“Thank you.”
When I walk back behind the sofa, Renata is looking at me closely. “What’s that look on your face?” she asks.
“There’s no look,” I say. “I’m just going to get more guns.”
“You’re leaving us here?”
“Only for a few minutes.”
“You’re going after Rokiades, aren’t you?” she asks accusingly.
“Renata…”
“No!” she says. “No.” Given her hand is still clasped on top of Sarah’s wound, she’s unable to stand up and face me. “Kian, don’t go.”
Phoenix hovers behind me. I glance back at him. “Take her place for a moment.”
The future Kovalyov don gets to his knees beside Sarah and presses his hands onto her gunshot wound. I help Renata to her feet, then pull her to the corner of the room by the closed windows.
“Don’t go,” she says again—this time, more passionately. “I need you.”
He words are a punch in the gut, but I can’t just sit here knowing that Yannis is out there. As long as he’s alive, he will continue to be a threat to my Clan and to Renata. I can’t allow him to live. In any case, I’d made myself a promise. I’d made Rokiades a promise, too.
And I’m a man of my fucking word.
She grabs my hand and forces me to meet her eyes. “I can see what you’re thinking. You want revenge,” she says. “I can see the bloodlust in your face. But it’s not worth it, Kian. Just stay with me.”
“We won’t be able to be together in peace, Renata. Not as long as he’s alive.”
“You’re in no fit state to fight,” she points out.
“I’m stronger than I look.”
“He’s got too many men.”
“Renata,” I say, grabbing her face between my hands, “enough. I will survive. And I will come back.”
“You promise?”
The youth shines back at me from her eyes. She’s so fucking young, so fucking pure, and yet somehow, over the last few months, she’s given herself to me. A grizzled old man with too many scars on my body and too many skeletons in my closet.
“I promise.” I pull her face to mine and kiss her hard. I’m pretty sure I’m bruising her lips, but I don’t care and she doesn’t seem to, either.
When I release her, she grips my wrists, keeping my hands on her face. “Come back to me,” she orders. “In one piece.”
“I will,” I say with a firm nod.
Then I kiss her forehead and slip out of the room. I’ve got two guns on me, but I know I’m low on ammo. I can’t afford to go searching for more right now, though. Time is short. Windows of opportunity only last so long before something changes the game.
There’s a part of me that registers that my off-the-cuff plan is bordering on reckless. Especially in light of the promise I’ve just made to Renata. But the adrenaline is surging now. Determination courses through my veins like crack cocaine. And all I want is to wrap my hands around Yannis Rokiades’s throat and squeeze the life right out of the motherfucker.
I can feel the battle drawing to its inevitable conclusion. It can only end in one of two ways.
His death… or mine.
I hear a sound and freeze immediately. An instant later, two guards run into my line of vision. I recognize them instantly as enemies. They’re definitely not Clan. Nor are they Bratva.
They look like they’re running from something. But I don’t pause to ask what. I just raise my gun and fire twice. Both men drop to the floor. One’s dead on impact. The other tries to crawl away.