The choking hold on my neck eased slightly as he cajoled, “Stay awake, Stefan. Stay and try just a little harder. Perhaps then I won’t rip that boy limb from limb when I find him.”

I barely heard the words. The roaring in my head had followed the curtain of spreading black before my eyes. My only concern was my traveling hand. Sevastian ignored its progress even as it touched his ear. He’d always had well-shaped ears, I thought dimly as my capacity for coherence began to unravel. It was peculiar to see: his bullet-shaped head, Neanderthal brows, soulless and cloudy eyes combined with a delicate seashell curve of ear that any woman would’ve been proud of. Whether Sevastian was proud of them, I didn’t know. It was, as they say, moot.

I ripped the left one from his head.

There was a scream that managed to rip through the haze surrounding me and the weight rolled off my back. Weakly pushing up to my knees, I sucked in air that seemed as thick as syrup. It rebelled in my throat, refusing to push past and inflate my lungs. I could feel the sensation of woven wool under my hands, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything. With a last-ditch monumental effort I struggled to expand my chest and pull in air. It worked; a teaspoon of oxygen managed to trickle down into my lungs. That short, choppy breath was followed by two more and then by a brutal kick in my ribs. I was thrown what felt like several feet and landed hard on my hip and shoulder. Fragments of light and color were returning to my sight and I spotted the glittering chrome of my gun barely out of reach. Lunging, I snatched it from the floor, rolled to my side, and fired.

And missed.

If this had been the movies, I would’ve hit him right between the eyes, and that would’ve been that. Conquering hero prevails. Popcorn and a cold one for everybody. But this wasn’t a movie. This was crappy real life, and I missed the son of a bitch. He was moving faster than any lung-shot man had a right to move, and I still had the vision of a ninety-year-old glaucoma victim. Ideal circumstances it did not make.

Sevastian had lost his gun as well when I’d shot him in the chest. With one blood-covered hand clamped to the side of his head, he was using the other to reach for his own weapon on the floor when my bullet passed him by a good six inches. I fired again. This time I did hit him . . . in the shoulder, but the wrong shoulder. The blow knocked him nearly sideways, but that only lined his gun up on me all the faster and he was already firing. Right up until the moment he dropped, boneless as a jellyfish, I thought I was dead. I knew I was; I knew it for an irrefutable fact. I could all but feel the bullet in my throat instead of in the floor that had claimed it; yet here I was alive, whole. And I owed none of that to myself.

Michael looked down at Sevastian impassively. “He’s not a particularly nice man either.”

He wasn’t wrong. First a child molester and now a hit man, Michael was being exposed to people who weren’t any better than those who kept him in the Institute. It wasn’t the most smoothly run escape to ever come down the pike. My talents, assuming I had any, apparently lay elsewhere.

Once again pushing up to my knees, I tried from there to get to my feet. Sevastian’s chest was still rising and falling, albeit slowly and unevenly, which meant Michael hadn’t killed him. Relief weakened my legs almost as much as the lack of oxygen. Putting that burden on him even to save my life wasn’t remotely what I wanted. Unfortunately, Michael seemed destined to do for others what he wouldn’t risk doing for himself. “You . . . okay, Misha?” I gasped roughly as I tried for more air.

He blinked and moved to my side to brace me. “I should probably be asking you that. He nearly killed you.”

The bastard had certainly given it his best shot. “Nah.” I rubbed the back of my hand across my eyes, clearing the last of the swirling flecks of light. And breathing, the breathing was slowly coming along. “I had it under . . . control . . . the whole time.”

With an openly skeptical look generated by the croak of my abused throat, Michael nodded and said dryly, “I’m sure.”

His mask of equanimity didn’t fool me. The tawny glasses emphasized the faint pallor of his skin and the fingers of one hand were curled tightly against the palm. It was the hand, I would bet, that he’d used to touch the back of Sevastian’s neck. Michael had left his hiding place behind the couch and used what Jericho had given him—no, what Jericho had forced on him—all to save my miserable ass. Taking him by the shoulder, I urged him toward the door. Sevastian and Pavel usually worked as a pair. There shouldn’t be anyone else lying in wait for us, but I tucked Michael behind me all the same. “What did you do to him?” I murmured, my eyes flickering back and forth for any signs of a nasty surprise that would indicate Sevastian had changed his MO to include a backup team.

He didn’t have a chance to answer as Lev appeared in our sight as we stepped over the unconscious body of Pavel. Waiting in the hall with hands clasped in their familiar position over his belly, he watched us come into sight with only a bare widening of dark eyes. “Stefan.” He gave a small smile laced with a lively curiosity. “It seems you’re not so soft after all.”

“Yeah,” I said remotely. “Seems that way.” The numbness I’d first felt as I’d realized his betrayal had dissipated. What was left in its place wasn’t as desirable—not goddamn nearly. “Five hours.” The time we had spent waiting for the lunch that Lev insisted we stay for. “That was more than enough time to stick Sevastian and his tag-a-long on Konstantin’s plane, wasn’t it?” He must’ve called Fyodor the minute the guard at the gate called to the house to announce us. Before we even made it through the front door, we’d been given up.

“The weather nearly spoiled their trip, but they landed right before the airport shut down.” He looked at Pavel sprawled spread-eagle in the doorway. “But I suppose you’ve ruined their trip just as much, eh, krestnik?”

“Don’t call me that.” The moment the words left my lips I regretted them. They were stupid, and they were pointless. The things I had thought about Lev, the illusions I’d embraced, were knives . . . slicing away pieces of me. I’d known who my uncle was, but I hadn’t ever accepted he was that same person with me. I’d thought I was exempt from his darker side. I’d thought I was family.

I’d thought wrong.

“Stefan, Stefan.” Lev rested his chin on his chest as he contemplated me with a mockery of melancholy affection. “It’s just zapodlo ; you know that.”

Just business, my ass. I didn’t bother to respond to the excuse as I raised my gun to point unwaveringly at his head. “The money. Now.”

He sighed and rippled his massively rounded shoulders in a minute shrug. “Very well.” Walking with surprisingly dainty steps for such a large man, he turned and moved toward the study.

Michael stepped up to my side as we walked the long stretch of hallway. I could see the confusion that furrowed his forehead, but I was still surprised when he asked Lev the quiet question, “How could you do that?”

Lev shook his head as he pushed open the study door. “Child, you’ve no idea what’s even happened here.”

My brother ended that misapprehension instantly. “I am not a child, and Stefan didn’t shoot that man. You know he didn’t. How could you betray him?”

Pausing in the doorway, Lev looked back with an air of patronizing bemusement. “Whether he shot him or not doesn’t matter, little Michael. It doesn’t matter at all.” Then his eyes met mine and he scolded, “Talking out of school, Stefan. You know better.”

The safe was flagrantly visible on one wine-colored wall. There had been no effort to hide it. Who would be suicidal enough to rob from the Russian mob? Plump fingers agilely punched in the combination and Lev went on with his lecture. “Talk, talk, talk, but did you tell your little friend that your father has vanished like a ghost? Did you tell him the rest of us are dependent on the goodwill of those in power?” The bronze metal door was opened to reveal several drawers. “I’m retired, Stefan, and I’m happy to be so. Making waves is no way to ensure I’ll enjoy that retirement. Konstantin was to take your father’s place. Now Fyodor will.” His smile was knowing. “Quite the coincidence, yes? But no matter. I’m loyal to the family. Fyodor is the family now. You, Stefan, are only a tiny piece of it. And, so, I did what I had to do. Loyalty to the family is all.”