Page 117 of Sapphire

“No!” I scream, watching the bullets slice through their skin, and they fall to the dirt with a thud.

Instinct kicks in, and my hand tightens around the knife. With as much force as I can muster, I drive it into the soft flesh of Nikolai’s stomach, over and over again.

“You fucking bitch!” Nikolai screams as he moves away from me, knocking the knife from my hand. I’m now defenseless. “You stabbed me!”

I can see the shock register on his face. His shirt is covered in blood, and it drips down his hand as he clutches at his belly. He tilts his head at me as if trying to work out why on earth I would have stabbed him. His gun is still trained on me, but his hand is a little shakier than it once was. Hopefully, he’ll miss me if he decides to shoot.

“I loved you, Zoe.” He shakes the gun at me in frustration. “I fucking loved you so much, but you never loved me. I was never good enough for you, was I?”

My heart is racing, all I can see is the barrel of the gun pointing at me, and all I can feel is my body waiting for the bullet to pierce it.

“You hurt me. Yousoldme. That’s not love.” They always say in the movies when in a hostile situation try to talk to the person, calm them down that way.

“To me it was.” And I notice a single tear slip from Nikolai’s eye. “When I saw you across the bar, I knew you were different. I wasn’t supposed to stay with you. My orders were to bring you straight to Moscow, but I couldn’t. I knew what would happen if I did. I wanted a normal life with you, even if it was for a fleeting moment, Zoe.”

Tears are falling down my cheeks now. I’m stunned by Nikolai’s words.

“You were worth the trouble I got into for not bringing you sooner. For the first time in my life, I could see a future with someone. I asked my boss if I could keep you, if I could marry you instead of putting you up for sale, but he said that our family could get much more out of you working than being my wife.”

“I would have said yes,” I tell him. It’s the truth. I would have easily said yes.

“But it’s too late now, isn’t it?” The fight in Nikolai is slowly coming to an end, and maybe that means the end is coming for me.

“Yeah, it is. Too much has happened between us, you know that.”

“I know, but …” He lets out a heavy sigh. “Just know that no matter what happens now ….” His eyes scan the desert around us. “I love you, Zoe.” His hand steadies and his fingers curl around the gun. This is it. This is how it all ends. The sound of a gunshot echoes all around us, and I watch as Nikolai’s body slumps to the ground, the single bullet hole in his head seeping deep red blood. His eyes are wide open.

I turn to see who shot him and Brooks gives me a grin. The concealed weapon hangs loosely in his hand as he slumps back into the dirt.

Nikolai is dead.

Nikolai is dead.

Those words swirl around my mind.

I don’t realize I’m screaming until strong arms wrap around me.

“It’s over. You’re safe now, Zoe,” Tomas tells me.

That’s when I collapse to the ground and start hysterically crying. I can hear distant police sirens.

“It’s over, Zoe, it’s over,” Mateo repeats as they join me in the sand.

Moments later we are swarmed by police. Thankfully ambulances arrive not much later. I watch as Brooks and the driver are taken away, and I pray they will be okay.

Tomas and Mateo were looked over, and thankfully, it was only a flesh wound from the bullets skimming them.

Enrique walks over to where we are sitting, huddled under blankets, sipping coffee, as the shock of today’s events sinks in.

“Nikolai’s dead, but Dmitri hasn’t been found. If he knows what’s good for him, he will go back to Russia and stay there.”

“What about the girls who got sold?”

His eyes don’t meet mine. “We couldn’t save the other Bratva Jewels. We don’t know where they are, but we have made some arrests and hope they will speak and give us some more information.”

Dammit.

Enrique gives me a smile. “But we were able to find where the Bratva kept all their lower-tiered women. We found many houses filled with them both here in Morocco and back in Spain.”

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