Bullet ✔️

Chapter 31

The stars were out. It was a beautiful night, not a cloud in sight. The moon seemed closer, too, shining brightly down at the otherwise darkened city.

Two hours left.

Even though Damian sped through every light, skidded around corners and talked to James on the phone at the same time, we'd still wasted a third of the time we had to find dad and make sure he lived. My tears had dried up and underneath was rage. I'd never been so angry before; not even when Angela told me I was a pathetic kid who'd never grow up, right after I'd lost my mom and what I thought was the love of my life. This was a whole new level for me, and I needed to be focused. Calm. Collected. So I bit down the sorrow and replaced it with cold wrath.

No one would take my father's life like that. Not when I could stop it. My hands around the gun tightened for every corner we turned, and for every new location James told us was empty. This would not be how it ended. I'd tell myself it was my fault, if so. It was my damn fault for being so selfish and stupid. But if I could make it right I'd prove that I wasn't.

"There's not a lot of places left," Damian told me, gripping the steering wheel tighter. "We're getting closer."

"Not close enough." My voice wasn't my own. Damian noticed too, so he took my hand and brought it up to his lips, kissed it sweetly a couple of times.

"I kind of like this side of you, sweetheart," he said, and I could hear he was smirking before I even turned my head to look at him. "We're not so different after all."

Maybe he was right, but that wasn't a bad thing, I decided. It just meant I was willing to protect the people I love. "What do we do when we get there?"

He kept my hand up against his mouth, his eyes flickering between me and the road as he drove to the addresses James sent him. "We tell everyone, we go in, armed, and we get your dad out," he explained, like it was a carefully crafted plan, even if it sounded simple enough. "I want to tell you not to go in, but he wants us both there, and I know you wouldn't've stayed."

"No, I wouldn't've."

My mind was both filled with fog and extremely clear. My moral compass was going amok, not knowing what I wanted at all.

Another half hour passed with nothing but dead ends and empty buildings. Damian's Audi seemed to get smaller with every meter, and I had no idea how much more I could take. We drove back and forth, in and out, left and right like we had no meaning.

Until James called and said, "I think I've found it."

One hour left.

I could feel every second in my bones. Tick, tick, tick, like a bomb. My body was shaking just like it was on July 30th, the ground underneath the car split up under it, like we were being sucked into a hole and wouldn't reach the place in time. I dreaded it. To find my dad shot and dead on the floor surrounded by blood was now my worst nightmare, and it was so dangerously close to being true.

Even though the buildings and lights flew by, other cars honking because of our recklessness, it was like we weren't my going fast enough. James was on the phone while he too sped to the place, Elina ordering people around in the background. She said the address loudly several times, telling every last Strac where to be.

But it was Damian and I Orlov wanted inside. Why, I still didn't know for sure.

Before I'd really processed what was about to happen, the car stopped. We were outside of a tall building—an apartment complex—with blocked out windows and walls almost falling apart. It was downtown Datoches, a side of the city I'd never visited because of all the rumors of crime and violence. My fingers went white around the handle of the gun while Damian reached into the glove compartment and produced another. I barely registered the sound of him checking the magazine before he exited the car and walked around to my side, opening the door. But instead of holding his hand out to help me out, like he used to, he knelt beside me, placed one hand on mine around the gun and the other on my cheek.