Bloodlines: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (The Snake Eyes Series Book 4) (20 page)

Warm blood coats my palm. He weighs heavy in my grasp, moving without any resistance in his muscles. I look down into his open left eye, this one glazed over with more gray than usual.

Yuri reaches down and shakes his shoulders in a childish attempt at waking him.
“Pops!”

I lay his head back down as shock turns to sadness. It only lasts a second. Rage overwhelms everything and I stand up to move towards the windows.

“It’s them,” Fox says, peeking outside through a narrow slit in the curtain.

“Them who?” Yuri asks.

“Snake Eyes,”
I answer.

Fox nods and points outside with his pinky finger. “The sniper is in the trees. Just over that ridge.”

“You’re sure?”

“That’s where I’d be. Avoid the windows.”

I keep my eye on Fox. He maintains his eerie calmness like he’s seen all of this before. “Can you take him out?”

“If I had my rifle, yes.”

“Where is it?”

“Under the couch upstairs.”

“Go get it,” I tell him. “Climb the east stairwell to the roof and knock him to the fucking ground.”

Fox hesitates.

I flex my jaw. “I don’t have time for your resistance to kill right now, Fox.”

“It’s not that,” he says. “This wasn’t a normal hit. This was a distraction.”

“From what?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He glances at my father on the floor. “They don’t make themselves known until it’s too late to stop them.”

Yuri pulls himself off the floor. “What does that mean?”

“It means they’re already inside.”

I look at Markov as he reaches for the radio on his belt.

“Sergei!”
he says into the radio.
“Boris!”

Nothing but silence. I turn around and throw open the bottom drawer in my father’s desk to retrieve the pistols hidden inside.

Markov sighs into the radio. “Somebody
please
say something.”

I pass a gun to Yuri and he instantly slides a bullet into the chamber. “We go together,” I say. “Find Ma and Sofia—”

Yuri raises his gun and points it at Fox’s face.

Fox presents his hands, raising them slowly in calm surrender.

I grab my brother’s wrist. “Yuri, what are you doing?”

“He’s one of
them
.”

“No, I’m not,” Fox says.

I try to lower his arm but Yuri shakes me off. “Put it down, Yuri—”

“He’s been here all night,” Yuri says, his eyes locked on Fox. Markov reaches behind his back for his own weapon and Fox watches with sharp eyes. “He’s seen the grounds. He knows where the guards would be. He could have led them in.”

Fox shakes his head. “I didn’t.”

“Bullshit.
You’ve been playing us from the start.
”

I look from him to my father’s corpse and I squeeze my gun’s grip a little tighter. There’s logic in Yuri’s reasoning, more than I’d like to admit. No one’s ever breached the Lutrova estate before until now.

Not until a snake slithered inside in camouflage.

“Luka…” Fox says, sensing my shift. “I had nothing to do with this.”

I raise my gun but he doesn’t even flinch. Only his eyes move, quickly targeting all of our locations but there’s no way he can dodge three bullets at once. I don’t care how well-trained he is.

“You’re making a mistake,” he says, his voice as solid as stone. “Think about it.”

There’s no time to think it through. Fox Fitzpatrick is a loose end; always has been. Whether he’s double-crossed us or not is irrelevant.

Never let a snake loose in Moscow.

Markov takes a wide step closer to Fox, coming within a meter of him and I inhale a sharp breath.

“Markov—!”

Fox grabs his arm and twists his hand, pulling him around to use him as a shield. He rests the gun’s barrel against Markov’s throat and lays his finger on the trigger before either of us can react.

Yuri panics and fires once but misses them both by a wide margin.

“Yuri, stop!” I keep my gun trained on Fox. “Let him go.”

Fox slides on his toes, inching slowly towards the door, keeping Markov between us and him the entire way.

“There’s no time for this,”
he says. “Trust me or not — it doesn’t change the fact that they came in here for a reason.”

Sofia.

“Shoot him, Luka,”
Markov growls.

My finger wraps tighter around the trigger and I stare at Fox over Markov’s shoulder. Even now, there’s not a hint of panic in his eyes. He’s in complete control and we both know it. Either he’s a total sociopath that deserves to be put down or I’m about to lose a very valuable ally.

I add another pound of pressure to the trigger and he squints.

Fox shoves Markov forward and spins around, darting out into the hallway. I fire off a few rounds, narrowly missing him as he disappears out of sight.

I bolt after him and peek around the door frame in time to see him reach the end of the hall and rush up the stairs to the second floor.

Yuri helps Markov to his feet. “Go after him!”

I pause and shake my head. “Leave him. Head for the kitchen. Avoid the windows.”

We enter the hallway, ducking and hugging the walls as we move. I focus my hearing, listening for anything that will pinpoint an incoming attack but nothing stands out. In fact, I hear nothing at all. The house is
too
quiet. There are no guards in sight when we should have passed three already. There are no bodies. No drops of blood or signs of struggle.

I’d be impressed if I wasn’t so fucking furious.

Finally, I hear it; that devastating sound. It pierces so deep, it rattles my bones.

Lucian.

He cries out, screaming from behind the kitchen door.

I burst through it, driven by a powerful, uncontrollable instinct and his wailing becomes louder.

“Luka!”

I hear Sofia’s voice but a hard kick to the head brings dark spots to my vision. Black, gloved hands grab me and shove me down to my knees while Yuri and Markov grunt in pain behind me and fall to the floor with hard thuds.

My gun slips from my fingers, yanked free by a trained hand. I move to break out of their hold on me but as I look up and my vision clears, I feel the gun barrels press against my skull.

There are five of them standing around me, each one dressed all in black. Just like the hissing man in Moscow. Just like Fox Fitzpatrick in the warehouse in Rome.

I yield and look forward into Sofia’s shaking eyes.

She sits at the table with her palms lying flat against it. Tears spill down her face and I grit my teeth at the gun pressed against her cheek.

My eyes fall to the floor in front of me and I cringe at my mother’s unconscious form lying face down beneath the table.

“What do you think, Lutrova?”

I look up into Gio’s victorious eyes. He smirks down at me with my screaming son draped over his other arm.

“Am I trying hard enough to kill you this time?”

Chapter 21

Sofia

“Let him go,” Luka says, his protective eyes locked on our child. “He doesn’t like you.”

“The feeling is mutual…” Gio glares at Lucian and spins around to drop him back into the high chair beside me.
“Shut him up,”
he spits at me.

I lean in and rest my head against my baby’s forehead, whispering softly in his ear to calm his cries.

Gio limps away from me and I take a deep breath of relief as his gun finally leaves my cheek. He nudges Nina with his dragging foot as he passes over her and Luka flexes his jaw.

“Sorry about
mama
,” Gio says, “but you have
no idea
how long I’ve wanted to hit that woman.”

My eyes stay on Luka and the halo of guns surrounding his head. Any one of them could go off and take him from me at any moment and I die a little more with each passing second.

But Luka doesn’t blink.

“Five assassins, Gio?” he quips.
“Really?”

“
Six
, actually,” Gio smiles and points at them. “Along with the sniper outside. I figured if
one
wasn’t enough then
six
would be plenty to get the job done this time.”

“Well, you wouldn’t be a Zappia if you weren’t
overcompensating
.”

Gio pauses. “You’re going to crack jokes like that
now
, Lutrova? With
six
guns
pointed at your head?”

“The only joke in this room is you, Gio,” he replies, his breath calm and steady. “You had to hire a squad of mercenaries to beat me. Is it really any wonder at all why you could never satisfy her?”

Gio drops his smirk.

“Oh, Sofia,”
Luka whispers, his lips curling. “The things I do to her… and the things she does for
me
…”

Gio lunges forward and knocks his pistol across Luka’s jaw. I cringe and keep Lucian’s attentions on me, praying that he never holds onto any memory of this moment.

Luka chuckles. “You should have seen her this morning…”

“Luka…”
I say, urging him to stop.

Gio twists in my direction and I look into his wild eyes. “No, let him finish…” he says, his voice dry and cold. “It’ll be all the more satisfying when I shoot him.”

“Oh,
please
…” Luka says. “You’re not shooting anybody, Gio.”

“Really?” Gio limps back over to me and lays the gun against my cheek again. “Let’s see if that’s true…”

Luka falls silent and I see that anger in his eyes return as he looks at me. Provoking Gio was obviously supposed to keep that gun away from me and Lucian and pointed at him instead. “Don’t do that,” he warns.

“Does it make you angry, Lutrova?” Gio asks. “Watching as another man takes something from you?” He grabs my arm and yanks me out of my chair. “Well, keep your eyes peeled… because this is
really
going to piss you off.”

Gio lays a hand on the back of my neck and shoves me forward to bend me over the table. My face slaps against it and fresh pain fires through my cheek as Gio leans over me.

“I’ve done some thinking,” he says, grinding his hips against me. “I’ve come to realize… that I don’t want
your bastard
, Lutrova. I want what was promised to me…”

“Please, stop,”
I whimper.

Gio digs his gun into my side, pushing deep towards my belly. “I want
my wife
to give me my heirs.”

“I don’t know, Gio…” Luka says, taking another shot at drawing him away from me. “You’ve been trying for two years. Are you sure there isn’t anything wrong with you?”

“Let’s find out.”

He reaches down to raise my skirt and I slam a fist against the table.

“Gio, please—
” I cry. “Not in front of Lucian. Please.”

He pauses behind me and leans down to whisper in my ear. “I’m getting real tired of you saying my name,
wife
…”

I tremble beneath him, cringing at the stank of his breath. He stands back up and I look to Luka, the fear in his eyes no doubt reflecting mine. I can see it plain as day; his stubborn defiance. He’s not going to sit there and let this happen. His eyes shift. His muscles twitch. Any second now, he’ll lash out but one of those guns will fire a bullet to end him.

I can’t let him do it. I can’t let him die when I could try and stop this myself.

“I’ll go with you!”

Luka deflates.
“Sofia—”

“I will go with you,”
I say it again, craning my neck to look back at Gio. “Please, spare him. Please.”

Gio digs his fingers into my scalp and twists, pulling my head up and I wince as the follicles snap. “He’s already dead, Sofia…”

“Spare him and I will give you anything you want.”

He yanks me up and spins me around to make me face him. “I can
take
whatever I want from you.”

I force my eyes to soften for him. “I will love you,” I say. “I will give you
everything
of me and we’ll never see him again.
Please
, spare him.”

“Sofia…”

I ignore Luka’s protest and Gio smirks.

“Promise?” he asks.

I nod. “Yes, sir.”

Gio takes a step back and loosens his grip on me. He glances down at Luka, taking a long moment to stare into him.

I do the same. Luka’s gray eyes lock onto mine and I take a deep breath, filling my lungs to the top before purposefully blowing it out through my lips. I inhale another one and hold it, waiting for Luka to do it, too.

Finally, he inhales a shaking breath and we both exhale together.

Just like that.

That’s how we stay alive.

Gio steps over to him and waves his hand, signaling the assassins to lower their guns from Luka’s head. “You know, Lutrova, you were wrong…”

“About what?”

Gio throws his good leg upward and kicks Luka in the stomach. Luka doubles forward onto the floor, falling onto his hands and more tears shake loose from my eyes.