Brutal vows

Chapter 7: The Lead Shield

We sprinted through the blinding downpour, my bare feet cutting against sharp twigs and frozen rocks, but the adrenaline numbed the pain. Alekov kept his arm tightly anchored around my waist, practically carrying me over the fallen logs and through the thick, thorny underbrush. Behind us, distant shouting and the sharp barks of hunting dogs echoed through the trees. They had found the body. The hunt was officially back on.

Through the heavy sheets of rain, a dark shape finally appeared in the distance—the modern, secluded safehouse cabin. It looked completely dead, a black silhouette against the stormy sky, surrounded by a high chain-link fence.

Alekov dragged me toward the rear perimeter gate. He bypassed the electronic keypad with a master keycard pulled from his collar, throwing the gate open and shoving me inside just as a bullet zipped through the air, splintering the bark of the pine tree right next to my head.

"Go! Inside!" he roared, firing three blind shots backward into the treeline with his pistol to force the snipers to take cover.

We scrambled up the wooden steps of the back porch. Alekov slammed his weight against the heavy, reinforced steel door, punching a rapid, eight-digit code into the dark security panel. The lock disengaged with a heavy, metallic clunk, and he threw me inside before slamming the door shut behind us. He flipped three heavy deadbolts into place and threw a massive iron bar across the frame.

Instantly, the violent roaring of the storm and the terrifying sounds of the hunting dogs vanished, replaced by a heavy, suffocating silence.

The air inside the cabin was freezing, smelling heavily of dry cedar, gun oil, and old stone. Alekov leaned his back against the steel door, his head tilted back as he let out a long, ragged breath. The white fabric of his dress shirt was completely ruined, soaked transparent against his broad, heavily muscled chest and stained with dark mud and the blood of the man he had just killed.

I collapsed onto my knees on the hardwood floor, my body trembling uncontrollably from the cold and the sheer terror of the last thirty minutes.

Alekov walked across the room, his boots leaving heavy tracks of mud. He ignored the light switches, keeping the cabin in total darkness. Instead, he approached a wall of small, glowing green monitors. He tapped the glass, and a dozen angles of the dark forest outside flickered to life.

"We are safe from their scanners now," Alekov said, his voice dropping back into its low, steady baritone. "The walls of this cabin are lined with thick lead plating. Their thermal scopes can't see our body heat through the wood. To them, this place looks completely empty".

"But they know we ran this way," I choked out, wrapping my arms around myself to stop the shaking. "They're going to search every inch of this perimeter, Alekov. What happens when they find the door?

"Alekov turned away from the monitors. In the dim, green glow of the screens, his face looked sharp, dangerous, and entirely unbothered by the army outside. He unbuttoned his soaked cuffs, slowly rolling his sleeves up over his heavy, tattooed forearms.

"Let them try to break in," he said softly, a dark, lethal smile touching his lips. "I built this safehouse myself, Elena. If they step onto this porch, they aren't entering a cabin. They are entering a slaughterhouse.”