“And that ain’t your woman, is it?” another asked around cruel laughter. “So fuck off and mind your own.”
“She’s not yours,” Sergei replied in a low snarl.
Gunshots went off all at once.
“Mommy!” Maisie screamed. Her tiny fingers clutched my hair as she tucked her face against me. I cried out, too, shaking and delirious with fear. Holding her close, I bent over to protect her with my body.
My ears rang. I couldn’t breathe fast enough, hyperventilating with this closest brush to death that I’d ever experienced.
But no pain registered. No piercings of a bullet, no blood gushing out of me. Maisie cried, holding on to me as time settled in the microsecond following the fight.
She was alive. I was alive. Neither of us seemed hurt, not by a bullet.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
The fight-or-flight instinct rose in me again. I was still standing. So was Sergei. Miraculously, Sergei was behind me, not on the ground, bleeding out. I could barely think straight, let alone marvel at the miracle that we hadn’t been hit. It seemed so impossible, but as I opened my eyes and lifted my head a little, actions that couldn’t have taken more than a couple of seconds, I saw that the danger wasn’t over.
“Fuck you! Goddammit,fuck you!” One man roared it, raising his voice louder than the others. Groans and more curses came from the two men who were down. The one near my feet didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
Bile rose up my throat as I realized he was dead. Sergei had killed him. Shot him right in the face, leaving a gaping, gory wound above his nose.
Oh, fuck. Fuck!
I swallowed hard, feeling flush and too hot with the instinct to vomit at this gruesome sight.
“Mommy!” Maisie shivered and smashed her face against me.
A man who hadn’t been shot—who didn’t have a gun—lunged at me, and I screamed. Holding Maisie tighter, I backed into Sergei and debated making a run for it. I couldn’t fight back. I had to flee. I had to get out of here!
“Stay with me,” Sergei ordered, as if guessing I was about to do the opposite. “Natalie.” He fired at the man, who dodged his aim. More men came rushing down the sidewalk. “Stay with me, Natalie.”
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t stay here near harm like this. I couldn’t keep my daughter near all this danger. My apartment was just right there. The door was so close. I could run and?—
A scream ripped from my throat as another man dove at me, trying to knock Maisie out of my arms. I fell hard, smacking my hands and knee on the pavement as the man wrested my daughter out of my arms. I didn’t have the chance to hold her close as I rolled into the fall, protecting her. He yanked her away as I slammed on the pavement.
“No!”
I screamed it so loud my throat was on fire. “No!”
Sergei was still firing at the men. But when he spun and saw me on the ground, he shifted his furious stare to my daughter.
She stood there, falling out of the man’s rough capture. Crying with tears down her face, she looked so out of place. Alone. Terrified. No child should ever be near gunfire, and there she was, like a target in the open.
“No!” I scrambled to get up, reaching my arm out to her to reclaim her and protect her.
Before I could, Sergei dove in front of her. He knocked into her, wrapping her in his arms and tucking her head against him as he blocked her with his body. Rolling away from the nearest thug who tried to take her, he didn’t wait. Mid-roll, he brought his arm up again and shot the man dead center in the forehead.
I flinched, rearing back at the shot so up close in this range. Maisie’s screams and cries didn’t fade. But all that told me was that she was alive. She wasn’t hit. She wasalive, all thanks to Sergei.
Gratitude would have to come later. Relief would be an afterthought. He’d saved her. He’d risked himself to save her. And me. But as he got upright on one knee, firing at the men with accuracy, he steered me to take Maisie and to get behind him.
I scooped her up, huddling her close as I stood at Sergei’s broad back. Then as he backed up toward my apartment door, he kept firing at the men who tried to get close.
“Get inside,” he ordered me.
I didn’t need to be told twice.
A car pulled up and a couple more men appeared, seeming to fight back the thugs who’d chased me.
