Page 48 of Santa Daddy
See? his eyes seemed to say. No illusions. No lies.
This is me. This is the world you chose instead of running.
And somehow, impossibly, I’d become one of the things worth protecting with it.
“Still planning my murder?” he asked, that infuriating almost-smirk tugging at his mouth.
Every damn day. Right after I figured out why I didn’t actually want him dead.
“Give me time,” I said lightly. “I’m still working out the details.”
The murder wasn’t his anymore.
It was mine.
The girl I’d been before the tree lot, before the gunshots, before the man in the black coat decided I was more interesting alive than dead—she was already bleeding out on some metaphorical marble floor.
Standing there in his bedroom, surrounded by luxury that felt like a cage and a man who felt like a loaded gun pointed at my heart, it hit me.
I didn’t want to bring her back.
And that was the scariest thing of all.
10
SEVENTY-TWO HOURS TO HELL
KONSTANTIN
Ifound her in the kitchen with my gun on the counter.
It lay in the middle of the marble island like a black omen, slide locked back, safe direction, as if she’d been careful not to “accidentally” shoot herself. Or me. She sat across from it in one of my shirts and thin pajama pants, bare feet tucked on the rung of the stool, staring at the weapon like it might rearrange the future for her.
Good.
She was finally starting to understand what kind of world she’d wandered into between Christmas trees and gunshots.
“Planning something?” I asked, lowering myself into the chair opposite her.
Her eyes lifted from the gun to my face. Dark. Clear. There was something new there—not panic, not defiance.
Acceptance.
“Just admiring your…” She let the pause hang. “Collection. I’m guessing this is one of many.”
Either she was cataloguing options for killing me.
Or she was thinking hard about how to stay alive.
Both were acceptable.
I reached across and closed my fingers around the grip, sliding the gun back toward me, out of her reach. Her gaze stayed level. No flinch.
“We need to talk,” I said.
“About what?” she asked. “Your interior-design theme of ‘impeccable taste and casual homicide’?”
“Our wedding,” I said.
