All Chapters of Retribution : Chapter 111 - Chapter 115

Valencia NightingaleMy fingers trembled from a cold so sharp it was enough to freeze anything just by holding it out for too long. Snow crunched under our boots as Anatoly and I stood at the rusted iron gates of the district police station. The building looked like it was going to collapse at any given time.I had the wig on again, the same mousy-brown one I’d worn around since I got here. It itched like sin, but it turned me into Anya Volkov, respectable married woman, instead of Valencia Nightingale, whom everyone could probably recognise from her midnight hair. Anatoly—Dmitry right then—stood half a step behind me, shoulders rounded, hands in the pockets of a cheap puffer jacket that made him look twenty kilos heavier and ten years older. No masks, no weapons. We had stripped ourselves bare before we left the safehouse: the Glock, the knife—all of it locked in the false bottom of the trunk of the car we had rented. Walking into a Russian police station armed was a shortcut to a ce

Valencia NightingaleEvery head in the hall, including mine, snapped toward the sound. Cameras clicked like light switches. For one suspended heartbeat the only noise was the low hum of the air-conditioning.My breath caught in my throat, as I wondered who exactly that was. My shoulders sagged the moment I set my eyes on Anatoly's towering figure. His face is dead straight and serious as he walks forward.His cheek was bruised, probably from the scuffle at the airport and I wondered just how fast he must have been to get to the Parliament to grant bail for Vladislav and come back to still catch up with me.Or was he not able to get him granted bailIn his left hand was a single sheet of heavy cream paper bearing the gold-embossed crest of the United Kingdom.The crowd parted before him the way water parts for a shark.I stood frozen at the bacj row, lungs still burning from the sprint, Malcolm's smug smile faltered for the first time. He half-rose from his seat, paddle still clutc

Vladislav MorozI came awake slowly, the way a man surfaces from deep water—lungs burning, limbs heavy, every heartbeat sluggish and uncertain.The first thing I felt was pain. Not the sharp, screaming kind from the cellar; this was duller, deeper, a constant throb that lived under every bandage and in every broken rib. It told me I was still alive. I hated it for a second, then decided I could live with it.The second thing I felt was warmth.Valencia was curled against my right side, careful even in sleep, her head on my shoulder, one hand resting so lightly over the gauze on my chest that I could barely feel the weight. Her breathing was slow, steady. Her lashes were still damp. She had cried herself out beside me.I couldn’t move much. My arms were lead, my back a furnace, my ribs a cage of knives. But I turned my head—just enough—and looked at her.God, she was beautiful.Even with tear tracks cutting through the blood on her cheeks. Even with her hair tangled and wild. Even ex