Chapter 288: Did they get away?

Elena had not moved. She was still crouched behind the wall with her arms around her knees, and her whole body shook. Her gray uniform was spattered with mud. Her short hair stuck to her forehead. She stared at the fallen men and the blood on the grass as if she were looking at a dream.

She wa s a shadow of herself. The proud woman in pearls was gone. What was left was thin and bent and quiet.

Marcus saw her. His eyes went wide. He took a half step forward, and then stopped, and swallowed hard. His mouth opened and closed. He looked at Viktor. Viktor shook his head, just once.

Later, Marcus nodded. He bent down and took Elena by the elbow, gently, and helped her to her feet. She followed him like a child.

Behind them, Carina pushed herself upright against the urn.

She took out her phone. Her hands were shaking so badly that she dropped it once. She picked it up, wiped the blood off the screen with her sleeve, and pressed a button.

"This is Carina." Her voice was thin but clear, and it carried. "To all guards. I repeat, all guards. Come inside to the main hall. Now." A burst of static. A voice answered, sharp and quick. "All of us, miss?"

"All of you. Now." She dropped the phone in her lap and let her head fall back against the stone. She closed her eyes. Most of the guards that went inside are all dead, the other guards are for special operations, and they guard the borders of the mansion.

From somewhere far across the lawn, a whistle blew. Then another. A great clatter of boots rose up from the front of the house, and the men on the grounds began to run, one after another, toward the main doors. The sound moved away like a tide going out.

"Go," Carina whispered. Viktor took Sienna’s arm. They ran.

They crossed the dark lawn in a tight group, Viktor and Sienna in the middle, Marcus and the Gallon boys on every side, and Elena stumbling between two big men who half carried her. The weak wall rose in front of them, low and black. A rope hung over it. One of Marcus’s men was already on the other side, holding it steady.

They went over one by one.

Sienna’s hands slipped on the rope. Her arms shook. Viktor lifted her by the waist and pushed her up, and she fell on the other side into the damp grass. She lay there, stunned, with the world spinning around her.

A hand pulled her up. It was Viktor’s. On the road beyond the wall, at the far end of the gate, a van stood waiting with its engine running and its side door open. A small yellow light burned inside.

"I have everything ready, Boss," Marcus said, over the sound of the motor. "A ship at the south port, an hour away."

"Good," Viktor said. He helped Sienna into the van.

She went in like a sleepwalker. She sat down on the bench with her hands in her lap and her head bent. Her breath was shallow. The yellow light fell across her face, and Viktor saw how thin she was, how pale, how her lips had gone almost blue.

She was barely holding on.

He climbed in beside her and slammed the door. The van lurched forward, and the walls of the Ivanou mansion slid away behind the window, white and ghostly in the moonlight.

Viktor wrapped both arms around her.

She leaned into him without a word. Her head rested on his chest, and her fingers curled in the front of his shirt. He could feel her heart through the thin cloth, a quick, uneven flutter, like a bird beating against a cage.

He held her tighter.

It had been a hell of a night. It had been the fiercest, deadliest battle he had ever fought. He had done it with a handful of bullets and a handful of men, against a house full of enemies, and he had won. He had killed, and bled, and carried the dead, and he had not lost the one thing he went in for.

But he did not feel like a winner. He pressed his face into her hair and closed his eyes. We are out, he thought. We are out. Please, God, let that be enough.

—

Helena took Konstantin to his room.

He walked, but only just. His arm hung heavy over her shoulders, and his feet dragged on the white stairs. Every few steps he stopped, closed his eyes, and breathed. The sleeve of his jacket was black and wet. A thin red line followed them down the hall like a ribbon.

"Almost there," she said softly. "Just a little more."

"You are kind, my love." She did not answer.

His room was at the end of the east wing, wide and dim, with a tall bed and heavy curtains. She laid him on the white sheets and pulled off his shoes.

She tore a strip from a pillowcase and bound the wound as tight as she could. Her hands were steady. She had done this before, in other years, on other nights she did not like to remember.

When she looked up, the room was full of men.

The guards Carina had called inside were standing at the door. There were six of them, then twelve, with their guns hanging and their faces gray.

They had run all the way from the gardens, and they were still breathing hard. They looked at the Don on the bed, and then at his wife, and nobody knew what to say.

Helena could not do anything more for him. She knew it. A bandage would not be enough. "Call a doctor," she said. "A real one. Now."

Two of them ran. Carina came in a few minutes later.

She walked slowly, holding her shoulder with the other hand, and her silver-white dress was dark all down the shoulders. Her face was pale and wet with sweat. Someone had pressed a cloth to the wound, and she held it there with her fingers. She leaned on the door frame for a moment, and then she crossed the room and sat down hard in a chair by the wall.

"Sit," Helena said, though she already had. "The doctor is almost here." Carina nodded.

Helena crossed the room and knelt in front of her. She did not look at the guards. She kept her voice low and her back to the bed.

"Tell me," she whispered. "Did they get away?"