Page 126 of Santa Daddy
We moved together toward the shattered back door, boots crunching on broken glass and splintered wood. The night air hit my face like a slap—cold, sharp, smelling of pine. That was when I saw it.
Dark stains in the snow, stark against the white. Blood. Still steaming in the cold, a deliberate trail leading away from the cabin.
No body. No attacker. Just blood.
“They’re playing with us,” Konstantin muttered, eyes scanning the dark between the trees. “Testing. Seeing how we react.”
They weren’t coming.
They were here already. Watching.
One of his perimeter traps went off with a crack and a flash—sharp report, shower of snow and splinters, a ragged scream cut off too quickly.
“They hit a tripwire,” he said. “Good.”
A second explosion echoed from deeper in the woods. Then a third, from the opposite side. Systematic. Probing. Learning the shape of our defenses.
“How many?” I whispered, breath fogging in the cold.
“Too many,” he said, jaw tightening as brief muzzle flashes flickered in the darkness like evil fireflies. “But they bleed like anyone else.”
The full assault hit like a wave.
They came out of the trees in coordinated lines—black gear, masks, assault rifles barking controlled bursts. More glass went, what was left of it. The cabin shuddered under the impact; wood splintered, dust rained from the rafters.
Konstantin moved like he’d been built for this.
His gun spoke in hard, economical bursts. One, two, three figures went down in the snow, limbs jerking, heat leaving their bodies in clouds of steam. He stepped, pivoted, used cover like the forest was a training course he’d run a hundred times.
This is what he was made for, I thought. This is who he is when the world stops pretending.
It wasn’t enough.
A bullet caught him in the shoulder—the same side that had barely started to heal. The impact spun him halfway around. He staggered, blood blooming through his shirt in a dark, spreading flower.
“Konstantin!” I grabbed him, fingers slipping on warm red as I dragged him behind a fallen log. “Stay with me, stay with me.”
Not now. Not after everything.
Bullets chewed the log above us, bark exploding into our hair and down our collars. I leaned around the edge, raised my gun, and fired.
Aim center mass. Breathe out. Don’t flinch.
His voice in my head steadied my hands as I squeezed the trigger. One shadow jerked and went down. Another flinched and dove for cover.
“Dani.” His blood-slick hand found my face, dragging my gaze back to his. His teeth were clenched against pain, but his eyes were clear. Commanding. “Whatever happens, you run. You get out. You save yourself and our baby.”
Our baby.
Not a theory. Not a maybe. A life.
“We run together or not at all,” I said, slamming a fresh magazine home with fingers that wouldn’t stop shaking. “You don’t get to love me and then die on me, Konstantin.”
Before he could answer, a voice cut through the gunfire.
“Cousin!”
Maksim.
