Chapter 5 - Blood on the Tile
“Get down!”
Nikolai’s roar was instantaneous. Before the sound of shattering glass had even finished echoing off the newly polished floor, he lunged across the counter, slamming me to the floor behind the heavy cash register bulkhead.
At the same time, Misha’s bodyguard—a hulking man named Gregor—tackled Misha under the corner table, drawing a compact submachine gun from his jacket with terrifying speed.
“Ambush! Front and rear!” Gregor shouted into his comm-link.
Automatic gunfire erupted outside. The distinctive thwack-thwack-thwack of suppressed rounds punched through the diner’s exterior walls, riddling the booths with splinters and turning the gleaming chrome soda fountain into twisted scrap metal.
“Misha!” I screamed, trying to scramble up, but Nikolai’s heavy arm pinned me firmly to the floor.
“Stay down, Amelia! Do not move!” Nikolai ordered, his face a mask of cold, lethal fury. He drew a polished Beretta 9mm from a shoulder holster hidden beneath his suit jacket, his movements fluid and practiced.
Through the bullet-riddled front windows, I could see two masked figures advancing across the street, assault rifles raised, firing methodically into the diner.
This wasn't a random drive-by. This was a professional hit squad.
“Nikolai!” I gasped, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I thought they would crack. “They’re going to kill us!”
“Not while I’m breathing,” Nikolai said coldly.
He didn't panic. While bullets chewed up the wood inches above our heads, Nikolai shifted into a kneeling position, calmly lining up his sights through a gap in the shattered front window.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three precise shots. Outside, one of the advancing gunmen dropped his rifle, clutching his shoulder before collapsing onto the pavement. The second gunman scrambled behind a parked car, returning blind, panicked fire.
Suddenly, the back kitchen door blew open with a deafening crash.
Two more armed men rushed in from the alleyway, shouting in Russian, weapons raised to clear the kitchen.
“Dad!” Misha cried out from beneath the table.
Gregor, the bodyguard, fired a rapid burst from his submachine gun, dropping the first intruder in the doorway, but took a round to the shoulder, stumbling backward with a grunt of pain.
Before the second gunman could swing his barrel toward the corner booth where Misha was hiding, I didn't think. Instinct, raw and desperate, took over.
I grabbed a heavy, boiling-hot iron skillet that Carl had left on the back counter earlier—still sitting on a portable warming burner—and charged out from behind the register.
The gunman spun around, eyes widening as he saw me rushing him. He raised his rifle.
With a wild cry, I swung the cast-iron skillet with every ounce of strength in my body, smashing it squarely across the side of his tactical helmet. The man’s eyes rolled back, his legs buckled, and he hit the tile floor unconscious with a heavy thud.
Silence descended on the diner almost as quickly as the violence had begun.
Outside, the screech of tires signaled the surviving hitmen retreating into the smoke of the Chicago afternoon.
Nikolai stood up slowly, lowering his pistol. He stared down at the unconscious gunman on the floor, then looked up at me, standing there holding a dented iron skillet, my hands shaking uncontrollably, surrounded by shattered glass and smoking drywall.
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For a long, stunned second, Nikolai just stared. Then, a slow, incredulous smile broke across his scarred face.
“Remind me,” Nikolai said softly, stepping over the debris to reach my side, “never to argue with you about the breakfast bill.”
