He doesn’t. His grip tightens until pain shoots up my arm. “You embarrassed me in front of my friends.”
“I said let go.”
He glances toward the end of the hallway, where the exit door waits in darkness. “You’re going to come with me quietly.”
“No.” The word comes out before I can think.
His expression hardens. One hand clamps over my mouth, the other dragging me backward toward the side door. Panic tears through me. I claw at his wrist, trying to twist away, but he’s much stronger than I am. My heels scrape against the floor. My shoulder hits the wall hard enough to send pain down my side.
He lowers his mouth near my ear. “Stop fighting.”
I bite his palm.
Leonid curses and yanks his hand back, but he doesn’t release me. I suck in air and scream, but the music swallows most of it.
“Help!”
He shoves me against the wall so hard my head snaps back. For a second, the hallway blurs.
Then I think of the sitting room at the Volkov estate. Dmitri’s hand on Katya’s waist. His voice saying,She’ll be fine.I don’t know why that memory comes back now, but it does. It cuts through the fear and leaves something hot behind.
Rage.
I am so tired of men deciding what I will survive.
Leonid grabs for me again, and this time, I stop trying to pull away. Instead, I drive my knee up between his legs with everything I have.
He makes a horrible, broken sound and drops to his knees, both hands going between his thighs. “You bitch,” he grunts, face twisted with pain.
I stumble backward, gasping, one hand braced against the wall.
Then a gunshot cracks through the hallway. The sound is so loud it punches the air from my lungs.
Leonid jerks once. For a second, he stays upright on his knees, eyes wide with shock.
Then he falls sideways onto the floor.
I scream.
Blood spreads fast beneath him, dark against the concrete. Some of it has splattered across my dress, small red marks on the black fabric and one warm streak across my thigh.
My body locks.
I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
At the far end of the hallway, someone stands half-hidden in shadow. For a second, I catch a glimpse of his face. Not enough to recognize him. Just dark eyes, hard and unreadable, and a pale slash of something down one side of his cheek.
A scar, maybe.
Or maybe it’s only the bad light.
My mind can’t hold on to details. Everything is noise and blood and the smell of gunpowder in the hallway.
He doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
The gun remains at his side, pointed toward the floor now, but that doesn’t make me feel safer. Nothing about him feels safe. He has just shot a man in front of me and stands there like the act cost him nothing.
Another door slams somewhere behind me. Voices rise from the club.
