Page 98 of Captive Vows
“Very funny!” I bit out through clenched teeth as the contraction claimed me.
The tech winked, stepping aside as a nurse opened the door.
While the panel was ajar, someone else showed up and entered too. It wasn’t the doctor.
But a man wearing a mask, toting a gun. He shot the nurse in the back of the head. She fell, blood and body matter spraying out. The guard attacked the next man trying to sneak in.
I screamed. Through the pain of the contraction. The fear of violence. The gruesome sight of that nurse shot dead right before my eyes.
This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not here. I was so fucking determined to bring this baby into a world where he or she would meet love, not death and danger.
Alexsei moved like a blur. He had his gun out, firing at the men as they tried to enter. One after the other, he shot them dead. Past this door, now held open with the dead nurse’s body preventing it from closing, more gunfire erupted. The guard at the door was hit, but he added to Alexsei’s shots.
“Don’t move!” he yelled at me as he hurried to secure the door.
I was too traumatized to roll my eyes. Where elsecouldI go?
My stomach was clenching in pain. Air couldn’t fill my lungs. My heart raced. And why was I so sweaty?
I was having a baby. I couldn’t hide and protect myself. As the medical facility turned into a warzone, I fought through the contractions to sit up. Alexsei and the other Dubinins were guarding me, not letting anyone enter the room. But that wasn’t good enough. If this baby was coming now, I would not be defenseless.
Where is Luka?
Why is this happening?
When will it ever end?
Dropping to my hands and knees, I cried out at the pain of another contraction. It ripped at me, nearly making me fall and pass out, but I didn’t stop crawling. Ignoring the blood and fighting the urge to puke from the labor and the grisly scene of death, I kept going.
My fingers shook and trembled, but I didn’t stop until I pried a gun from a dead man’s hands near the open doorway.
I’d never used a gun. Never fired one. But for fuck’s sake, how hard could it be?
The energy of crawling, of moving at all, worsened the pain. Once I held the weapon in my hand, I slumped to the side. Lying on a clear spot on the floor, I gritted my teeth and breathed through the contractions that came so quickly, one after the other.
Screams filled the air, broken up only by the gunfire and shouts. Even though I was the only patient in the waiting room, other expectant mothers were in other rooms. More medical personnel were out there. So many innocent lives were taken, cruelly and horribly, in this place where new lives were supposed to come into the world.
I didn’t need to focus on what the gunmen were saying.
I knew they were here to get me.
Miguel had told them to get my child, all to pawn him or her off to the Italians. That was what two men said in the hallway. It sounded like it was Pyotr, the one guard who’d once scared me. He was punching and fighting someone trying to get into my room, and that was how I caught word of the confession.
“No.” I shook my head, delirious with this shock.
“It can’t be like this.”
The Cartel wanted me dead to wound Luka.
The Riveras wanted to take my child to hurt him too.
I was a target. I’d become collateral damage because he dared to love me.
“Gabriella!”
I tensed, opening my eyes as someone neared my room. On instinct, I lifted the gun and aimed it shakily.
A guard’s arm reached out to stop a nurse, but she pushed at him. “No. Let me in. She’s in labor!”
