Page 38 of Defiant Devotion

Stunned immobile, he stared ahead, not down at me. His arms began to lower as he pitched forward.

Someone had shot him. Someone had come to help? Someone?—

I wrenched to the side the best I could, craning my neck to see who was behind us.

Ben.

He’d come. He washere.

Somehow, my baby daddy, my mysterious man, had come here to shoot my attackers.

“Get him!” The Ilyin holding my right arm released me to reach for his gun, but Ben was faster. Moving his arm, he aimed and fired again, taking out that man. And again for the man who’d gripped my left arm. Then another man fell as more ran into the fight.

One by one, shots were fired. Ben was picking them off cleanly. Calm and poised, he shifted his arms and shot the Ilyins as they filed out into the room.

Ben.

Ben washere.

Just when I’d feared the worst horror ever, being unable to protect my baby, he’d shown up.

Right at the moment when I knew I’d never survive the loss of my child and get over the pain of this beating, he strolled in to save the day.

Before I could accept the cruel reality that I’d been captured again, he’d changed my fate.

I couldn’t understand any of it—why he was here, how he’d known to come, and when he’d targeted me as the woman he needed to rescue. Questions stabbed my mind, but they didn’t settle with the dizzying cloud of shock that enveloped me.

Sinking down, curling over as I hunched to the ground, I closed my eyes and waited for it all to stop. Leaning over like this, in the tightest ball I could manage, was my last line of defense for my baby.

Ourbaby.

He wasn’t just saving the stranger he’d fucked twice now, but also the new life he’d helped create in me.

Plastered low to the floor, I hugged my stomach. I clenched my eyes shut tight, willing no stray bullets to reach me as the Ilyins and Ben completed their shootout.

I didn’t understand any of this, how he, of all people, had come to save me.

I couldn’t try to figure it out, not yet. All I could do was hold on and wait for the all-clear that we would be alive after all this carnage and death.

16

BEN

Ishot the man who wanted to attack Sonya with a crowbar. He dropped dead.

Then I shot the men holding her back. Both fell before they could reach for their guns.

I killed them all. One by one, the Ilyin Mafia men filed into the room, lured by the commotion. And I ended each one of the bastards.

I didn’t think. I didn’t feel. I moved on autopilot, numb to any distractions in this war. All those times in combat in the military had honed me into this machine of death. My hits were solitary tasks, carefully planned out and executed.

This was a massacre, and I didn’t stop until every single one of them was dead.

More will come.

I knew that. This wasn’t a game over moment just because I’d moved with precision and professional accuracy to shoot all ten of these men before they could get a reliable shot at me.Someone would be alerted further back from another part of this building. A camera could be watching. These Mafia families didn’t leave shit to chance, so I knew, without a doubt, this window of opportunity to flee with Sonya wouldn’t last.

“Get up.” Keeping my gun at the ready and scanning my surroundings, I ran up to Sonya curled up on the floor. She was hunched over, covering her belly, but she was alive. Bruised, bloody, and shaking, but alive.

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