Page 120 of Twisted Little Game

I feel like my heart is going to come out through my fucking throat.

So they never got Yegor.

But they fucking got her.

“I should have known,” I tell Nata, holding out my gun steady toward her while Maks faces toward the others.

“Yes. You should have,” Natalia says. “You should have known that my loyalties will always go toward the people who actually give a fuck about their family legacy. It’s a shame that Petrov used to be that family, and now, it is the Malettis, isn’t it?”

“Say the truth,” Maks barks at her. “The Malettis just gave you more money, didn’t they?”

She snorts a laugh. “Of course they did. But you two know I don’t need more money. They gave me money and gave me something that you never could, Romik. They gave me access.”

Natalia had always asked me to involve her in my tasks.

She wanted access to weapons.

To my body.

To information.

And of course I never gave her that.

“My mother loved you,” I tell her.

She shrugs a shoulder. “And I loved her.”

“Lzhets,” I scream at her.

Liar.

The most evil fucking kind.

“Give us the Landrey boy,” Lucian Farina says as he steps closer to the car. “We take him, we get our money from Luke, and this all ends cleanly.”

“Nothing is ever clean,” I tell him. “And you will never see Tate again in your life.”

A gunshot sounds through the air and I don’t know who took the first shot.

I lunge to the side and see the bark of the tree behind Maks fracture. Maks drops to the ground and fires a shot at Lucian Farina, hitting his shin.

And then the gunshots come so fast I don’t know which is which.

I take cover behind a tree and run deeper into the forested edge of the yard. I can see that Maks is safe, but a bullet from Natalia’s gun grazes his arm.

The fear in my heart only returns when I see more people coming.

Figures coming from further down on the street, where I spotted the other cars earlier.

And then I see who walks out.

No.

Niko is here, holding a gun in his hands, too.

Sev is behind him, and he nods at me before moving across to the far side of the front yard.

Hunter comes out next, and my heart freezes.