Page 14 of Blood Code

Would they pay for it for the next week?

Absolutely.

“I thought the goal was to kill him,” Neeve said, out of breath.

“It is.” I pinched my lips together. “It’s just not time yet.”

Neeve huffed, dragging me another two feet before propping me against an unmarked SUV. “You mean you’re not ready.” Before I could respond, she pulled the door open. “Thomas, come help.”

A bulky Irish guard wearing a mask and gloves stepped out of the driver’s side and easily lifted me into the backseat as if I were a doll.

“Why didn’t you have him help from the beginning?” I asked.

“Shut the fuck up, Xeniya. Sometimes, I don’t think things fully through.”

“Right.”

As soon as my back hit the cushion, my eyes drifted shut, and darkness clawed its way back into my mind.

I was going to have to sleep this rescue off for at least five days.

Chapter Five

Severin Volkov

Age 36

Ahard slap jolted me awake. “Wake up, asshole. Someone I love deeply wants you alive.”

I groaned. That voice. My least favorite brigadier.

I tried to blink, but my eyes stung and felt impossibly heavy. With a slow breath, I dragged smoke-tainted air into my lungs.

Kazimir slapped me again.

He knelt over me in a perfectly pressed suit, and his lips curled into a wicked smile.

“Did Nika send you?” I croaked, coughing, my throat on fire.

“What?” Kaz’s eyebrows drew together. “No.”

My eyelids drooped shut. The weight of all the pain made it hard for me to keep them open.

“Wake up, you dumb brute.” Kaz slapped me again, this time not to wake me up but because he could get away with it in my current state.

“You can see I am awake.” I coughed, my voice disgustingly soft from the smoke damage.

“Eh, your eyes were closed.” Kaz shrugged. “You very well could have been asleep.”

“They’re not closed now.”

“I can see that.” He sat back on his heels, cocking his head to the side. “What did you get yourself into this time?”

Somewhere along the way, we had gone from tentative allies back to brutal rivals. After Xeniya died, we had grown close in our grief. Kaz had even helped me hunt down the Carusos and skin them alive. But then, one day, he was back to the boy I knew in college.

My nemesis.

He had always hated me, but his hatred felt worse now. It was as if I had kicked his puppy off a yacht and into the ocean, where it drowned—as if I had done something unforgivable.