Page 79 of Hey, Daddy

I watched Haze’s chest.

Watched the cords in his neck tense as I was talking.

“Do you remember the badge number?” he asked carefully.

I swallowed hard. “I’ll try…”

He nodded and said, “Please, Mama. Continue.”

Milena came up to my side, fed up with the distance, sat on the edge of the bed and threw her arms around me.

I leaned into my sister’s touch for a long moment before continuing.

Maven moved in, still hesitant around me, but I held out my free hand and waited for her to take it before continuing.

“The door barely made it all the way open before the second guy pushed through. Daniil sensed the danger immediately and told me to run. I did, and that’s the last I remember beforewaking up,” I said. “When I woke up, it was to find Daniil dead beside me, blood everywhere, and my body…stiff.”

“Do you feel like you fought?” Dima asked.

I shrugged. “I feel like I’ve run a marathon.”

I was being for real, too.

I’d run several, and every last one of them I’d felt like death afterward.

“Nastya’s run three or four now,” Milena supplied helpfully to everyone in the room. “She was barely able to move after each one.”

“Was the uniformed officer that came in John?” Auden asked what likely everyone was thinking.

“No,” Haze disagreed vehemently. “John isn’t ever in uniform anymore. To be completely truthful, I’m not even sure that he has a uniform that fits anymore. He’d have had to go buy all new clothes to make that happen, and though you think it might be easy, John had to special order all of his uniforms because he was so bulky.”

“I’ll call Lev, have him meet us at the house,” Shasha said. “Maybe we can use the street cameras to piece together what happened.”

“That’s a little bit illegal,” my lawyer said as she gathered her sweater and bag. “I’m going to exit stage left. If you need me, call.” She leveled me with a look. “You will not go to jail for killing an officer of the law and seriously injuring your bodyguard.”

“Seriously injuring?” I croaked.

Elianora smiled and said, “I’ll let them catch you up.”

She left, leaving Shasha, Dima, my sisters, Auden and Haze in the room with me.

“Daniil is alive?” I asked no one in particular.

It was Shasha that answered, though.

“Hanging on by a thread,” Shasha answered honestly.

I wasn’t sure how.

There would be no way on earth that I thought a man could live through what Daniil had. But I’d known Daniil for a very long time. If anyone would live through sheer stubbornness, it would be him.

Haze’s eyes had never left mine since I’d started talking, and I felt like he’d wrapped me up in a warm blanket and held me tight with each prolonged second.

I loved my sisters, but I really wanted him holding me…

As if he sensed it, he asked, “Do you all mind giving us a moment? Could you go check on whether she can be discharged? Maybe call in and check on the kids…”

Shasha looked from me to Haze and back before saying, “I got an update from Brecken five minutes ago that Desi was playing Candy Land with Vivi, but I’m going to give her a heads up that we’re gonna have a full house in a bit.”

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