"Am I?"
One second. Two. The factory holds its breath. The overhead light hums. Seven men breathe in the dark. My wrists are against the armrest, the zip tie frayed to threads, one flex from freedom.
I don't know if the brothers are outside. Nico doesn't know if Dmitri kept his word.
Then the windows shatter.
Glass rains down. Tactical lights cut the dark like blades. The sound of boots on concrete. Weapons racking. Voices calling positions in Greek and English and Gaelic. Bodies pouring through the shattered windows, the loading dock, the side doors. Lex. Cormac. Declan. Stavros. Alliance soldiers, Greek and Irish, flooding the factory floor.
And my zip tie snaps.
I pull my hands free. Raw wrists, bleeding, six hours of friction against metal turned into seconds of liberty. I'm on my feet before Viktor can adjust the Makarov's aim.
Dmitri Reznikov kept his word. Barely. Reluctantly. At a price I don't know yet.
But the reinforcements didn't come. And the rescue did.
The factory erupts.
Chapter 34
Siobhan
The Choice
* * *
Glass rains down and the world becomes noise.
Lights. Boots on concrete. The staccato of automatic weapons echoing off the factory ceiling. Bodies pouring through the shattered windows, the loading dock, the side doors. Alliance soldiers. Greek and Irish. Lex's voice cutting through the chaos: "East side, move!" Cormac's: "Loading dock, clear the corners!"
Viktor's men react. The two at the main door open fire. Muzzle flash in the dark. The walkway sniper swings his rifle toward the breach point. The roaming guards scramble for positions they rehearsed but never expected to use because Viktor promised his father's reinforcements and his father lied.
I'm on my feet. Zip tie shreds hanging from raw wrists. Six hours of friction bought me this: freedom at the exact moment it matters.
The factory is a crossfire. Bullets chew concrete. A guard drops. Another. Stavros moves through the east wing like a man born in buildings exactly like this one. Alliance soldiers takepositions, weapons up, the coordinated geometry of a force that trained together in a basement forty-eight hours ago.
But I am focused on one thing.
Viktor. The Makarov. Nico.
Viktor's gun swings toward Nico. The shot that ends everything. Nico is ten feet away, unarmed, too far to close the distance before the trigger pulls. Viktor's wrist is steady. His aim is center mass. One pull and the man I love dies on a factory floor.
I don't think.
The chair. The metal chair I sat in for six hours. Blood on the armrest where the zip ties scraped. Industrial. Heavy. I kick it hard. Both feet. Every hour of adrenaline and fury and patience channeled into one motion.
The chair crashes into Viktor's legs at knee height. He staggers. The Makarov fires. The shot goes wild, punching concrete three feet from Nico's head. The report is deafening.
I saved him. With a chair and six hours of frayed plastic and the refusal to be a woman who waits.
Chapter 35
Nico
* * *
Viktor goes down. The chair hits his legs, and he stumbles, and the shot that would have killed me buries itself in the floor, and I'm on him before the echo fades.