Since she called when I was in Alexander’s office, I knew Rai had a plan bigger than sending Kyle and his assassin after Ivan.
“For fuck’s sake,” Kyle says after she hangs up, but he doesn’t try to stop her again.
She smiles at me; it’s slight and barely there. “Let’s get my sister back.”
With purposeful strides, she pounds on the metal door and doesn’t even blink at the corpses lying in front of it. “I’m here, Ivan. I have the ledger.”
Kyle creeps to her right and I stand to her left as we wait for a response.
One second passes, two—
The door opens with a creak. A blond man stands in the entrance, filling it up and disallowing any view of the inside.
“Rai…” he says in an accented voice, grinning. “Isn’t this a surprise? You even brought the traitor.”
Kyle lifts a shoulder. “I was never with you.”
Now I know why he sounded familiar. Although he feigned a Russian accent at the time, this is the man who was at the forest the night Reina—and supposedly Rai—were assaulted. He pretended to be with them but was actually saving Rai. That’s why she’s been relatively safe since.
“If you want the ledger, you can have it.” Rai steps forward.
“Where is it?” The humor Ivan tried to fake disappears.
“Where’s my sister?”
A red drop hits the ground and I follow the line, realizing the source is his hands, which he’s been hiding since he opened the door.
Reina…?
“See, it’s a bit too late. She wouldn’t talk, and you know I hate the silent ones.” He pauses. “She’s not dead yet, though, so give me the ledger and I might let her breathe another second.”
The need to pull the trigger and shoot him in the head overwhelms me, but I can’t do that, not without knowing how many of his men are in there. What if I hurt him and the others kill Reina?
“My sister first.” Rai’s voice doesn’t change.
He extends a hand. “The ledger, Rai. Don’t make this too difficult and try to take what was never yours.”
“That’s you, not me. But fine, I guess you win.”
“I always win, suka. Now give it.”
Rai reaches a hand under her hoodie and Ivan’s eyes light up like a kid.
Instead of a ledger, she pulls out something glinting and grabs him by the hand, going straight to his eyes with a knife. His roar of pain can be heard in the long empty hallway.
He reaches blindly at her. The knife in his right eye gushes blood all over his cheek and neck and down to his shirt.
I push him aside in his stupor and run inside. If there is anyone in there and they’ve hurt—
The sight in front of me stops me in my tracks. Reina lies on the ground, tied to a chair. Her blond strands are smudged with red. Everything is red—her face, her arms, and even her clothes.
Fuck!
I run toward her, tuning out the commotion between Rai, Kyle, and Ivan. Crouching in front of Reina, I push the strands over her cheeks and find one of her eyes swollen, the other closed shut. Her lips are bloodied and busted. If I hadn’t recognized her as my Reina from afar, I wouldn’t have known it’s truly her.
I cut through the wires around her wrist like a maniac with the knife Kyle gave me. I hold her hand mine and wait with a held breath to see the rise and fall of her chest, the proof she’s alive and won’t put me through the torture of living without her anymore.
A small sound rips from her, something that resembles a whimper or a moan of pain—or both.