Page 152 of The Bratva Sinner

I don’t have time to process the dead man on the ground.

Damien is moving us. I readjust my grip around Maksim’s waist, and we go. My legs are shaking, but I keep moving. One foot in front of the other, across the cracked asphalt, toward the lights of the waiting vehicles.

Sergei appears out of the dark ahead of us. He stops when he sees his brother. Relief and fury cross his face.

He steps forward and takes Maksim’s weight from me. Maksim lets him, and that’s when I see him slump. Sergei’s strong form is supporting the full weight of his younger brother.

Sergei says something in Russian close to Maksim’s ear. Maksim responds the same way. I don’t understand the words, but I pick up on the tone.

My legs are so heavy. It takes monumental force to get them to move. Someone is there, supporting me the way I supported Maksim.

I’m being put into the back of the SUV and stop.

“Nikolai,” I say.

“Already in a vehicle. He’s going to be fine.” A man I don’t recognize places a hand on my back, helping to steer me. “You did good.”

I have no idea who the man is, but I believe him.

44

Maksim

I’m propped against the headboard of the narrow bed in the med room, with my ribs wrapped and a warm feeling spreading through my veins. The doctor shot me up with a painkiller against my protests. He apparently listens to my wife now. She is apparently more terrifying than me. I’m apparently too injured to have a say.

And I love her even more for it, and it has zero to do with the honey sliding through my veins and dulling the pain.

Lila standsat the foot of the bed with her arms crossed over her chest, and her jaw set so hard that I see the muscle ticking in her cheek. She’s got blood on her clothes that isn’t hers. Her hair is wild. Her eyes are red-rimmed and blazing, and she hasn’t stopped crying since they brought me in. She’s mad as hell and crying through it.

She looks like she went to war.

I think about my mother. She had that same quality—fury and love wound so tightly together that you couldn’t separate them.My mother loved each of us fiercely. I remember the first time that Nikolai got stabbed. She’d cried and shouted at him while she cleaned his wound.

She would have loved Lila.

“You look terrible,” Lila says.

“Feel terrible.”

Her eyes flash with anger even as another tear slides down her cheek. She doesn’t acknowledge it.

“You knew they were coming,” she says.

“I made a call.”

“You let me walk out of there thinking there was a big rescue, and they told me there wasn’t. I left you to die. Do you know what that did to me?”

“I’m sorry.” I mean it. “I needed you out.”

She makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You asshole.”

“I trusted my brothers.”

“Ember?” she asks. “I assumed it was a code to go in there and save you.”

“Saveyou. It was code to get you back to the estate. He was supposed to keep you safe while my brothers came for me.”

“And if they didn’t?” she asks.