Page 50 of Sexting His Assistant

Luka’s security men respond from two directions. More gunfire cracks through the concrete space, ricocheting in brutal echoes that make it impossible to know where anything is coming from. Tires burst. Glass shatters. A car alarm starts screaming, then dies abruptly after another shot punches through it.

I clamp both hands over my ears.

Luka drags me lower.

His body moves with awful precision, one knee braced, one shoulder angled toward the open side of the car, keeping himself between me and everything else.

This is my first real taste of his world.

And it tastes like blood, smoke, and panic.

I think of Misha. My brother telling me he trusts Luka with his life. With mine.

I understand now what that means.

It does not mean Luka is safe. It means Luka knows exactly how unsafe the world is.

A flash cuts through the dark from the left. I see it before I hear it. Luka sees me see it.

His arm slams around me and he twists, hauling me beneath him just as another shot cracks through the air.

His body jerks barely enough for anyone else to notice.

But I feel it.

I feel the hard, sudden shock that runs through him. I feel his breath leave his chest in one violent exhale. I feel his weight dip over me for half a second before he catches himself on one hand.

My heart stops.

“Luka?”

He doesn’t answer.

He fires twice over the hood of the car, controlled and brutal, then drops back down beside me.

The emergency light flickers red across his face.

That’s when I see it.

Dark crimson spreading across his shoulder.

At first, my brain refuses to understand.

It looks almost black in the red light, soaking through the fabric of his coat near the upper arm, spreading too quickly for anything else.

Blood. His blood.

Because he moved in front of me.

Because the bullet meant for me hit him.

“No,” I breathe.

His jaw is tight, but his eyes are clear, colder than I have ever seen them. “I said don’t move.”

“You’re shot.”

“I know.”