Creak.
I open my eyes. My bed doesn’t creak.
I sit up. I don’t recall lying down on the couch. I stare into the dim light from the den’s lamp, listening.
The faintest tap. Someone is inside the house. Ilya left and Irina shouldn’t be here today.
I quietly move to my home bar. I lift it up less than an inch and shift it forward. I reach behind it, finding the holster where my Ruger is kept.
Gun in one hand, I take the cocktail shaker in the other. I reach it into the doorway, using the reflection to check for anyone in the hallway. When there’s no one, I set the shaker down and step out into the hallway.
I listen again. Nothing.
I search the halls and the rooms on the first floor. Empty. I keep my gun raised. As I move toward the entrance, mind racing, I notice a small dark shadow underneath the door.
Not a shadow. Blood.
I jerk the door open, fear gripping me as I picture Ilya, dead on my doorstep. More than my second-in-command, the man is also my closest friend—something I rarely acknowledge. But if he’s been killed …
I take several steps out, my finger over the trigger. Another dead body lies farther out in the yard, but no moving targets.
I check the body at the front door. It’s not Ilya. Relief washes over me, along with regret as I see that it’s Bogdanov—a low-ranking soldier. Even so, he was one of my men, and I treat all their deaths the same—with the aim to avenge the loyal fallen. His throat has been slit, blood painting his lower neck and most of his chest. Tension ricochets in my body as I go farther out to check the other body. Semyonov. Another soldier, who had three kids. A knife wound to his eye, one to his throat, and three to his chest. Ilya must have assigned them to the house.
Fuck.
I pull out my cell phone, then hear a sudden sound, deafening, followed by indescribable pain.
For a split second, I feel my body crash into the cement and the blood-drenched grass before everything is gone.
20
Allison
“Could you pour us some wine?” Julia asks as she sets the pot roast back into the oven. “It should be ready soon after your parents get here.”
I take two glasses out of our cabinet. After I pour one glass, I stop before I pour into the other one.
What is the likelihood that I’m pregnant? I try to recall the statistics—it’s either fifteen percent or twenty-five percent and both seem like a high risk.
I set the wine bottle down and fill my glass with water from the faucet instead. When I hand Julia her glass, she glances between the glass of water and my face.
“Are you driving somewhere tonight?” she asks.
“No,” I say. Avoiding her maternal gaze, I look over at our dining room table. I can almost see Lev sitting there, refusing to drink more because he knew how I felt about driving under the influence.
Her eyes narrow. “This dinner isn’t to tell your parents that you’re pregnant, is it?”
I nearly spit out my water. She rubs my back as I cough into the sink. It only makes me feel worse.
“Um,” I manage to get out. “No. The dinner is because my parents wanted to talk about my relationship with Lev.”
Her hand on my back feels too small. Lev’s arms, steady and toned, gave me security without feeling restrictive. When he held me after I told him about the car crash, he turned all my panic into the heartbeat of something new.
“I could see why your father wouldn’t like him.” Julia sips from her wine. “Why isn’t Lev here then?”
“Well … we broke up.”
She rubs the back of her neck. “I think you might have spiked my drink because I’m already confused. Why are your parents coming over if the two of you broke up?”
I shoot her an apologetic look. “We were kinda engaged.”
“Are you shitting me?” She sets her glass down. “What the hell, Ally? Take a few steps back. So, at one point, you got engaged. And at some point, this became past tense. Have I been downgraded to your next-door neighbor or something? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was chaotic. Everything was overwhelming,” I say. “But it’s over now. So, my parents should be happy.”
“Are you happy?”
“Yeah,” I lie.
She eyes me suspiciously. “And this engagement had nothing to do with a pregnancy?”
“No,” I say. “That … is something else entirely.”
“Excuse me?”
“I missed two of my birth control pills. So … I might be.”
Julia throws her hands up in the air. “Holy shit, Ally.”
“Can we please change the subject?” I ask.
“Not yet. What does Lev think about all of this?”
“He doesn’t want it. I doubt there’s any pregnancy anyway,” I say. She frowns.
“Well, I guess that works out,” she says. “It’s still not great. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s just forget about it. Tell me about your day.”
She sighs, taking another sip of her wine. “Fine. In comparison, my day has been boring, which is saying something. So, the first call I get, it turns out to be a guy with a huge swastika on his neck. His friends have similar tattoos. This guy has overdosed, I’m trying to save his life and get him into the ambulance while his friends are trying to prevent me from helping him because Faiza is with me and I guess they didn’t like the look of him or something. The police end up coming to help us. On my second call, a man was beating his kid and the kid had locked himself in the bathroom. That’s all we were told, but once we got there, we found out that before the kid locked himself in the bathroom, he’d stabbed his father in
