with a corset top and a wide, full skirt layered with satin roses. His mouth curved in distaste.
She raised her chin, even as her cheeks burned with embarrassment.
He focused on the glaring Alek. “You have a coin.” His accent... Greek, perhaps? “Give it to me.”
Alek laughed his patented you-only-have-minutes-to-live laugh. “I have many coins.” Several of his guards unsheathed their guns, waiting for the signal to strike. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“This one belongs to Hades. Pretending ignorance will do you no good.”
Alek gave his most trusted enforcer, who now blocked the door at the back of the room, an almost imperceptible nod.
The signal.
The enforcer aimed. No. No! Katarina screamed out a warning. Which was unnecessary. The redhead was already mobilized, spinning and tossing a dagger. The tip sank into the enforcer’s eye socket.
Blood spurted, a howl of pain echoing from the walls. The gun fell from his grip, useless, and he dropped to his knees.
Katarina’s scream tapered into a whimper. The redhead had just...without any hesitation...so brutal...
The women in the pews jumped up and raced through the exit, their heels click-clacking against the floor tiles.
“My next victim will lose more than an eye,” the redhead said with cool detachment.
The male with black hair and blue eyes grinned. “Baden, my man, if I were keeping score you’d get a ten-point bonus. So proud of you right now.”
Baden. The redhead’s name was Baden. The killer’s name was Baden, and the black-haired man had just praised him for his violence.
Baden focused on her. “Test me. I dare you.”
Anyone else would have cried and begged for mercy when challenged by such a deadly force. For Katarina, tears were impossible.
She’d cried buckets in the months leading up to her mother’s death, but not a single one after. She’d been too relieved. Her mother’s misery had finally ended. But with the relief had come guilt. If Katarina hadn’t been able to cry for the mother she’d revered, what right did she have to cry for anyone else?
Paling, trembling, Alek retreated—he never retreated!—stepping behind her and...using her as a shield?
In the first pew, her brother stood. He was six feet tall, though his emaciation made him a pin-drop in comparison to the newcomers. Did the chruno actually plan to fight trained killers?
Baden pivoted in his direction.
“No!” She scrambled from the dais to throw herself in front of Dominik. “My brother has nothing to do with this. You will not harm him.” While her affection for her only living family member had withered, she remembered the boy he used to be. Kind, patient and protective. She had no desire to see him killed, would rather see him locked behind bars, forcibly removed from Alek’s insidious influence and a ready supply of heroin.
Maybe, if Dominik got clean, they could try to be siblings again.
He pushed her behind him, astounding her. “Do not play the hero, sestra.”
Baden lost interest in him. Radiating bloodcurdling malice, he closed in on Alek, the man so many feared. “This is your last chance. The coin.”
Alek pursed his lips, an action she knew well. His drug lord moxy—I am master of all I survey—had just switched back on. “The coin belongs to me. Tell Hades he can go to hell where he belongs.”
The dark-haired man laughed. The white-haired man adjusted his gloves.
“Wrong answer. Perhaps you don’t yet believe I’m willing to do anything to retrieve it.” Baden grabbed Alek by the neck and lifted him off his feet, squeezing him with so much force his eyeballs bulged and his face reddened. “Does this convince you?”
The dogs! If he died... “Stop,” she shouted. She tried to return to the dais, but Dominik snaked an arm around her waist to hold her in place. “Prosim!” Please.
Baden ignored her, telling Alek, “I’ll leave with the coin...or I’ll leave with something you value.” He motioned to Alek’s hand with a tilt of his chin, ensuring his meaning was clear. “You choose.”
Alek sputtered, beating at his arm.
“Know this,” the redhead added, unruffled. “I’ll be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until I have what I want, and I will never leave without a prize.”
Who was this man? Who was Hades?
Alek grappled for the small gun hidden at his waist. Baden spun with him, using him as a buffer while firing the man’s own weapon at the guards who’d taken aim.
New howls of pain erupted. Blood splattered, and bodies dropped. Katarina clutched her stomach to ward off waves of nausea.
Finished with the guards, Baden twisted Alek’s wrist and broke the bones; the gun fell as her groom screamed. More and more men jumped up to help him, and more and more guns were aimed at the trio.
Even Dominik withdrew a gun from his ankle holster, though he didn’t take aim. He hauled her through a side door, down a long corridor.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Multiple shots rang out behind her.
Had Alek been hit? She tried to fight her way free. “Let go!”
“Enough.” Her brother was panting, already winded. “This is for your own good.”
A gesture of kindness, even if it was executed the wrong way.
“I won’t allow Alek’s bride to suffer,” he added, ruining everything. For him, everything always came back to Alek.
“I must stay with him,” she said. “The dogs—”
“Forget the dogs.”
“Never!”
The gunshots stopped. The pained grunts and groans quieted. The scent of gun smoke and corroded metal coated the air, following her.
Just before Dominik reached the doorway that led to the outside world, she stuck out her foot and tripped him. He maintained his grip on her, lugging her with him as he crashed. As he fought for breath, she was finally able to jerk free. He reached for her, but she kicked him in the stomach and stood.
Cursing, he hopped up. She leaped backward and—
Slammed into a brick wall. With a gasp, she whirled. Her gaze traveled up a man’s legs...a torso ridged with muscle. There were thin rivers of black tattooed from the tips of his fingers to the edge of the black bands that circled his biceps. Three bullet holes marred his shoulder, but the wounds didn’t appear to be bleeding.
Her eyes locked on cool copper irises. Baden.
He was hyperfocused, radiating challenge,
