Mafia Princess by Kennedy Slope

Chapter Thirty

Iclosed my eyes in an attempt to keep my anger at bay.

“She there?” Marco asked. He was standing beside me in tactical gear. We’d managed to get a team together quickly, and we were surrounding Katarina Petrov’s childhood home. It was set back on a quiet street, so we didn’t have to care too much about neighbors.

My men wanted to storm the place. They were salivating for a kill. But I wouldn’t let anyone in until I knew that Sasha was safe. I wasn’t willing to risk her life on a botched operation.

I hadn’t expected to see her, but as usual, Sasha surprised me.

“She’s in that room,” I said, raising a hand towards the window, where Sasha’s lovely face had been just moments ago. Even though I was far away, I could see the tears and grief in her eyes.

She was upset, but she was alive, and I intended to keep it that way.

“This place is huge, and I couldn’t find a single blueprint online,” Marco said.

I closed my eyes and sent up a small prayer that I was doing the right thing. “This isn’t going to be quiet,” I said. “But we can’t let Katarina get away. She’s proven to be much more dangerous than any of us thought.”

Including her husband, I thought to myself. I knew that Sasha was going to be crushed when I told her that her father was dead. My own feelings aside, Sasha had been close to her father, so much so, that she’d practically begged me to spare his life.

“Katarina’s taken over the Bratva,” Marco said.

“Let’s go,” I said. I’d made the decision to do whatever I could to get Sasha. The men who were surrounding the property had agreed to sacrifice themselves for their queen. I knew that for many of them they didn’t care about Sasha specifically, but I was glad to have them with me just the same.

“Are you sure about this?” Marco asked.

I nodded. “Give the order.”

Marco grabbed a walkie and talked into it. I wasn’t paying attention. My eyes were focused on that window. I needed to get to that room before any of my men did. Katarina Petrov was unlikely to make it out alive, and I didn’t want Sasha caught in the crossfire as she had once before.

I cocked my gun and rushed forward as I heard gunfire going off around me. “Watch your back,” I told my brother.

Marco snorted. “I’ll watch mine and yours.”

I snuck through the woods of the back of the property as quickly as I could, stopping as I watched Katarina’s perimeter guards start leaving their post. It had been decided that we would clear the perimeter, drawing all the men to the front of the property, so that Marco and I could sneak into the back.

We were silent as we made it to the back of the house. Katarina had fewer men than we anticipated, and for the first time, I was starting to think that we might be able to get Sasha back unscathed.

Marco gestured to me as we walked into the backdoor. The house wasn’t very well guarded, and I wondered if it was because Katarina was overly confident or because we were walking into a trap.

“Shit,” my brother muttered as we walked through the door and into the house. The house was well-kept, but the furniture looked ancient. That wasn’t what had stopped Marco and myself. The house was like a fucking maze.

“Who the hell has three staircases,” Marco muttered.

There were two staircases leading upstairs and one leading to what I assumed was a basement.

“She’s upstairs,” I said as I walked towards one of the staircases.

Marco shook his head. The house was dark and eerily quiet. We could hear the gunfire at the front of the house, but there were fewer and fewer shots being fired.

“We aren’t splitting up,” he muttered. “That’s not happening.”

“Go,” I ordered. The more time that we spent arguing, the more likely we were to get caught. I’d asked my men to sacrifice themselves, and I was going to make it count.

I didn’t wait around to see what my brother decided. I walked up the stairs, trying to keep my feet as light as possible which was difficult considering I was wearing combat boots. I didn’t know the layout of the house, which made finding that room Sasha was being held in much more difficult.

But I wasn’t giving up.

The upstairs hallways were darker, which made it more difficult to navigate to see. The fact that I hadn’t seen a single person in the house was starting to make me question if I hadn’t been played.

Marco hadn’t been wrong. There was so much information that was just out of reach.

My heavy boots thumped against the floor as I checked room after room praying that I would find Sasha alive.

There was one more door at the very end of the hallway, and something in my stomach told me that she was in that room. I shifted my gun training it on the room before I reached out and twisted the knob. The door gives, and the second it swings open, I see Sasha tied to a chair.

“Thank fuck,” I muttered.

I didn’t drop the gun as I rushed towards her. She was shaking her head, her eyes wide, as I came up to her. Her face was swollen. It was clear that she’d been hurt, and I vowed to make sure that whoever harmed her experienced a deeply painful death.

“I’m here,” I told her.

The room was surprisingly empty. They probably hadn’t thought that Sasha was too much of a threat tied up and scared. I reached to my belt buckle where I kept my knife. I slipped the blaze under the zip ties holding Sasha to the chair and smiled as they released her with a satisfied snap.

“What are you doing here?” she breathed out the moment she was able to get the gag out of her mouth. Her small hands were pressed against my chest. “You can’t be here.”

I shook my head and grabbed her wrists forcing her out of the chair. “Let’s go,” I told her. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that this was a trap. I wasn’t completely stupid.

Sasha pulled her arm away, which I hadn’t expected. “Wait! You have to listen to me. There’s more to this than you know.”

I was about to drag Sasha out of the room by her hair if I had to. The gunfire outside had practically ceased, and I knew we were running out of time.

“You should have listened to her,” a voice called. I turned around at the sound of a gun cocking and saw Nikolai Petrov standing there with a gun pointed at me.

“Didn’t I kill you already?” I asked. I wasn’t surprised to see him standing before me. I had done much more digging than I’d told anyone. Nikolai and Katarina thought they were so slick, but in reality they’d left breadcrumbs everywhere.

“Nikolai, just let us go,” Sasha begged. “Please.”

I could hear the pain in her voice, and my heart went out to her. I knew that I was going to have to kill her brother. Nikolai wasn’t letting me out of here alive.

“I can’t, Sasha,” Nikolai said.

“Don’t let Mama’s desire for power ruin you,” she said. I was trying to keep her behind me, but she was slowly inching closer and closer, so that she was between the two of us.

“He ruined my life,” Nikolai breathed. “He took everything from me.”

Sasha was now between the two of us.

“I’m not going to let you kill my husband,” Sasha said. Her hands were raised, and I felt my heart starting to thump against my ribs as I looked Nikolai in the eye. Whatever had happened years ago, had warped his sense of reason. His mother had helped. He wasn’t thinking clearly, and until I was dead, he wasn’t going to stop.

“Damn it, Sasha!” he yelled. He was waving the gun around. “Don’t make me do this.”

“Do what?”

He leveled the gun straight at her head. “Don’t make me kill you,” he said.

“It’s me you want, right,” I said, trying to draw Nikolai’s attention away from Sasha. I was worried that any sudden movements would spook him, which was the very last thing that I wanted.

“What are you doing?” Sasha asked, turning to me. Her blue eyes were wide and scared.

I ignored her. “You can have what you want,” I told him. “If you let Sasha go.”

His hand was shaking.

“You don’t want to kill your sister,” I reminded him. “You don’t.”

“You ruined everything!” he breathed out. “I was a good man once.”

I nodded. “Yea,” I said. “Me too.”

I stepped forward, so that I was level with Sasha. Nikolai’s eyes looked back and forth between the two of us. He didn’t know who to train the gun on, and his erratic behavior was making me more and more nervous.

“Look at me, Nikolai,” I ordered. “I’m the one who shot you that night. I started the fire. I wanted you to pay for what your father did to my family, and if I had to do it again, I would.”

The anger in Nikolai solidified, and I knew even before he pulled the trigger that he was going to kill me. I took solace in the fact that Marco and Sasha were going to be okay.

Those were the last thoughts I had before the gun went off.