Page 111 of Santa Daddy
Behind me, the cabin’s single sagging couch complained as Dani shifted. She stared out at the trees, hair wild from the escape, clothes torn, my blood dried on her sleeve. For about ten seconds, her face went soft.
She was probably imagining living somewhere like this. No skyscrapers, no lock codes, no bullets punching through glass. Just trees and wood smoke and the kid growing inside her playing in the snow.
Ten seconds was all hell gave us these days.
Then I watched the tension slide back into her shoulders like armor she couldn’t put down.
“Who was it?” she asked suddenly, her voice slicing through the quiet.
Here we go.
“Who was what?” I kept my eyes on the trees. On the shadows. On anything but her.
“Don’t do that.” Her tone sharpened. “Don’t play dumb with me. Who betrayed us? Who sold us out?”
The million-dollar question. Or however much Vlad thought Mariupol blood money was worth.
I shifted my weight. Pain bit into my shoulder, hot and sharp.
“Could be anyone,” I said. “My world is full of wolves, kotyonok. It’s just a matter of which one decided to bite first.”
She turned fully toward me.
The fury in her dark eyes was glorious and terrifying. She’d been dragged through hell and still managed to light up like that.
“That’s not an answer,” she snapped.
“It’s the only one I have right now,” I said, finally letting my gaze leave the tree line to meet hers. “Maksim, probably. He has the network. The motive. And he’s always wanted what I have.”
What I have.
Like she was an object. A car. A territory.
She deserved better than this.
I turned away from the window fully and let myself look at her.
Small bruises already forming where doorframes and hands and seatbelts had met her skin. She was beautiful like that. Fierce. And carrying my child in a world that saw that as an opportunity, not something sacred.
“You want certainty?” I asked. “Here’s certainty: someone on my side decided you were worth more dead than alive. Someone looked at you and saw the perfect way to hurt me.”
And they weren’t wrong.
Losing her would finish what the bomb that killed my father started.
She shot to her feet so fast my hand automatically went toward my gun. She wasn’t charging the door, though.
She was charging me.
She stopped inches from my chest.
“This,” she spat. “This is what you dragged me into. This poison that follows you everywhere. It touches everything. Ruins everything. You turn anything beautiful into something violent just by breathing near it.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Everything I touched either died or learned how to kill.
Something gave way inside my chest. The careful distance I’d been trying to keep, the lie that she was a piece on my board and nothing more—it all crumbled under the weight of her rage.
