Page 51 of Beautifully Damned
Pop-pop.
Gunshots.
The phone slips from my fingers, my ears ringing.No, no, no.I don’t even have time to dive under the bed before the door bursts open.
It’s Lola. And the look on her face makes the blood drain from mine. She storms toward me, fire in her eyes. Her hand tangles in my hair, yanking hard enough that my knees buckle. I cry out, grasping at her wrist.
“You don’t get to hide,” she hisses. “Not when your father just made my man a fucking target.”
How is that my fault? She drags me with her like a ragdoll, and I do fight back, but at the moment, with her man at risk, she literally turns into a demon. I’m not sure two sumo wrestlers can get her off of me. A vase explodes in the room when a stray bullet hits it. I scream and try to dive underneath the bed again, but her grip tightens, dragging me up by the roots. The pain is dizzying.
She’s going to kill me. Or Roman’s going to kill me. Or my father is going to kill me with a stray bullet. I’m dead either way.
I stumble after her down the hall, down the stairs, tears streaming down my cheeks. Every instinct inside me is begging to run, but I’m anchored to her, to this chaos, to this nightmare. I pray silently that no one gets hurt, especially Roman. I pray for a peaceful end.
“Lola! Stay upstairs!” Mikhail’s voice echoes like a thunderclap.
The living room looks like a battlefield. Blood, glass, overturned furniture, flashes of gunmetal and violence. Mikhail is crouched behind the couch, firing with his weapon. Roman stands next to him, giving orders. A couple of men shoot from behind the piano. Even Elena is firing too.
Lola shoves me forward so hard I almost fall. “Move,” she snaps, and I do. We run. I hear a bullet whistle past my ear, and then something burns hot across my arm. I cry out, nearly collapsing. She grabs something from the table—a gun—and before I can ask what she’s doing, the barrel is cold against my temple.
“L-Lola, please—” I don’t want to die this way.
“Shut up.”
I can feel her rage in the tremble of her hands. Right now, she has what feels like inhumane strength because she’s defending her love. And I wish I were this strong.
“You listening, you fucks?” she screams. “One more bullet and her brains paint this wall!”
My legs shake beneath me. I thought she was my friend. On my side.
“I thought you were my friend,” I whisper through a sob, it slips out of me without permission. Shame curdles in my gut at my own naivety.
“Your Baba just sent men with machine guns into Bratva territory to collect you like a piece of lost luggage. Don’t talk to me about friendship.”
The shooting slows. Then it stops. I feel the weight of every eye on me. On us.
Roman’s voice breaks through the short lived silence, furious. “What the fuck are you doing, Lola?! Get that gun off her! Both of you, go upstairs!”
“You think the Pakhan’s gonna pull the trigger?” she sneers at the shooters. “Maybe not. Maybe he knows the etiquette of whatever this war is.” She glares toward him. “But I don’t care. I’ll do it. I’ll blow her fucking head off.”
I see something in Roman’s eyes I’ve never seen before.Fear. He’s afraid for me.
This is Lola. His future sister-in-law. His family. And I’m… the liability. The softness. The rot infecting his life.
And he knows it.
I see it all over his face, he doesn’t want this. But he understands why she’s doing it.
Because he can’t.
So she does.
She’s the executioner. And he’s the man with too many jumbled feeling to do it.
Roman reaches for me, trying to pull me away, but she won’t let go. It’s only when Mikhail catches her eye from across the room, some silent look exchanged between them, that her fingers finally loosen.
She shoves me to the floor.
