"Kiro really could be alive. We got an amazing lead on this social worker who'll help us find him-"

I can feel the shock waves roll through the room. They didn't think he was alive. Now they know.

"I found the folder on my mom-" I blurt.

"Mira. Baby-that's why you left? I'm sorry-shit. I know you're probably reeling-"

"Aleksio-" I suck in a breath. "Stay there. I'll come back."

"Of course I'll stay."

"It'll be happy baby animals," I say. "Okay?"

There's a silence where I think I've shown my hand. Surely he'll understand that by "happy baby animals," I mean "blood and death."

"I'll wait for you," Aleksio says. "Hurry, baby." He cuts the connection.

"What's happy baby animals?" Lazarus demands.

"That house is in the middle of a forest," I say. "Baby animals frolicking around."

"It's fall," Lazarus says. "Baby animals are born in spring."

"Squirrels have two litters," Ioannis says. "One in spring and one in fall."

"Ioannis, you are such a fucking nerdboy." Lazarus takes a bit of my hair and rolls it around his fingers, expression unreadable.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

Aleksio I set down the phone, heart thundering in my fucking ears. "They're coming," I say to Tito. I storm into Viktor's room. "Nikolla's on his way."

He stands. "She told? She told where we are?"

"She warned us," I growl. She sounded so scared. Her father wouldn't scare her like that, would he? Shivers crawl up my spine. "It could be her father, but I think it's Lazarus. He's making his move, and he has Mira."

"She told you this?"

"More or less."

"What is more or less?"

"More or less means I know her. They're coming, got it? They made her answer my call. She endangered herself warning us. They could be out there now." And if they know she warned us? I can't think about that.

"You trust her? One word and you trust her?"

"Yeah. I trust her."

"Just like that."

"We're connected, Viktor. I need you to trust me on this. I just know."

He seems to contemplate this. What is he thinking? Then just like that, he accepts it and shuts his laptop. "I understand, brat. We have that C-4. We rig the house to take them all down if they come. If not..." He shrugs.

"If we move on them like that, they'll know Mira warned us." "Happy baby animals" wasn't the most natural comment.

"They'll know either way. If we run or if we kill them, they'll know."

I scrub my hand over my face. "I need to get her out."

A text. My tech guy comes through with a location-the Beverly Inn. Her dad keeps a suite there. I stand. "I'll go in there and get her out before they realize what she did."

"Brat," Viktor says. "You can't-"

"I love her."

He looks surprised. Hell, I'm surprised.

"Just like that."

"Always."

"Aleksio," he says darkly. Leave it to Viktor to see love and trust in a dark and tragic light. "Go, then. Take Tito. Brewer. Take all of my men."

"Leave you?"

"Yuri and I will rig it. Then we'll wait in the woods and pick them off. It'll be bloody as hell."

"Viktor-"

"We've done this many times. We could do this drunk."

Mira would want to prevent more killing, to be neutral like Switzerland or something. Too late for that.

Yuri and Mischa get to work rigging the place, just like Lazarus did with the adoption agency. They're like an Indy 500 pit crew, laying down cascading triggers. A lot of people will die. The three of them will snipe the survivors from the trees around. This won't end the war-it'll make it worse.

The remaining seven of us sneak out the side in case we're being watched. We head into the forest, cram into one of the vehicles we have stashed over the ridge, and crash out the side road.

It takes forever. Viktor has agreed to text me when the action starts. We have to reach Mira before they arrive. Once they suspect her of warning us, she's done. Does she realize what she did?

The traffic is shit. I go up on the shoulder at one point. Let the cops try to stop us. Tito argues with me, tells me to be smart.

I'm not thinking straight, I know. I just need to get to her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

Mira Lazarus holds the phone, knuckles white, wild eyes turned to me. "You little bitch!"

I back up. "What?"

"'Happy baby animals' was a code, wasn't it?" He throws the phone at the door. "The place blew as soon as they entered."

I hit the wall.

He's in my face, digging his fingers into my shoulders.

"You're h-hurting me." He's going to kill me.

"You tipped him off."

"You think we have codes?" I rip out of Lazarus's grip and move along the wall toward the window. I'm scared out of my mind. I feel like he can see right through me.

Lazarus advances on me with murder in his eyes. He grabs me again.

It's then that the door bursts open. I gasp when I see Aleksio shoved in...his lip is bloody, and two of Lazarus's guys are right behind him, guns at his head.

"Grabbed him out in the hall," one of them says, setting Aleksio's weapons on the table. Clack. clack. Clack.

Lazarus wraps an arm around my shoulders. Aleksio's eyes shine with hatred.

"I get not taking the finger. But showing up like this?" He smiles. "Why, this is just too delicious. And I'm in such a mood."

Aleksio's watching us, steady on his feet...barely.

"Ioannis, how many men did I lose out there?" Lazarus asks.

"Twenty-one we know of," Ioannis says.

"That's going to be twenty-one hours I'll need to hear her beg to die. Or should I split it up between the two of you?" He grabs my hair. "Maybe I'll play it by ear. And I'll make Mira tell all about this social worker of yours so that we find Little Kiro, too. Just so that you die knowing that's handled. It's good to have closure, don't you think?"

The blank look on Aleksio's face is killing me because of what it conceals. This is all my fault for leaving.

"We'll have to get Konstantin involved, too," Lazarus continues. "We don't want to leave him out."

Ioannis smiles.

Aleksio jerks away from the guys holding him, but they take him back easily. It's not enough that he's fucked up with a bloody lip and face and his ankle and who knows how many injuries-no, two guys have guns on him. Like he's this huge threat. Like he's a nuclear bomb, liable to go off.

"You had to come for Mira," Lazarus says. "I can't imagine she was that good. Guess we'll see about that."

Aleksio goes at him then. He actually manages to rip out of one guy's hold. All the attention is on him.

All off me.

Suddenly it's like I'm animated from some other planet-I see myself reaching for nearby weapons, taking one from Lazarus's back belt and one from another guy's holster. I take off the safeties before they can even react, and I put one to Lazarus's head and one to Ioannis's head. "Let him go."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Aleksio It's sheer and utter madness. Mira, taking their guns. She hates guns.

One second I'm utterly fucked in a hotel suite with some of the biggest hitters on the planet, all with pieces trained on me, and then Mira moves like a fucking goddess of lightning and wrath.

Two cannons in her hand, one pointed at Lazarus, the other at his brother Ioannis. The two people in the room who matter.

But I'm freaking. What if they call her bluff? Everyone knows she hates guns. I know it most of all. Mira would never shoot a guy in cold blood. It's not in her.

Lazarus smirks. "Mira, Mira. You don't do firearms. I bet you don't even know if the safety is on or off."

He's trying to shake her. My heart thunders.

"On or off," he says sweetly. "You don't have the balls." Lazarus's about to make a move.

Then she speaks. Or more like, she growls, "You go ahead and try me, motherfucker."

That voice-it's like she's possessed by a demon or something. Everybody freezes.

"You try me." Oh, God, it's not the voice of a demon-it's the voice of Sergei Kazan, Russian action star. And then she starts spinning the fucking pieces like a hoodlum.

It's a total mindfuck-Mira, talking like that and spinning guns, Wild West style. Like the sun rising at night. Like the moon crashing into the stars.

"I'll fill you so full of lead it'll be coming out of your ass," she says.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Mira's holding a room. With guns.

This is what Yuri and the guys taught her, the gift they didn't realize they were giving her. In a flash the guns stop spinning and come to rest in her hands like she was born with them there. Like she's itching to shoot up the room.