“Last chance,” I warn, stepping closer. “Let. Her. Go.”
He starts to back toward the door, dragging Gela with him. “I'm walking out of here. With her. Or I paint the walls with her—”
I don't even let him finish, that threat turning my anger to a level of beast I haven’t experienced before. I take aim right for his knee and just as he lets go of Gela with a howl to clutch it, I shoot him straight in the head.
Gela screams, scrambling away from the body, blood splattered across her white shirt.
I move quickly, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her feet. “We need to go. Now.”
“What—who—” She's hyperventilating, staring at the bodies with horror. She looks like she might be sick, and I have to remind myself that this is probably the first time in her life she’s heard a gunshot, let alone seen a man die.
But right now, we’re on a leash, and I need to get her out of there, no matter how much of a shock she’s in. We can’t just loiter around.
From past experience, I know how quickly things can escalate with the Zakharovs. Just last month, they shot one of our men in the head the second he walked into one of their bars. He’d wandered in by mistake, and they killed him anyway.
I don’t want to wait around for some trigger-hungry Zakharov lackey.
“There’s no time,” I cut her off, checking the hallway to see if any other men are loitering around. “We need to go before more come.”
I drag her by the wrist toward the emergency exit, but she tries to pull away from me. “Let me go!” she screams. “What the hell is happening? Who are you? You…you killed those men in there.”
I tighten my grip on her wrist and pull her closer, forcing her to look me in the eye. “If I hadn’t killed them, they would have killed you. Don’t you get it, Gela? You have to trust me. If you stay here, you’ll die.”
“I…I’m going to call the police,” she tries to threaten me, her eyes welling with tears of panic. “Please, Valentin…or whatever your name is…you have to let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear. I won’t. You can run away and hide. I won’t say a word. I’ll say I don’t know who killed those men and…”
She’s rambling. Panicking and rambling. She’s begging, and I hate to see her beg for this.
Just then, I hear the elevator’s machinery move. Someone’s going up, or down. Someone could be coming right this way.
If outnumbered, we’re fucked.
We need to get out of here, and I see no other way than to take her against her will, if she won’t move. So I wrap my arm around her waist and half-carry, half-drag her fighting body through the emergency exit. Her protests die the moment we hear men running down the hallways.
“There…there are more of them?” she whispers with urgency, the panic finally forcing her to move with her own two feet.
“Yes.” I push her down the stairs ahead of me and quietly close the door behind us. “And they won't stop. Now run.”
Chapter 4 - Gela
The steel stairs are slick and wet, and I try to run because Valentin keeps hissing at me to move, and I remember how he killed all those men. My legs feel like jelly, and the bile rises in my throat, but no matter how hard I try, all I can think of is the color of blood.
How the hell did my day end up like this?
One second, I was elbow-deep in work, trying to make the most of a free Sunday, and the next? I’m running for my life. My lungs are burning, my legs are shaking, and I can’t get the sound of those gunshots out of my head. The smell of blood still lingers, and I try not to gag as I do whatever Valentin wants.
I’m shit scared, and I’ve clearly got Valentin down all wrong, but he’s still a safer bet than waiting around for those dangerous men to come back.
Ever since he walked me back to my office this afternoon, my heart had been doing these uncharacteristic little flips at the thought of him.
When will I see him again?
He walked me to my building…does that mean something?
Will he actually call, and if he does, would it be just for dinner… or a date?
Fuck.
Twenty minutes ago, I was trying really hard to work on a marketing plan for the Fitness Haven account, that is, through the haze of thinking about Valentin—and unsuccessfully trying not to.
