Page 40 of Twisted Little Game
Holy fuck.
These guys are serious.
They’re actually going to fucking—
“I said three words, and I meant them. I will never. Fucking. Rat,” the bald guy says. “What are you going to do, Petrov prick? Shoot me in the skull?”
A loud bang hits the air and I stumble backward onto my ass as I see the man’s head lurch backward.
Red spills from a hole in his forehead.
Roman’s cousin just shot someone.
Shot them dead, point-blank, in the backyard.
My stomach lurches, and I almost puke, heaving over in the gravel behind the low shrub. I hear the argument continue, my ears still ringing from the sudden shot.
“On the ground,” Roman says in a deep voice, clearly talking to the redhead. “Yegor, you should not have shot that man. What is going through your head? We needed to negotiate a little longer.”
“Fuck negotiating,” Yegor shouts. “He disrespected us. He lied.”
“Shit. Get back here—”
I look up to see the redheaded man taking off, getting a head start and darting off through the side yard.
He’s running straight toward me.
I get up off the ground and cold fear spreads through my body as I look both ways, wondering where the fuck to go.
I take off toward the other side of the front road, but my shoe slips on the gravel and I come down hard, my knees and palms slamming into the rocky ground.
It hurts like fucking hell on my already injured palm.
“Fuck,” I whimper. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”
I glance behind me and the guy is right there.
“Are you another Petrov spy?” the redhead says. There are tears streaming down his face, and he reaches into his pocket, brandishing a gun and holding it up at me.
A moment later, Roman bounds around the corner and tackles him onto the ground.
A gunshot rings out, but it misses, hitting one corner of the house and missing me by many feet. I scramble up, running back toward the car and taking cover behind it, peeking around the corner.
Yegor walks over, leveling his pistol at the redhead.
“He’s going to kill you all for this,” the redhead is blubbering now. “You think this is going to work out? You’re so goddamn wrong.”
Yegor’s aim is disturbingly accurate.
I shout as one bullet hits the guy in his temple, and the next at the center of his head, right in the same spot he got the other man. Roman is still holding the guy’s legs down, just a few inches away from where Yegor was shooting.
Too close.
Way too fucking close.
“You are impulsive, Yegor,” Roman says. “We could have waited at least five minutes more.”
Blood is spilling from the guy out onto the gravel.
