Right. I really needed to stop zoning out like that.
I stepped out of the car, the late afternoon air cooler up here on the hill, brushing against my skin as I walked toward the house.
Two guards were standing near the entrance: one was leaning against a pillar and scanning the driveway; the other was holding a newspaper upside down, studying it with the intense focus of someone who was clearly not reading it.
Everything looked normal. Well, as normal as it got for me these days.
Sasha and Kyrill had been called away earlier, disappearing into their SUVs after receiving a call that wiped the easy amusement immediately off Kyrill’s face, replacing it with the cool focus indicating something serious had happened.
They had taken several of the men with them, but not all of them. They never took everyone.
Paranoid much?
I let out a small breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and started toward the door, my heels clicking softly against the stone terrace.
For a few seconds everything felt completely normal again. The quiet hum of insects, the faint rustle of palm leaves in the evening breeze … and then the window beside the entranceexploded.
Glass burst inward with a deafening crash, shards scattering across the terrace like glittering rain. I froze. Itwasn’t intentional — my brain just couldn’t process what my eyes were seeing.
For a fleeting moment, everything felt disconcertingly wrong, as if the world had shifted slightly off its axis and my body hadn’t caught up yet.
A dark shape dropped from the perimeter wall, followed by another. Then a third man fell and they all landed in an uncoordinated heap of limbs and swearing.
“… What the fuck?” I whispered.
The guard by the pillar threw the paper on the floor and drew his weapon, but before anyone could react, gunfire erupted somewhere on the far side of the house.
More shots were fired in response, causing me to turn towards the courtyard. Fast, urgent shouting, definitelynotin Russian, echoed from the back gate.
Fucking hell.
This was an ambush.
Two more of Sasha’s guards came running around the corner of the house with their weapons drawn. They moved with the kind of sharp, practiced coordination suggesting this had instantly become a real fight.
Misha spotted me immediately.
“Inside!” he barked.
I took one step toward the door, and then three more men came scrambling over the outer wall, rather clumsily. One of them caught his foot on the top of the stone wall and nearly fell face-first into the courtyard, buthe managed to haul himself down with the determined clumsiness of someone who had watched too many action movies.
Oh, this was bad. This wasreallyfucking bad. Sasha was going to lose his shit.
It was confusing because the guys currently exchanging gunfire with Sasha’s guards sounded … significantly more professional.
Shots cracked again from the far side of the villa. The guard beside me shoved something into my hands so quickly I barely registered it before he was already turning back toward the attackers.
“Take it!” he shouted at me over his shoulder. “Shoot if they get close!”
I stared down at the gun, then back up at the three men who had just dropped into the courtyard like uncoordinated burglars. My hands were already shaking and the weight of the weapon felt wrong. Too heavy. Too real.
They had guns, but they were clearly out of breath, too. One of them was still brushing glass out of his hair.
More shots exploded behind us, near the back of the property. Apparently, the main fight was happening somewhere else. It also meant these three idiots had probably run ahead.
Fantastic.
One of them spotted me and pointed.