“Fuck,” I grunt, pushing the sting of pain aside to focus on the attack.
Lev steps in and shoots him between the eyes.
He falls to the ground, and when the dust settles, it looks like everyone in the room has fallen. I twist around, my eyes searching the faces of the dead men for any sign of Nikolai.
When I don’t see him, I know that he’s got to be wherever Danielle is. I need to get to her before him.
I rush through the warehouse searching for any place they might hide Danielle, and I eventually make it to the stairwell that leads down. When I reach the bottom, a bullet flies against the metal wall, and I look to see Nikolai at the end of a dim hallway. I can barely make him out in the darkness, and he quickly runs into the shadows.
I want to fire at him, but I don’t know if he has Danielle with him. I can’t be reckless when it comes to her life.
I creep my way to the back of the hallway. I use my phone to light the way as I can’t see anything otherwise.
“Get off me!” Danielle’s voice cuts through the space.
Every cell in my body is on edge as I hear her, imagining what kind of horrible things Nikolai is doing. Once a-fucking-gain, he’s here touching her. I warned him last time that if he hurt her again, I’d put a bullet between his eyes, and that wasn’t just a threat.
I rush toward the sound of her voice with my phone lighting the way, my gun cocked and ready in front of me. I spot Nikolaiin one of the cells, Danielle in front of him with a gun pressed to her temple.
“You want your whore safe? Put your gun down. I’ll make sure her pretty little head isn’t put on a spike after I kill you,” Nikolai warns, pressing the gun firmer against her head.
“Let her go, and I’ll make this quick,” I say, not giving in.
He moves his thumb to the safety on the gun to turn it off, and I smile, knowing I have a split second to get the upper hand. I fire my gun at his arm, forcing him to drop his weapon.
The gun goes off in the cell, crashing to the ground. Danielle is still in his other arm, and I take advantage of this brief moment to shoot him in the leg.
“Let her go!” I scream, stepping into the cell as he tries reaching for another gun at his waist.
He pushes Danielle away so he has use of his other arm, and she crashes to the ground with a thud. I shoot Nikolai in his good arm, stopping him from getting another gun.
I rush at him, knocking him to the ground so he’s prone, and I’m on top of him. “What did I say about touching her?”
My fist crashes into his face. He grunts as I break his nose, and I do it again and again and again until his face is nothing but bloody pulp on the ground.
All I can think about is Danielle and how he held a gun to her face, how he dragged her from the penthouse and brought her here. I saw the bruises on her face as the light shined on her. I don’t even want to know what they did to her, but imagining his hands touching her and hurting her fuels every blow I pummel at him.
He is still breathing when I back away, though his eyes are too swollen to open and his head moves back and forth slowly.
“This is what you get when you touch what’s mine,” I say, breathing heavily.
I grab the gun he dropped on the ground and point it between his eyes, staying true to my word, and lodging a bullet between them without a second thought.
When I turn around to check on Danielle, her eyes are wide, and tears are streaming down her face. Fuck. Now she’s seen who I really am…whatI really am. A killer, a criminal, a monster.
What she doesn’t know yet is, I’m her monster.
Chapter 8
Danielle
I’m completely shell-shocked.What the hell did I just see?
I try to rationalize everything that’s happened over the past few hours, and I simply can’t. Two days ago, I was a student at NYU studying animation, and now I’ve just seen someone brutally killed in front of me.
My entire body is numb, and I don’t feel the stinging in my cheeks anymore from being hit.
I’m back in the penthouse, and I barely registered leaving the warehouse. Looking back, I can feel Ivan’s hands gentle on me as he carried me out, how he asked me questions while someone else drove back here.
