I wake with a start, my heart pounding inside my chest as sweat slicks down my spine. My muscles are tense as I search the darkness with wide eyes, trying to figure out what it was that woke me with terror filling my veins.
“What the fuck?” Roman mumbles, also sitting up in bed, his naked chest lined in the moonlight. His palm comes up to rub his face, the other side of me cold where Rowan should be. A sharp crack sounds and my heart thuds as he curses. “Fuck! That’s gunfire, stay here!”
He leaps out of bed just as the door crashes open and Hunter storms in.
“Sergi is playing his hand, attacking us on our own fucking turf,” he snarls, his body vibrating as he slams the light on and I blink, trying to clear this nightmare away. Roman is still cursing as he tugs on his sweatpants and a vest, all while I sit there, the still-warm blankets clutched to my naked chest.
Hunt goes to his bedside table and nausea swirls around my stomach when he pulls out a gun, checks it, and then shoves it into the back of his jeans. Full-body tremors wrack my frame, my arms coming to wrap around myself as my mind begs for this to be a nightmare.
“W–what’s that for?” I ask, dread leaving me freezing and shaking. Hunt pauses, his deep scowl softening as he comes towards the bed. Using the same hand that just checked his weapon, he cups my cheek, and my breath stutters out of my lips as I hold his intense stare.
“Stay here, Iris,” he commands, and it’s the use of my name that stops my heart. I didn’t realise how much the constant use of nicknames was a comfort until now. “Rowan will stay with you, Bubby and a few of the others will keep you safe. We need to protect our people and show those bastards that they can’t come onto Shadows’ turf and not pay the price.”
My breathing is stuttered, my chest unable to take in a full breath as he dips down and places a quick kiss on my lips. Then he’s gone, taking all the warmth from the room. I swallow, licking my lips as Roman steps in front of me.
“Stay in the flat, okay, Princess? We’ll soon sort this out.” Then his lips land on mine, his kiss deeper than Hunt’s but no less fleeting before he’s striding away.
My lips are frozen, opening and closing as I’m left alone. A small whimper leaves me when I hear the front door slam, and I realise that I didn’t even get my fucking brain to work to say anything.
Trembling, I get out of bed, reaching down and snagging a hoodie from the floor. A broken sound falls from my lips when I realise it’s Roman’s, and tears fill my eyes when I tug it over my head, the soft material falling to my thighs. I slip some knickers and my leggings on, though it doesn’t seem to matter that I wore them yesterday. I just need something to cover my clammy skin and make me warm again.
Only being in their arms will chase away the cold…
More cracks rend the air, sounding far too close, and I flinch, especially now that I know the sound is gunfire and that my guys, my Shadows, are out there, facing bullets. My heart thrashes inside my chest, the walls feeling like they’re closing in as panic consumes me. Stopping, I take several deep breaths, just focusing on counting them until the black spots that were starting to take over my vision disappear.
With the next pop, something jogs inside my mind, and I rush to my bedside table, opening the top drawer and grabbing the knife that Rowan gave me. It sits in my trembling palm, the handle warming against my skin, and not only does it make me feel closer to the guys, but a sense of power washes over me. I may not know how to use it since we didn’t get that far in my self-defence training, but at least I have something if it all goes to shit.
It’s with shaking limbs that I leave the room, tucking the switchblade in a small pocket in my leggings before making my way down the silent hall, planning to find Rowan, whom I’ve still yet to see. Hunt said he would be here with me, alongside Dayton and some of the other guys. As more gunfire sounds, I can’t help wondering where the fucking police are, though as soon as the thought enters my mind, another tells me that Sergi probably paid them off. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had that kind of power.
All the hair on my body stands on end, my breathing picking up as I pad down the hall towards the main living room. The place feels so empty without the guys in it, so cold and lifeless, and I once more wrap my arms around myself as I round the corner. My eyes snap upwards, a dark shadow appearing from the side of the room and stealing all the oxygen from my lungs.
“Good evening, Kukolka.” My entire body freezes, the sound of Sergi Petrov’s voice like the brush of death upon your spine. “You have been a very naughty girl, but it’s time for you to come home where you belong.”
HUNTER
My jaw clenches as I duck behind a concrete planter, just barely avoiding another fucking bullet that could have taken me out. Fuck. We’re outnumbered, and the number of my crew littering the ground breaks my fucking heart. I can’t even get to them to check if they’re alive, the gunfire unrelenting.
I would question why the police haven’t turned up, but knowing the Russians, they’ve been paid to ignore what’s happening on the estate. Fucking pigs, it’s bollocks to think they are here for the people. They’re here for whoever pays them the most.
“What’s the plan, Hunt?” Roman pants from beside me, and I look over at him, seeing the same grim determination that I feel, his face and body glistening with ruby red like some kind of demon. The Russians have suffered losses too, but there are too many of them for us to gain the upper hand, and it pisses me the fuck off.
I knew from the moment Nikolai messaged me, telling me he was being sent to Russia, that something was going to happen. That Sergi was planning something and that we’d be going into it blind without his son and heir’s help.
“What’s the plan, Hunter?” Roman asks again, his voice rough, the blood lust riding him hard, and I swallow before biting the inside of my cheek. My stomach tenses, similar to when I was a young boy and would come home to find my baby sister screaming with hunger as my mother was passed out on the sofa, a needle in her arm.
For the first time in years, I’m at a loss. I don’t have a fucking plan, just a hope that we somehow make it out of this alive.
IRIS
My entire body goes cold, like the icy brush of a freezing winter wind as I gaze upon Sergi Petrov, the man I’ve been running from for what feels like an eternity, but in reality, is barely over a week.
I don’t ask what he’s doing here, or how he got past the Shadows that were posted outside the door, but I can’t stop the small sound of pain that leaves my lips when I see Rowan, slumped on the floor, a small puddle of ruby underneath him. He’s not moving, and as I take a step forward, Sergi tsks like I’m a naughty child, and my gaze snaps back to his.
“He’s not dead, just incapacitated for now,” Sergi says, his accented voice so damn calm that it sends a shiver across my skin. “What happens next, what happens to them all, is completely up to you, little Iris.”
Terror locks up my muscles, making it hard to breathe, my heart screaming at me to go to Rowan and check for myself, but my mind knows that I’m mostly powerless here.
“What do you mean?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper, and the grin he gives me is nothing short of evil as he closes the distance between us. I’m frozen, my mind screaming at me to run, but my body just won’t fucking move.
“You have a choice, Kukolka.” His hand reaches out, his fingers grasping a piece of my hair and coiling it around, his touch gentle but full of a promise that makes butterflies with barbed wings soar in my stomach and bile sting the back of my throat. “If you come with me quietly, with no fuss, I will let them all live.”
My breath stutters out of my lips, and his burning gaze focuses on them, heat entering his brown eyes in a way that makes nausea roll around my insides.
“And if I don’t?” I ask, already knowing that I will do anything to keep the Shadows and Bubby safe. The weight of my blade presses into my hip, but I daren’t use it, not with Sergi and several of his goons filling the room, violence swirling around them like a heady perfume.
“Then they, and everyone else who is important to them, will die tonight.” His words are a violent caress, a devastating promise that settles inside me with the finality of a stone falling to the bottom of a lake.
My eyelids flutter shut, two hot tears scorching a path down my cheeks.
“I’ll go, just please don’t hurt them,” I plead, my voice broken, small, and full of desolation.
“So beautiful when you cry and beg,” Sergi comments softly, leaning in and placing his dry lips against my cheek. His tongue darts out, catching my anguish and lapping it up. I have to swallow hard to stop from vomiting all over his pristine, tailored suit. “Tell the men to stand down.” His order is quiet, but I hear the door open and then the crack of gunfire stopping.
Blinking my eyes open, I face my new reality, one that, in the deepest part of myself, I knew I wouldn’t be able to escape. It was always going to come to this, a choice which is no choice at all, because there is no way I’d be able to live in a world without them, without my Shadows.
“Let’s go and give them the good news, shall we?” Sergi suggests, but we both know it’s a command when his fingers wrap around my bicep to drag me towards the door of the flat.
HUNTER
All of a sudden, the gunfire stops, and I exchange a concerned look with Roman. Why have they stopped? Nausea swirls in my stomach as the answer comes to me, my stomach bottoming out as it becomes obvious.
“It was a distraction,” I whisper, locking eyes with Roman. Comprehension dawns on him just as we hear the door to the stairwell slam open, and I know, before even looking, that we’ve somehow lost.
“Time to come out, little Shadows,” Sergi’s voice is full of glee as it rings around the courtyard. “And drop your weapons. You wouldn’t want your precious flower to have her petals plucked.”
My eyelids slide closed, my world ending when he confirms my worst nightmare. They have Iris. They’ve overpowered Rowan. They have us surrounded, outmanned, and outgunned. I can’t save my people and her.
With a heaving sigh, I get up, my arms raised as I slowly spin and face the direction of his voice. Seeing something is different from believing it, and the moment I see her beautiful face, tears glistening on her perfect cheeks, my soul fractures.
“I’m so sorry, Hunt,” she whispers, the words somehow making them to me, cutting into me, even given the distance between us.
I lower my arms, dropping my gun on the tarmac, the sound bouncing around the night. “Drop your weapons.” The sound of guns hitting the floor rings around us, my crew following my order as we face the devil him-fucking-self.
Roman appears beside me, his sharp intake of breath making my eyes look away from Iris’s face to see Sergi with his hand wrapped around her arm, a knife pressed against her delicate throat. My beast roars at the audacity he has of touching our woman, and I swear a vow that he will die by my hand one day.
“Good. Now, you took something that didn’t belong to you, boy,” Sergi chides, like I’m some naughty child to be told off. My hands clench into fists at my sides, my jaw working as my brain tries to find some way out of this. “I’m taking it back.”
Beefy hands pull my arms behind me, the grunt to the side of me telling me the same is happening to Roman, and we’re pushed towards Sergi and Iris. I don’t take my gaze off her, unable to look away as her eyes plead with me to make this right. To fix this somehow.
One of Sergi’s men steps from behind him, and Roman’s growl fills the space as a bloodied and almost out-of-it Rowan is brought beside us. His chest is coated in red, and I’m pretty sure he’s been at least shot, a head wound trickling blood down the side of his face.
We’re forced to our knees, the cold, unforgiving pavement sending pain ricocheting up my legs from the impact. Then the cold barrel of a gun is pressed to my forehead, Iris’s stuttered cry filled with terror as my attention is brought back to the man in front of me.
“Y–you promised that if I came with you, you wouldn’t hurt them,” she says, her wide gaze flitting between the twins and I.
“Oh, Kukolka,” Sergi coos, and a red mist coats my vision as he leans in and brushes his nose along her cheek. “That is just to make sure they don’t do something stupid.”
A small whimper sounds in her throat when he finally moves that fucking knife, rage filling my veins when he uses it to slice down the front of the hoodie that she’s wearing, her naked breasts exposed to the night as he cuts it away from her.
“You motherfucker!” Roman snarls, grunting when the massive guy holding him pistol-whips him with the gun. I see the bloom of red on the side of his head, but my guy pushes his gun painfully into my skin, forcing me to look back at his boss.
“No!” Iris cries, fresh tears welling in her eyes as Sergi ignores all of us and starts to cut away the leggings she’s wearing next. Her body trembles, fresh tears dripping down her cheeks as she holds still, her hands balled into tight fists at her sides.
“You will learn, Kukolka, that I can do whatever I like to the things that I own,” Sergi tells her softly, gently, like it’s words a lover would speak. My blood boils, my body burning as I watch him cut away her underwear until she’s naked and shivering in the freezing air.
The leggings land with a soft thunk, and he pauses, an eyebrow raised. Then one of his men dips down, searching and pulling out something that was hidden in the fabric. Iris’s jaw sets as Sergi takes the object, a low, goosebump-inducing chuckle falling from his lips when he presses a button and a razor-sharp blade slides out.
“Seems like our baby doll has some sharp edges,” he muses, the switchblade that Rowan gave Iris glinting in the moonlight. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to smooth them out.”
He hands the switchblade off to one of his men, who swaps it for a circle of black leather.
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Rowan’s slurred words are a harsh whisper, like a knife as it slides into flesh, but Sergi doesn’t even spare him a glance, placing the fucking collar around my wife’s neck and buckling it up.
It’s an abomination. If anyone should collar her, it’s us, not this cunt. I watch as her eyes slide shut, defeat rounding her shoulders as his fingers gently trace the collar like she really does belong to him. Then he reaches out, still fucking ignoring the three Shadows promising him murder, and a low growl leaves my lips when he’s handed a chain, the sharp snick of it being attached to the collar loud in the silence.
“You will come to heel,” he whispers, wrapping the chain around his fist until it’s pulled taut and her eyes pop open. It takes everything in me not to fight the hold that grips me tightly, but I can’t do anything to put her in any more danger. Sergi twists so that he’s facing us, his dark gaze locking with mine. “Or I will send her to you in pieces. Then I will kill everyone you’ve ever loved. Your sister in that American academy. Your crew turned to dust. The men who stand beside you, carved up like animals for slaughter.” He steps closer to me, dragging Iris along until he’s looming over me, speaking my deepest fears as she shudders, naked beside him. “And you, Hunter Anderson, will be the last to die. You will watch as they all fall, knowing that you could have saved them if only you’d submitted.”
I swallow hard, drowning in the horrific picture he’s painted, holding his gaze and frozen to my very bones. There is no way out of this, not right now anyway, and the smirk that slowly spreads over his lips tells me that he knows this. He’s won. For now at least.
And so with the taste of ashes filling my mouth, I lower my gaze, dipping my head in submission as I do the only thing I can to save everyone, to keep us all breathing, just for the moment.
My heart shatters, my soul flickering out as the light leaves my world when he drags her away, her soft sobs ringing in my ears as I continue to kneel long after all of Sergi’s men have left.
Forgive me, Peaches.
