Page 118 of Santa Daddy
The hunt had found us sooner than we’d bargained for.
24
BLOOD ON PINE
DANI
Dawn came gray and thin, seeping through the cabin windows like it wasn’t sure it wanted to commit.
No gunshots tearing the sky open. Just wind in the pines and a couple of birds arguing about something that didn’t involve automatic weapons.
Konstantin hadn’t slept. He’d spent the whole night at the window, gun in hand, eyes on the trees. Now he sat at the rickety kitchen table, the set of his shoulders saying he was still on high alert even if his body was running on fumes.
“Maybe they decided to pull back,” I said, dropping into the chair across from him. My voice felt small in the wooden box of the room. “Regroup. Hit us when we’re stupid enough to think we’re safe.”
“Maybe.” His gaze never left the window. “We stay put until I hear from Alexei. Moving in open is worse.”
Nothing about this was safe. One bad decision from any direction and we were done.
But he was right. Better the devil you’d already scouted than the ambush you couldn’t see.
That was when I noticed his bandage.
The white gauze on his shoulder had gone dark and sticky, the blood blooming through it like some grotesque flower. He sat there as if the open wound was an inconvenience instead of a hole in his body.
Stubborn bastard.
“You need that changed,” I said, already standing. The small first-aid kit sat on the counter, looking insultingly inadequate for Bratva-level trauma.
“I’m fine,” he said.
He still didn’t look away from the window.
“You’re not fine,” I said, more quietly this time. “You’re bleeding.”
I grabbed the kit and came around behind him, putting the chair between him and any thought of escape.
“Shirt off,” I ordered. “Now.”
“Dani—”
“Please.” I set the gauze and antiseptic on the table. “Let me at least do this.”
Us.
Me and the baby.
The word still felt both foreign and right, sitting heavy under my ribs.
With bad grace, he set the Glock down and managed to work the shirt off over his head, biting back a curse when the movement pulled at the wound.
Up close, it was worse than I’d let myself think.
The bullet had carved through muscle and tissue, leaving an ugly track that really needed stitches and antibiotics and sterile everything. Instead, he had me, a half-empty bottle of antiseptic, and whatever gods watched over idiots.
“This is going to hurt,” I warned, soaking a pad.
“I have had worse,” he said.
