Page 19 of Shielded Secrets

I screamed, seeing him grab for me again, but the need to fight back came faster. All those moments of how I’d gotten my street smarts filled my mind. Former fights. Past threats. Previous scrimmages and issues of violence I’d had to survive to make it to this situation. Rearing back, I braced myself to lunge out and connect my foot with his groin.

He growled, bending over to dodge my hit. Instead of sending his balls up his spine, I hit the inside of his thigh. It still had to have hurt because he retaliated instantly. He lifted his hand to strike me. This time, the hard slap caught me across the cheek. I wasn’t going to cower. While he wound back to lash out at me again, I shoved at him. He didn’t fall back. Still with his arm up, he remained poised to hit me. Pure loathing shone from his slitted eyes as he scowled at me.

Then just as quickly, his fearsome, evil face morphed into something of surprise. He furrowed his brow as he was wrenched backward.

Someone was here!

I wasn’t alone!

Shoving at the man’s fingers manacled around my wrist, I strained to break free. In slow motion, everything passed as a blur. The man was pulled back as someone took hold of his bicep. Instead of unleashing his fury on me with another strong backhand across my face, he was forced away from me as someone else pulled on that upraised arm.

I swallowed hard at the change of positions. I was almost freed with the man further away, but he didn’t release me. The urge to scream rose again, to attract more help to come, but I couldn’t speak. My mouth and throat were so dry. I couldn’t manage this adrenaline rush, feeling so close to passing out from the stress alone. Panicked and stuck in a frenzy of too many strong feelings jumbling in my head, I focused on staying alert and not falling down. It was all I could do—until I heard his voice.

“Let her go!”

Hisvoice.

I blinked, confused and worried I was imagining things, whether I was so full of anxiety that I’d lost my control on reality. My dreams were merging into the forefront of my mind. They had to be because there was no other explanation for how I would be hearing his voice.

“Let her—” A hard punch to the man’s gut forced him to release me. “Go!”

Rurik!

Itwashim. That was his voice I heard.

The tall, muscled bodyguard I couldn’t stop thinking about was here. He was the one forcing this man back. I couldn’t tell if it was another one of Jerome’s friends or if he was another opportunist coming to take advantage of and attack a woman. It didn’t matter who this bastard was. All that mattered, all that reached the functioning parts of my mind, was that Rurik was here.

Without Eva, his Mafia family’s princess, here to be protected, he would have no excuse to be on campus. As I watched him fight the man who’d struck me, I didn’t care. Hewashere, and I couldn’t tear my gaze off him as he pummeled his fists on the other guy. They fought hard in a grisly fight, grabbing hair, shoving and punching, trading kicks and trying to maneuver each other into tight holds.

Whatever the reason, Rurik was here, determined with gory and angry might to protect me.

The need to run faded. This instinct to survive was altered as I witnessed Rurik here. After all this time of missing him, of wondering what had happened to him and where he’d gone,how he was doing and if he ever would’ve noticed a plain, non-innocent woman like me.

I couldn’t run from him. I had spent far too long wishing I could runtohim to entertain fleeing the scene.

Under his protection as he valiantly fought back this other man, I was safer. I was secure so long as he was in charge of deflecting this stranger from putting his hands on me again.

Rurik didn’t stop once. He didn’t hesitate, not even when the man pulled out a gun.

My heart thundered faster at this sign, though. The escalation of danger had me worried for him. Not myself. It would’ve been smarter to stick with my old mantra of lowering my head and minding my own business. It would’ve been wise to distance myself from this danger and remain anonymous and aloof.

“Rurik, watch out!” I cried out when the man moved the gun from under the flap of his coat to brandish it at the Russian I hadn’t been able to forget about.

All the muscles in my body tensed as I braced for a hit. In my arms and legs, I felt the tension of waiting for impact. My stomach clenched as well, and I resisted shaking from the potency of my fear.

The man didn’t shoot him, though. Rurik was too fast. He was too skilled. Moving so quickly that it seemed like he was a machine, he deflected the man’s moves. A quick jab to his side had the man dropping the opposite way. Another quicker hit from Rurik had the stranger shouting out in pain and lowering his arm. That was all the access Rurik needed to wrest the weapon away.

Then he used it. On him.

A shot was fired, but the racket of it didn’t deafen me. A silencer had been attached to it because no loud crack or boom came with Rurik pulling the trigger and aiming the shot directly at the man.

Again, he squeezed the trigger. Expertly, with the finesse a trained bodyguard and Mafia killer would have from years of this kind of experience, Rurik shot the man who’d rushed up to attack me.

The body slumped to the ground. His legs splayed out awkwardly on the path as blood gushed out his chest. Once more, despite the stranger lying unmoving on the sidewalk, Rurik prepared to use the gun on him.

Before he did, he looked up at me from his position of hunching over, one knee on the ground. “Don’t watch,” he ordered me.

I blinked, too stunned to speak. Then without realizing I was disobeying him, I watched as he pressed the end of the barrel to the man’s head and shot him again.

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