Or blind faith in me?
My heart flatlines. I’ve spent my life protecting the Kozlov Bratva, Roman’s family, the organization.
Now, for reasons I can’t fully understand, I’m protecting her. This bright, innocent woman who doesn’t belong in my life.
And I’ll kill anyone who tries to steal her from me.
Chapter 16
Chloe
My lungs burn with each gasping breath as Kolya drags me into another backyard.
Shadows stretch like grasping fingers.
This can’t be happening.
People don’t get shot at in Willow Creek. They don’t flee through backyards half dressed with a strange man’s hand locked around their wrist.
My bare feet slap the cool grass and scrape over gravel as we flee from the gun-wielding man or men.
All while Kolya’s flavor still lingers on my tongue.
With an iron grip, he hauls me through Mrs. Hooper’s vegetable garden. As we smash her tomato plants, the acrid scent of crushed vines rise into the night air.
A week ago, this would’ve mortified me. Now I just concentrate on staying upright as the hastily buttoned pants I’ve just thrown on without slowing down slide down my hips with every desperate stride.
We hurdle a low fence and duck behind a plastic playhouse.
Sweat and fear mingle on my skin. My chest heaves.
Kolya crouches beside me, his body taut as a drawn bow.
He doesn’t pant or sweat or even appear especially disturbed by the bullets or nighttime chase.
Simply acts like this is just another day for him.
“You hold that gun like a pro.” I gasp for air. “Who the heck are you?”
He responds by squeezing my wrist and pulling me forward again. While I may not understand what’s happening, I know the safest place is next to him.
We dart between an expensive gas grill and patio furniture that probably cost more than my monthly salary. The surreal normality of these backyards—the wind chimes, the garden gnomes, the abandoned Big Wheels—twists my current reality into an even more disorienting nightmare.
I’m stuck in a terrible, straight-to-streaming thriller where the ditzy girl falls for the mysterious stranger, then acts shocked when he reveals himself as dangerous.
Yup,thatgirl. The foolish one who gets murdered right after she gets down and dirty with the bad boy character.
My throat still burns from how eagerly I took him in my mouth. My inner thighs are sticky from his tongue. This time, shame rather than desire triggers the heat flushing through me. How had I been so easily fooled? So willingly blind?
That electric current that runs from my core to my fingertips every time he touches me must’ve fried my brain.
My body’s betrayal.
“Stop.” I dig my heels into soft soil as we pause in the shadow of a storage shed. “Just stop. Tell me what’s happening.”
His face sharpens in the darkness. “We need to keep moving.”
“Why? Why are people shooting at us? Why are we running through people’s yards? Why are you here?” Each question rises in pitch, my hysteria threatening to boil over. “Who are you?”
