Page 119 of Twisted Little Game

I toss Yegor a crisp white pool towel from the stack he keeps on the deck. The wound doesn’t look good, but I know he will be dead either way if I don’t handle the people inside first.

“More movement. They are going for the front door,” Maks says. “We need to go now. Go around the side of the house.”

We loop around the edge and push past the side gate.

When we walk under the cluster of trees along the gravel path, I see a black car coming up Yegor’s driveway.

“Fuck, did he inform others that we were here?” I whisper to Maks. “Could this still be…”

“I don’t think Yegor is setting us up,” Maks tells me. “I think Farina called someone, minutes ago.”

“Look. More headlights. Further down.”

Past the thick forest that blocks Yegor’s house from the main road, there are two other cars, parked further down on the street.

“Blyat. That is too many,” Maks says.

“It is.”

I think of Tate’s eyes.

The way he looks at me, with that hazel green, and he sees someone that no one else sees.

The way he has hope for me when I don’t.

His own hope, beautiful and pure, that couldn’t be touched by my darkness.

The black car pulls up to the front of Yegor’s house and the passenger side door swings open.

“Fuck,” Maks whispers.

I think of how Tate kisses me when he can’t hold himself back any longer.

The way I have to kiss him back.

How badly I need it, too, in a way I only knew how to deny at first.

“There is only one thing we can do,” I say, my voice growing louder. “We have to be better. We have to be better than them, Maks. Are you with me?”

“I am with you. Always.”

“This is for my mother. And for him.”

Someone steps out of the passenger side of the black car, and when I see long, glossy black hair in the low light, my chest turns to steel.

“Romik,” Natalia’s singsong voice carries through the air.

She’s carrying.

She was always fond of my Makarov, and it seems that she’s invested in her own.

She’s wearing a vest, too, which I can only assume is bulletproof.

“Why the fuck are you here, Nata?” I ask, stepping forward into the bright glare of the car’s headlights.

“You weren’t supposed to be here yet. Yegor had his whole pretty little plan for later, didn’t he? Too bad it’s ending tonight.”

The front door of Yegor’s house swings open and the three other men step out, all holding guns out toward me.