Page 33 of Santa Daddy
My free hand slid toward the inside of my jacket.
Then I saw her face.
Dani turned toward the touch, slow and deliberate. Not flinching. Not shrinking.
For a second, her expression shifted. Not fear. Not coy submission.
Something sharper. Like a woman who’d seen a man bleeding out in the snow under Christmas lights and still managed to put one foot in front of the other.
Careful, ptichka.
In my world, the wrong reaction could get you killed. The right one could get people killed on your behalf.
The hand lingered a beat too long before Kaminsky withdrew it, smile smoothing back into place as if nothing had happened.
I smiled too.
Made a note.
There’d be time to deal with him later.
Touch what’s mine, and you don’t get to keep touching anything.
7
PEACHES AND GUNPOWDER
DANI
The penthouse door slammed behind us with the sound of something heavy being sealed. Coffin. Vault. Trap. Take your pick.
Something in me finally snapped.
My stilettos came off first. I kicked them like they’d personally offended me. One slammed into a marble column with a satisfying crack. The other skittered under the couch like it was trying to escape this circus too.
Good. Let something in this place run for its life.
“You almost got me killed over peaches!” I spun to face him, the words ricocheting off glass and stone and the quiet tick of whatever five-thousand-dollar clock lived in this museum. “Fucking peaches, Konstantin.”
Outside, beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, snow dusted the city in fake innocence. Down there, people were probably slipping on ice and complaining about slush. Up here, I was yelling at a Bratva kingpin about Whole Foods.
Life came at you fast.
I couldn’t control being kidnapped from a Christmas tree lot. Couldn’t control being fake-engaged to a man who used words like “liability” and “acquisition” in sentences about me. Couldn’t control the way my body lit up every time he got within a two-foot radius.
But I could control this.
This fury. This ugly, blistering thing that felt a hell of a lot safer than the want underneath.
He watched me come apart like it was mildly interesting dinner entertainment.
Still in the suit from the restaurant, dark wool and darker shirt, he stood there in the entryway, snowmelt beading on the shoulders of his coat. Not even breathing hard. Like hauling me through a room full of wolves and back out into the freezing night hadn’t dented his heart rate.
“You’re being dramatic,” he said, voice calm enough to make my teeth grind. “No one almost killed you.”
Dramatic.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I snapped. “Next time someone calls me a liability in front of a table full of armed sociopaths, I’ll just giggle and ask for the wine pairing.”
