Page 49 of Sexting His Assistant

Luka’s body covers mine, heavy and hard and immovable, one arm around my waist, one hand pressed to the back of my head, forcing me down behind the armored car. My cheek’s against the cold concrete. My knees hit the floor badly enough to sting. Somewhere above us, metal groans from the impact of another shot, and the entire garage goes black so suddenly it feels as if the building itself has closed its eyes.

I hear myself breathing now in pathetic little broken pulls of air against Luka’s coat.

But he’s silent.

And that scares me more than the gunfire.

His hand leaves the back of my head for half a second, and then I hear a sound I’ve only ever heard in films before: the clean, mechanical slide of a gun being drawn.

Except this is not a film.

This is not one of the rumors whispered about him in hallways. This is not my brother lowering his voice when Luka’s name comes up. This is not me joking about Bratva politics as if danger is something stylish and distant, something that wears black suits and sits behind glass desks.

This is real.

This is Luka Kazan’s body between mine and a bullet.

Another shot explodes through the dark.

I flinch so hard my teeth snap together.

Luka shifts instantly, pulling me tighter against him, his arm locking across my back as if he can fold me into his ribs.

“Don’t move,” he says, his voice low, controlled, terrifyingly calm.

I nod, though I’m not sure he can see it.

My eyes are wide open, but the garage is almost completely dark, broken only by the red emergency strip lights glowing along the far wall. They flicker once, twice, washing the concrete pillars, cars, and shadows in pulses of blood-colored light.

A shout comes from somewhere near the ramp. Then another.

Security.

Someone yells in Russian. I catch only pieces of it, enough to understand that men are moving, that someone is down, that no one knows exactly where the shooter is.

But Luka does. Or maybe he just guesses faster than everyone else.

He raises his gun and fires once into the dark.

The sound is so loud at this distance I cry out before I can stop myself.

His hand comes back to my head immediately, fingers firm in my hair, grounding me even as his attention stays fixed somewhere beyond the car.

I smell gunpowder. Burnt metal. His cologne. My own fear.

The combination is so strange and sharp that my stomach twists.

“Luka,” I whisper.

“Quiet.”

Something moves near the next row of cars. A shadow, maybe. A man, maybe. I cannot tell. My brain keeps trying to turn shapes into ordinary things because it does not want to understand that people are shooting at us in the private garage beneath his building.

Luka fires again.

A man grunts in the darkness.

Then the whole garage erupts.