But aside from these words, I can’t help her with anything more, because we still haven’t escaped this hell. On the stairs leading to the floor above, where loud gunfire can be heard, we run into my two brothers, along with Dimitri.

One has a focused, solemn expression, while the other smiles brightly when he sees me, smearing even more blood across his face as he wipes it with the back of his leather-gloved hand.

“I thought we were supposed to wait a little longer! Did you find out who’s behind them?” Yar asks me.

“He gave me a few details, but he isn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to tell me more. They were in a hurry to finish us, and I lost my patience.”

In my arms, Katya is still trembling, and every shiver of hers is like a knife to my heart.

“I need to get her out of here right now,” I tell them, climbing the stone steps while they flank me.

“Wait for the boys to clear the way, then we leave.”

I give Yaroslav a flat look. “I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

He presses his lips together and immediately speaks into his earpiece. “Grenades and everything you’ve got. Wipe it all out. In thirty seconds, we want to be at the cars.”