In between grimaces of pain, Paxán looked sheepish. “This is . . . not how I planned things.”
“Don’t talk, please don’t talk.” Blood skimmed past my fingers. Lifeblood. He can’t lose any more. “You have to save your strength!”
Sevastyan dropped to his knees on Paxán’s other side. He put his hands on top of mine, knotting our fingers to bear down with even more force. Sevastyan’s expression was so hard, like granite under pressure. About to crack.
Paxán’s wound wasn’t fatal. It couldn’t be. So why were they both acting like it?
What did Sevastyan and Paxán know about shootings that I didn’t?
Everything.
Paxán cast Sevastyan a weak smile. “You know I couldn’t have borne it if you’d saved me instead of her. Proud of you, Son.”
The hazy scene replayed in my head. Sevastyan had been directly between Paxán and me when the bullets had flown. He’d made a choice, tackling me to the ground—instead of Paxán. “Stop this, both of you! Paxán, you have to hold on. You’re going to make it!”
“Be at ease, dorogaya moya.” With effort, he reached for me, brushing my face before his arm collapsed.
Then his eyes went to Sevastyan. “You are bound to her,” he told him in Russian. “Her life is in your care, Son. Yours alone.” He covered our bloody knot of fingers with his hand. “She belongs to you.”
One sharp nod from Sevastyan. More pressure on granite.
With difficulty, Paxán turned his head back to me. “Aleksei will protect you. He is yours now too.” I stared down at our interlaced fingers, awash in crimson—it was like a blood oath. “My brave daughter.”
My eyes filled with tears, drops spilling. “Don’t do this! Bátja, please, just hold on.”
“Bátja?” He smiled through his pain, somehow still evincing contentment. “I knew you would call me Dad.” But the twinkling blue of his eyes was ebbing. Replaced by sightlessness? “I only wish I’d had more time with the two of you. I love you both.”
To Sevastyan, he said, “Make her life better . . . for my having been in it.”
Blood bubbled from his lips. His eyes went blank, his chest . . . still.
“No, don’t go!” I sobbed. But it was too late.
Pavel Kovalev, my father, was dead.
Chapter 26
“Natalie, get up!”
The siren in my head was back. Sevastyan was standing beside me, but his words sounded distant.
He grabbed one of my blood-coated hands and hauled me to my feet.
“This isn’t happening,” I muttered as I stumbled along, glass from Paxán’s beloved clocks crunching beneath my heels. “This isn’t happening.” My father couldn’t be dead.
Sevastyan dragged me over to where Filip squirmed in pain, blood pooling from his gut wound.
In a broken voice, Filip told me, “I-I didn’t want this. I came tonight . . . because others were already . . . on their way. It was going to happen. No matter . . . what I did. The bounty is . . . unthinkable.”
Hatred welled up inside me, drying my tears. “Goddamn you! How could you do this?”
“Swear to you, I only came for Paxán.” He reached his mutilated hand toward me. “If I didn’t know about Travkin . . . others won’t have heard yet either. They’ll . . . be coming.”
“What does that mean?”
“Travkin also wanted . . . your head.”
With a furious yell, Sevastyan yanked me behind him, drilling a bullet into Filip’s skull.
Two dead. Two. Slain before my eyes.
I couldn’t catch my breath, my lungs seeming to constrict. I felt like the whole world around me was on fire, flames crackling ever closer. Like if I screamed, no one would hear. I was hyperventilating by the time Sevastyan snatched my upper arm in his punishing grip and started dragging me away. “Come on, Natalie!” Gun raised, he led me toward a door at the back of the office.
“We can’t leave Paxán like this.” I gazed back at his still body. His lifeless eyes. Why hadn’t I closed them? Stupid, stupid. “We have to care for him!”
Sevastyan just yanked me along harder. “I’m taking you from Berezka. We don’t know who can be trusted here.”
I was speechless. As the siren in my head amped up, he shoved me into a garage I’d never seen, then tossed me into a dark sedan.
Haze.
A car ride down the wet shell drive, rain pouring from the night sky.
Sevastyan’s bloody rings digging into the steering wheel.
Mud slashing over the windshield, wipers gritty.
The back of the car fishtailed; I remained frozen.
Sevastyan didn’t slow until we neared the river, then slammed to a stop in front of the boathouse. “You’re going to stay here and lock the doors behind me,” he ordered as he reached across me toward the glove box. “The glass is bulletproof. You do not open these doors.” He took out a pistol, cocked it, flicked off the safety, then held it out to me. When I made no move to take it, he laid it on the console. “If someone gets in anyway, you use the gun. Aim for the chest and pull the trigger.”
Sevastyan was heading out into danger? Already the entire world was on fire; if I lost him too . . . “Where are you going? Don’t leave! Can’t we just stay in this car and drive away?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know who’s controlling the gates. Or who’s waiting outside them. We need to leave by water.” In the Casino Royale boat? “I’ll clear the boathouse, then return for you.”
When he opened the door, his own gun raised, I cried, “Please be careful.”
He cast me an odd look. “Don’t worry, your protection will return.” He slipped out into the rain, swiftly closing in on the boathouse—
I spied a muzzle flash out of the corner of my vision. Heard a sharp pop, like a lightning bolt cut short.
Half of Sevastyan’s upper body was wrenched back, as if he’d been punched in the shoulder.
Not punched. Shot.
Lightning flashed as I screamed. By the time my eyes adjusted, Sevastyan and another man were grappling for a gun.
In the headlights’ beams, I could see it was the brigadier Gleb. Sevastyan struck with one of his anvil fists, connecting with the man’s face. Gleb tottered, overpowered.
Sevastyan couldn’t be hurt too badly if he could move like that, right? He wrested the gun from the stunned man, then pistol-whipped Gleb with it. “How many more are there?” he roared.