Page 197 of Tarnished Tyrant (Zhukova Bratva 1)

“Get out of the house right now,” Xena hisses. “Grab your sister and go.”

“Xena? Did you get my message? I texted you that I’m calling off the plan. I know you went to a lot of trouble, but—”

“He knows.”

Ice settles in my veins. “What?”

“Nikolai knows you’ve been working with me. He knows you were planning to disappear. He knows what you’ve done.”

Inhaling is difficult. My lungs feel like stone. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to catch my breath.

“But… how? I just saw him. Everything was fine.”Everything was perfect.“What happened?”

“There’s no time to explain, Belle. I’m trying to help you here. You have to get out of that house before he gets back.”

I blink again and again, as if that will change anything. It’s like waking up from a good dream, trying desperately to cling to the warm, fuzzy feeling. I’m not ready to give up on this fantasy.

“Belle!” Xena snaps. “You have to move. Do you have any idea what Nikolai does to people who cross him?”

In my mind’s eye, I see the men who came to get me the other night. One of them falls sideways in a pool of his own blood. His friend collapses back into the car after a gunshot wound to the head.

Dead. Dead. So fucking dead.

That could just as easily be me.

It could just as easily be Elise.

My hand is shaking around the phone. “What do I do?”

“Get your sister and get outside,” she instructs. “I’ll take care of everything else.”

Xena hangs up. I move in a daze to Elise’s room and shove the door open. She’s sitting in the center of her bed, a laptop open in front of her.

“Ever heard of knocking?” she grumbles. But when she sees my face, her eyes widen. She slides to the edge of her bed and grabs my hand. “Belle, what’s wrong?”

“We have to go.”

I hate that I can see the panic lance through her. I hate that I brought this chaos and trauma and pain into her life.

But right now, the only thing I can do to protect her is get her out of this house.

“Is this about what Nikolai said? About his enemies?”

How do I explain to her that Nikolai might be the enemy now? I can’t. There isn’t time. Instead, I nod. “We just have to go, okay? Now.”

She slips on her shoes, and we run through the house and straight through the front door without stopping to grab anything. No covert mission this time around, no sneaking from tree to tree. We sprint as quickly as we can down the curved driveway towards the road.

By the time we reach the curb, a sleek black car pulls up in front of us.

Elise gasps and tries to pull me back, but the passenger window rolls down and Xena Simatou looks out at me from the driver’s seat.

“Get in,” she orders, a crack of desperation in her voice.

I push Elise towards the car. “It’s safe. It’s okay.”

“It’s that lady from Iceland.” Elise does a double take as I help her into the backseat.

“Xena,” she explains with a tight smile. “Nice to meet you.”

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