Chapter 5 - Fire in the Alley
The quiet crack of suppressed gunfire was followed by the shattering of glass down in the alley. Cassia pressed her back against the tiled bathroom wall, holding Arya tightly against her chest. She covered her daughter’s ears with her hands, humming a soft lullaby under her breath to drown out the muffled sounds of violence outside.
Five years of peaceful domesticity evaporated in five minutes.
A loud smash rattled the apartment’s front door. Heavy boots pounded across the wooden floorboards of her living room.
“Check the rooms!” a harsh voice shouted in Russian. “Find the girl!”
Cassia’s heart hammered violently against her ribs. She looked around the tiny bathroom—no window, no secondary exit. They were trapped.
The doorknob turned violently. The door rattled against the wedged wooden stool.
“In here!” the man yelled.
A heavy kick smashed against the bathroom door frame. Splinters flew into the room. Arya shrieked, burying her face into Cassia’s neck.
“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” Cassia cried, backing into the shower stall, searching frantically for a weapon. She grabbed a heavy ceramic soap dish, her knuckles white.
Another violent kick shattered the center panel of the door. A gloved hand reached through the broken wood, searching for the deadbolt.
Before the attacker could unlock it, a deafening roar echoed from the living room.
The sound of a heavy body being slammed against a wall vibrated through the floor. A sharp crack of broken bone echoed, followed by a wet choke.
“Get your hands off that door,” a low, lethal voice commanded.
Adrian.
Sounds of brutal hand-to-hand combat exploded in the hallway. Glass shattered, wood splintered, and heavy impacts thudded against the walls. Cassia heard Adrian’s guttural grunts of exertion, the sickening sound of striking flesh, and the sharp drop of a heavy body hitting the floor.
Silence returned—sudden, heavy, and absolute.
Cassia held her breath, her hand still holding the ceramic soap dish above her head.
A knock sounded gently against the ruined bathroom door.
“Cassia,” Adrian’s voice came through the broken wood. He was breathing heavily, his tone laced with adrenaline, but his voice was controlled. “It’s clear. You can open the door.”
Cassia hesitated for two seconds, then kicked the wooden stool away and pulled the door open.
Adrian stood in the hallway. His charcoal coat was gone. His white shirt was torn at the shoulder, stained with dark blood that wasn't his own. His hair was disheveled, and his knuckles were raw and split. Behind him, two men lay motionless on her living room rug, bound tightly with zip-ties, guarded by Ivan holding a silenced pistol.
Adrian’s gray eyes swept over Cassia, then down to Arya, who was peeking out from behind her mother’s hair.
“Are you hurt?” he asked softly, stepping over a piece of broken door frame.
“No,” Cassia breathed, her body shaking from the shock. “Are you?”
“I’ve had worse,” Adrian said dismissively. He looked at Ivan. “Get these two into the van. Mikhail, sweep the street for a secondary surveillance team.”
“Understood, Boss,” Ivan grunted, dragging one of the unconscious men out by his collar.
Adrian turned back to Cassia, reaching out a hand, but hesitating before making contact. He looked down at his blood-stained knuckles and slowly pulled his hand back, wiping it on a clean pocket handkerchief.
“Your life here is burned, Cassia,” Adrian said grimly. “Lev knows this address. By tomorrow morning, more of his men will arrive. You cannot stay in Pittsburgh.”
Cassia looked around her ruined apartment—the broken picture frames, the shattered door, the life she had painstakingly constructed over five years destroyed in a single night. Teardrops finally spilled over her lashes.
“I have nowhere else to go,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
Adrian stepped closer, his shadow falling over her softly. “Yes, you do. You come with me to the estate in Upstate New York. It’s fortified. It’s safe. And it’s where I can protect both of you.”
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Cassia looked at her sleeping daughter, then back at the man she had run from five years ago. “I won't be your prisoner again, Adrian.”
“You were never my prisoner, Cassia,” Adrian said quietly, his gray eyes shining with an aching honesty. “You were my wife. And you are the mother of my child. I am asking you to let me keep you alive.”
