I stared out at the building, thinking wildly that this wasn’t the way these things ever played out in the movies. We weren’t here on a dark and stormy night. No, we were here in the middle of the day, on a Sunday. As Evgeni had explained, it was one of the best times possible to catch the Spaniards flatfooted.

It also meant that it was surprising that we had so many Spaniards there to help us out. I frowned, looking around at our small group, where we were assembling in a warehouse near Audaz’s headquarters. Suddenly, I saw someone else that I wasn’t expected.

“Diego, what are you doing here?” I asked, pulling him off to the side. “After everything that you told me about yesterday, about how you wouldn’t take part in anything dangerous anymore, for Julia’s sake, I wouldn’t expect you here.”

Diego sighed. “How do you think all these men got here?” he asked, gesturing around. “I called in a few favors. But none of these guys would be here if I weren’t here. They’re loyal to me, not to you Russians.”

I frowned at him. “You think we’re going to need backup.”

 “I know we’re going to need backup,” Diego said, shaking his head. “I just can’t shake the feeling that things aren’t going to go smoothly today. Audaz must be expecting us. Maybe not today, maybe we have the upper hand there. But they have to know that we’re not going to let them just get away with what they did.”

“You think there’s going to be a fight?”

“If there’s going to be a fight, I want to make sure we’re prepared,” Diego said simply. “I want you to try to make it out of there without incident, of course. But I owe Evgeni one last favor. This buys my freedom, so to speak.”

I shook my head. “I don’t like this,” I said flatly.

“I don’t either,” Diego said simply, shrugging his shoulders. “But there’s no other way, not if you want to rescue Emily.”

And that was it, what it came down to. We didn’t have the manpower to take on Audaz, no matter what sort of stunt they’d pulled.  But my personal decision was coming down to, did I protect my family or did I protect Emily?

At that moment, I wasn’t so sure that I was making the right decision. Not knowing the danger that Diego was putting himself into. But then again, Diego at least knew the risks. Diego knew exactly what he was getting himself into, and he didn’t have to be here if he didn’t want to be.

Emily had had no such choice. She hadn’t known anything about this. And so I had to rescue her.

I just had to try to do it without being detected.

I nodded at Diego and then impulsively pulled him into a brotherly hug. Then, I turned, nodded my head at Aleksander, who had somehow managed to get insider information about the very layout of the Audaz headquarters building, and headed out of the warehouse, leaving the backup forces gathering there.

We snuck into the headquarters building. It was another former warehouse. There was a popular club in one corner, Audaz’s main business front. But we were headed much deeper than where the public usually ended up.

We crept slowly along, taking out cameras as we went, neither of us having to speak.

After a while, Aleksander tapped me on the shoulder and jerked his head towards a doorway, and I followed him through it. “This is their command center,” he said under his breath, gesturing around at the many screens, some of which had flickered out as we’d passed. They weren’t incapacitated permanently; the tool that we were using instead interfered with their signals for about five minutes, long enough for us to creep past, and then they would flicker back online.

We had hoped that it would keep from raising suspicion among Javier’s men. But apparently, we needn’t have bothered: there was no one there to watch the screens.

I raised an eyebrow at Aleksander. “Does any of this feel weird to you?” I asked. The fact that we’d encountered no one in the building, the fact that the command center was empty… It was almost as though Audaz had deserted the place.

Or like they had laid a very intricate trap.

I swallowed hard, scanning the screens for Emily, desperate to assure myself that she was still there. And there! She was huddled in a screen in the bottom left corner, in a room that appeared to have a bunch of storage boxes.

“How do we get there?” I asked Aleksander, hoping he would recognize it.

He frowned. “That looks like the storage rooms for the club,” he said. “Those are beer crates that she’s sitting against.”

“Lead the way,” I said.

Aleksander was still studying the screens though. “There’s no one here except us,” he said, shaking his head. “You and me and your girl.”

I frowned, realizing that he was correct. I was starting to get an increasingly bad feeling in my gut. “It’s a trap,” I said. “But what kind of trap?”

I didn’t have long to wonder; just then, there was static in our headsets. “Nikolai, Nikolai!” Diego said, his voice frantic. “You’ve got to get over here—Audaz has us surrounded and they’re picking us off!”

His words were punctuated by bursts of static. In the background, I could hear what sounded like gunshots.

There was no way the police weren’t cracking down on us after this. I felt a rush of guilt go through me as I thought about what Diego had said, about how the gang violence would be all my fault when it erupted. But no matter how badly I wanted to run outside, to help them out, I had to finish what I had come here for. I looked back at the screen and then over at Aleksander, who was waiting for me to make a move.

“We have to get her out of here,” I said, jerking my thumb towards Emily on the screen. “If the police come down on us, she can’t be here. She can’t be caught up in all of this.”

“Okay,” Aleksander said simply.

I spared a moment to wonder when I had gained such authority in our circle. I had questioned Evgeni during the meeting, and everyone had ended up siding with me. Now, here was a man whom I hardly knew, and he was trusting me to make decisions that could impact his whole life.

It was a responsibility, I realized suddenly, that I didn’t want. I might have been working towards it the whole time that I’d lived in Barcelona, taking on whatever Evgeni asked of me and learning the working of the family and the group and the broader gang network in Barcelona. But I had no desire to take over for Evgeni.

Instead, I wanted to rescue Emily.

I raced after Aleksander, skidding on the smooth, tile floors as we left the rougher, warehouse-like sections of the building and moved towards the parts that the public might actually see. We burst through the door into the storeroom, and Emily rolled her head towards us, clearly drugged.

“Emily!” I cried, flinging myself down at her side.

She sighed softly, a small smile coming to her face. “I knew you’d be here,” she murmured. Then, her eyes fluttered closed.

I looked over my shoulder at Aleksander. “Get her out of here,” I told him. “Bring her back to my place. Get her comfortable. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

“Yes, sir,” Aleksander said, no trace of irony to his tone.

I nodded at him and then got to my feet. It was easy enough to find the exit to the club, and from there, I found my way out onto the street. The sounds of the fight were clear from here, and I paused in the doorway, knowing they were probably looking for me, ready to shoot.

I darted across the street when there was a break in gunfire. When I entered the warehouse that I’d left the Volkov men, along with Diego’s men, in, I paused, staring around at the carnage.

“Diego!” I cried, flying across the room and skidding to a stop next to my best friend, who lay on the ground clutching at his stomach.

He looked at me with wide eyes. “Kolya,” he whimpered as I tore off strips of my shirt to use as a bandage. “Kolya, you have to look after Julia for me,” he said.

“No I don’t,” I snapped. “You’re going to be fine. This is just a…flesh wound.”

It was anything but, I could tell as I moved his hands to the side. It was bad. But he was Spanish; that meant I could take him to the hospital and there would be no questions asked. It was a hunting accident or something.

It might be a little risky, I reflected, since the police were sure to be investigating this. In fact, it was strange that they weren’t here already…

As though that thought had summoned them, I suddenly began to hear sirens outside, a sure sign that the fight was over. I just had to get Diego to the hospital. Then go home and make sure that Emily was okay. And then go find Uncle Evgeni and apologize for screwing things up so badly.

Because men had died today. I could hear screams all around me, could smell the blood thick in the air. If there had been any question remaining in my mind, it was gone now: I didn’t want the responsibility of this. I didn’t want to be the one who made these sorts of orders in the future.

Diego coughed, and blood spattered his lips. He caught my hands as I started to tie rough bandages around him. “Get out of here,” he said. “Go. But take care of Julia for me…”

“Diego,” I said, feeling tears in my eyes. But I knew, deep down, that he was right. There was no saving him now. “I’ll avenge you,” I swore. “I’ll make those Audaz sons of bitches pay. I swear it.”

Diego looked like he wanted to say something in response to that; there was a final moment of clarity in his eyes. But before he could give voice to those words, he breathed out one last, raspy breath, and then the awareness faded from his eyes.

I reached out and closed his eyes, but that was the best that I could do. I did a cursory look to see if there was anyone living that I could drag out of there with me, but the rest of our guys seemed to have already finished that job. All that was left was to get out of there before the police arrived.

So I fled without a backwards glance, kicking off my shoes outside the building so that I wouldn’t leave a trail of bloody footprints behind me.