He shrugs his shoulder away from my hand, looking at me with accusation in his eyes as he points at the guard whose throat he slit.
“Anton was looking for you, of course,” he hisses at me. “They’ve been targeting you for weeks, Artyom. You must have known coming to a big public event like this, away from Vanya’s watch, would be a risk.”
“I didn’t think they’d put the family name in danger by bringing death to a fundraising gala.”
His blue eyes spark with anger. “One of your many oversights lately. You’ve been so distracted by this doctor of yours that you don’t see what’s staring you in the face.”
I don’t like his tone, but I let the comment slide. Nina is my primary focus. I’m not about to apologize to Nikolai for that.
“What’s been staring me in the face?”
“They don’t care about running the business side of things and good name of the family into the ground as long as they get the seat on the Council, Tyoma. All they want is a license to run this family however they want.”
Polina and Denis may be scheming, but I struggle to take them seriously as a threat. If they did order this hit on me… That changes things. My family is poisonous, but they’ve never tried to kill me so obviously before.
Vanya’s game has injected a level of desperation into the Petrovs that is putting us all in danger.
And now it’s affecting Nina too.
I swallow as I return to her. I don’t want to be the one to tell her about Lily.
She’s still huddled under the drinks table, looking confused and still tipsy.
She looks up at me, dazed.
“You’re bleeding,” she says, tracing her hand over a place on my cheek. Her fingers come away red, where the glass of the chandelier sliced into my face, but it’s not me I’m worried about.
I check her for injuries before I help her to her feet and let her see the scene in the center of the ballroom. They didn’t get Nina. I let myself breathe a sigh of relief. If she’d been hit, while they looked for me, I would never forgive myself.
“Nina…” I begin. “Lily has been shot.”
Her hand flies to her mouth and tears spring into her eyes. She tears across the ballroom and pushes through the crowd to get to her best friend’s side.
She holds Lily’s hand and waits with her until the medics get there, sobbing but continuing to talk to her. She says it’s in case Lily can hear her, so that she has something comforting to listen to.
When the ambulance arrives, I place my arm around Nina’s shoulders. I have to physically drag her away from Lily’s side as they head out to the street. It’s not safe for her to be alone.
“Nina.” I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her away from the stretcher as they carry it out of the ballroom. “We need to get out of here. Whoever did this might try again.”
Nina nods, looking out of it, tears streaking down her face and ruining her makeup. She stares after the stretcher. “Daniel will be at Middlefield to help her.”
I push down my instinctive growl at the way she talks abouthim, like he’s a safe place. I nod. “He will. It will be okay.”
She starts to shake, staring at Lily as she’s loaded onto a stretcher.
I cup her face and pull it towards me. “She will be okay. I’m serious. I’ve seen worse gunshot wounds. They’re saying she hit her head when she fell, and that’s why she’s so unresponsive. Not the blood loss.”
She nods slowly, her eyes so wide and trusting on mine. For once, I feel like Nina believes what I’m saying.
Nina lets me lead her away, my guards flanking us. “Let’s get Ava from the daycare?”
“And then go home,” she says.
I can’t stand the thought of letting Nina and Ava go home alone. Not after someone just tried to shoot me, after seeing me dancing with her.
“You shouldn’t be alone right now, Nina. You’ll be safer at my place.”
Her brows raise. Her face is pale, her freckles stark across her cheeks.
