SWNOVELS Twilight Sins: Chapter 72
We turn into the mouth of the driveway and Nik curses. “Fuck. The gates are wide open.”
We’ve had thirty minutes to imagine what we’ll find at the mansion. Every single one of my worst-case scenarios begins with those gates being open.
Without discussing it, Nik pulls his gun out of the center console. I get mine ready, too. We both know what this means.
I was right.
He eases the car through the open gates, crawling along the drive until we see the first body. Someone is lying face-down on the curb just outside the wrecked security shack. The door is hanging off the hinges, there are so many bullet holes in the siding it looks like a sieve, and the red warning lights inside the shack are flashing again and again, red throbs like blood splashed against the black, empty night.
One of my men is dead.
It’s not Luna. It’s not Mariya.
I’d sacrifice my own life and countless others to keep the two of them alive.
I jump out of the car and check the man’s pulse without flipping him over. The time for identifying bodies will come later.
Nothing. No pulse. But his body is still warm.
I look up and see more bodies. Blood squelches under my feet as I go to each of them. Dead. Dead.
“Goddammit.” Nik kneels down next to Oleg, his hand flat on the man’s back.
Oleg is next in charge after Nik. If he’s gone… they didn’t stand a chance.
“Yakov.” Nik’s voice is barely above a whisper, but the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
I follow his gaze and see the front door to the mansion standing open.
Dread coils low in my stomach. I’m vibrating with rage and terror and regret as Nik and I race across the grass towards the house. It’s too quiet. There should be yelling. We were supposed to show up in the middle of the fight, bullets flying, bodies dropping.
It’s not supposed to be over.
We’re too late.
I’m so focused on the front door that I almost miss the dark shape off to the right. But I turn towards it and nearly fall to my knees.
“Mariya!” Her name roars out of me.
Nik spins around, searching until he sees her, too. We run for her, dropping down on either side of our baby sister.
Nik combs his hand through her hair. “Mariya, can you hear me? Mariya.”
I can’t even look at her. I keep my eyes pinned to the grass above her head. Her face is so pale it’s practically glowing in the darkness. With every blink, I see my father draped across my arms. The trickle of blood that came out of his mouth and his nose. How still and cold he was.
Then Mariya whimpers. “Lu… Luna?”
“She’s alive,” Nik breathes.
Thank fucking God. But Luna’s name is a knife to my chest even as relief floods through me.
“It’s me,” Nik says. “Me and Yakov. We’re here. Where were you shot?”
Mariya coughs, instantly wincing and grabbing for her right shoulder. “Ow.”
Blood soaks into the knees of my pants. Thin streams of it are still flowing over her neck. “She’s losing a lot of blood.”
Nik takes off his shirt and presses it against Mariya’s shoulder.
“What happened, Mariya?” I ask her. “Who did this?”
I already know what she’s going to say. I figured it out at the club.
I figured it out too late, though. Too. Fucking. Late.
“Akim,” she gasps, wincing again as Nik applies pressure to her wound.
“Where is Luna?”
There are a million other questions I should be asking. When did Akim arrive? When did he leave? How many men were with him?
But Luna is the only thought in my head.
Mariya shakes her head. Her eyes roll around in her head like loose marbles. “I… don’t know.”
Her eyes flutter closed. I reach down and shake her other shoulder. “Mariya!”
“Yakov!” Nik snaps. “She’s been fucking shot.”
“And Luna could be dead any second,” I fire back. “I need to know what happened.”
“It’s blurry. I p-passed out.” Mariya’s voice is getting softer by the second. Like someone is slowly turning her volume down. “I remember… I saw L-Luna. For a second. She came out and then…”
“Then?” I press.
Nik gives me another warning glare, but I don’t care. If anything Mariya can tell me will save Luna, I have to try.
“They took her.”
As soon as the words are out of her mouth, I turn and sprint into the mansion. I run from room to room, yelling Luna’s name. I’ve been avoiding her for days, but I’d give my fucking life to see her curled up in the library with a book in her lap or nearly burning down my kitchen to make me breakfast.
I check my room, which belongs more to her than it does to me now. The soft vanilla scent of her is everywhere. It torments me with how close we were.
She was just here.
And now, she’s gone.
Just like I knew she’d be.
My laptop is lying on the bed. I have no idea how it got here, but it doesn’t matter. I sit on the edge of the bed and pull up the security footage. I scroll through the playback until I see movement. Until I see her.
Luna is running barefoot down the driveway, her blonde hair trailing behind her. I know how this ends. I know she doesn’t make it. But that doesn’t stop me from muttering under my breath.
“Run, Luna. Keep moving. Don’t stop.”
She cuts into the grass, sprinting… towards Mariya.
Luna’s life is on the line. This is her chance to escape. But she drops to her knees next to my little sister. She’s so focused on Mariya that she doesn’t notice the men creeping around the far side of the house. When Luna finally stands up, it’s too late.
One man grabs her around the waist while another puts a hood over her face. They bind her wrists and throw her in a van.
I have only one thought searing its way through the sky of my brain like a comet: they will die for this. Every single person who laid a hand on her is dead. Every single person responsible for this attack is dead.
Akim wanted me to suffer, but he has no idea the hell I’m willing to walk through to get Luna back.
I can’t lose her. I won’t.
Whatever it takes, I’m bringing her home.