Page 86 of Savage Heart

“Do not let him in!” he commanded, his mind whirling. How the hell did the asshole biker know he was there? Did he know Liz was there, too?

“Did he tell you what he wants?”

“He says you want to talk, so he’s here to talk.”

Tense, Danil glared into the hallway, his eyes barely taking in the smooth, mint green walls.

He began to tell Mischa to grab the biker cocksucker, and drag him into the nearest closet until he was ready to deal with him, but the shock and pain of something piercing his side made him cry out instead. Immediately, breathing was agony.

His mouth hanging open, he let the pain roll through him as he turned to look at the woman he’d turned his back on. And shouldn’t have.

His poison had bite.

She was standing beside the desk, her hands in the air, her face pale. He dropped his gaze to his side.

There was a scalpel lodged between his ribs, right where a skilled doctor would know where to put it.

“You fucking stabbed me,” he drawled, dragging in a wet-sounding breath against the pain. He loved pain—inflicting it. Not since he was a boy in the slums of Volgograd after his father threw him away, and then in the “training camps” of the Medev Bratva, had anyone inflicted pain on him.

And this bitch had literally stabbed him when his back was turned.

“I’m going to kill you!” he raged, ignoring the sounds of a scuffle down the hallway. A red haze descended over his gaze, and the desire—the need—to wrap his hands around her throat tore through him.

She screamed, backing into the wall behind her, and he lunged, forgetting about the scalpel still impaling him. She side-stepped, banging into a shelf holding framed diplomas and pictures.

A shot rang out, and he cursed, throwing a look over his shoulder.

Liz gasped, then cried out when motherfucking Trouble slid into sight, his chest heaving, his expression wild, his gun raised.

Trouble’s enraged gaze slid to Liz for a moment, taking in everything in a single glance, then he pinned his gaze on Danil.

Rage. Glorious wrath. Hatred. Retribution. Trouble’s green eyes turned cold, colder than a winter’s night in Yakutsk.

Danil didn’t have time to open his mouth, before the blast of a gun ended everything.

Shaking, Liz couldn’t breathe through the terror.

She’d stabbed him. She’s stabbed Danil Oblek…and he was going to kill her; she could see it in his eyes; that demon was in there, that evil, and he wanted her dead.

Then Trouble shot him.

“Trouble!” she cried, her legs nearly giving out, but he was there to catch her.

He grabbed her in his arms, holding her against his trembling body.

“Fuck, Liz…fuck!” he rasped, shoving his face into her neck, his hot, shuddering breaths hitting her sweaty flesh. “I thought…I thought I’d lost you. I heard someone cry out—and I lost my fucking mind!”

Closing her eyes, melting into him, leaning into his strength, she whispered, “I stabbed him…when his back was turned, I stabbed him with my letter opener.” Actually, it was a scalpel, but it was razor sharp and did the job just fine. She kept it on her desk, and she’d found it beneath a stack of invoices, thankful that Danil had been distracted by that phone call.

“Fuck, baby, are you alright? Did he fucking touch you?” Trouble demanded, his voice like sandpaper on glass.

She shook her head, unable to speak through the tears in her throat.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here; the Russians can clean up their own mess.” With his arm still wrapped around her, he palmed his gun, holding it aloft. “I don’t know how many more goons he had here, but I dealt with the three at the front.”

“I-I didn’t see any in the back when I got here, but he said he had men at each door,” Liz supplied.

“Right. Let’s go.”

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