Page 106 of Santa Daddy
Not with his fists.
With his whole body.
He drove me flat, covering me from shoulders to shins. The impact punched what little air I had left out of my lungs.Between his weight and the floor, there was nothing but sound and fear.
The scent of his cologne cut through dust and cold. Underneath it: something copper and sharp.
Blood.
“Kon—” I gasped, the rest torn away by the roar.
Gunfire chewed through the room. Deafening. Bullets ripped into furniture, walls, the Christmas tree. Marble chips exploded from the island, raining down like stone hail.
Our perfect glass box was being shredded.
“The baby,” I choked, one hand clawing instinctively to my stomach under his weight. “Oh God, the baby?—”
His arm banded tighter across my back, pinning me harder. “You stay down,” he growled in my ear, accent rougher, consonants harder. “Do not move.”
I didn’t argue. I couldn’t. Terror had swallowed my tongue.
Through the chaos I caught flashes—figures in dark tactical gear at the blown-out window, black masks, rifles braced. This wasn’t some drunk with a handgun. This was practiced. Planned.
Too fast after Maksim. This had been ready no matter what happened in that kitchen.
He shifted his weight just enough to free his right arm. A gun appeared in his hand like magic. He twisted, still over me, and fired.
Two clean shots. Two bodies dropped. Blood sprayed the white wall in messy arcs.
There were more. Too many more.
“Move!” he barked.
He rolled, dragging me with him, hauling me to my feet by sheer will when my legs wanted to fold. We half-ran, half-stumbled across a minefield of glass and debris toward what looked like a solid stretch of wall off the hallway.
“Where are you?—”
“Now, Dani,” he snapped.
His palm hit a section of panel I’d always assumed was just art-friendly drywall. A square of it slid aside with a whisper, revealing a narrow elevator door set into raw concrete.
Of course there was a way out I’d never seen.
He yanked it open and practically threw me inside.
Another burst of bullets shredded the corridor we’d just crossed. The sound was so close I felt it in my bones.
He dove in after me, slapped a control I couldn’t see, and the doors slid shut with a soft hiss that didn’t match what we’d just escaped.
The floor dropped.
My stomach tried to claw its way up my throat. My hands clenched in his already blood-soaked shirt on reflex.
“You’re bleeding,” I managed. The words came out thin. Useless.
He glanced down. A dark stain spread across his shoulder, soaking the white cotton, running in thin lines along his ribs.
“Is nothing,” he said. “Grazed.” His vowel flattened, the Russian heavier. “I have had worse.”
