Page 76 of The Pakhan's Secret Baby

Batya drops his head and rubs his face with both hands. When he looks back up at me his eyes are wet and his lip trembles. "I'm trying to protect you, Emory," he says sharply. "I know I've done everything wrong. Every choice I've made has put you and Lex in more danger and I can't take any of it back. But I can't sit in this basement and wait for Krasnov to decide to kill us. We have to get out."

"You could trust me," I snap, now angry I even considered apologizing to him. "Staying here keeps us safe. Can't you see that!"

He stares at me with open anger. The pause before he speaks is painful. "You want to stay with him?" My father looks angry, then hurt, then disgusted. The idea of me doing what he's done is abhorrent. He can get into bed with criminals, but when I do it, somehow it's wrong?

"I want my son to be safe. And right now the safest place for him is in this house with a man who has the resources to protect him." I sit back down beside Batya, forcing him to join me, and take his hand again. "I'm not saying I trust Rashid completely. I haven't fully forgiven him for what he did. But I know he won't hurt Lex, okay? And I know he won't let anyone else hurt him either. That's more assurance than we had before."

Batya looks at our hands together and his thumb moves across my knuckles. "Your mother would have known what to do," he says quietly. "She always knew how to handle things when I couldn't."

"Mama would have slapped you for stealing that phone," I tell him, and he almost smiles.

"She would have slapped me for a lot of things." He brings my hand to his lips and kisses my knuckles. "I'm sorry, Emory. My gambling and skirting around what is right put you in danger. You deserved a better father than what I've been."

"You're the only father I have," I tell him. "And I love you even when you make it impossible."

He holds my hand against his cheek and closes his eyes. For a moment I'm transported to happier times, when it was just me and Batya against the world, but his scheming crashes in on us and it's too late to even try to warn Rashid.

The whole house erupts in gunfire, though the sound's muffled through the ceiling. But I can hear men shouting and boots pounding across the floor overhead, and more gunfire coming from multiple directions at once. Something heavy crashes against a wall upstairs. A woman screams, and I'm on my feet before I know I've moved.

"That's Anna," I say. "That's Lex up there."

"This is it," Batya says, color draining from his face as he realizes what he's set in motion. "They're here. Gusev's men are inside. I thought we'd have more time."

"There's no more time, Batya. We have to move." I rush toward the steps, taking them two at a time, and my heart is thundering. The idea of running from this place with my boy isn't even tempting. I know Rashid keeps his word, and he promised to protect me. The problem is he's not here.

Batya shoves the phone into his pocket and climbs to the door, pulling a thin piece of metal from his pocket. He drops to his knees in front of the lock and works the pick into the mechanism with shaking hands.

"How long have you had that?" I hiss, unbelieving. If I pound on this door I give away our location, but if we stay here, they could kill Anna and take Lex.

"I made it from a piece of the cot frame a few days ago," he says, twisting the pick as another burst of gunfire rattles through the ceiling. Dust falls from the exposed beams and the lightbulb flickers. "I've been practicing on the lock when the guards change shifts."

"Hurry up." My palms are sweaty and I'm barely fighting off the tears of terror. My baby must be so scared. Oh God, how can I leave him alone in a time like this?

"I'm trying, Em." His hands shake so badly the pick slips out, and he has to start over as more gunfire erupts upstairs, closer now. I hear glass shattering somewhere near the front of the house and a man's voice shouting something in Russian that Ican't make out. Then a crash shakes the floor under my feet and the tears start flowing.

"God, can we just kick it down?" I'm panicked, ready to start banging, but Gusev would come straight here. He'd find us and he'd kill Batya.

The pick slips out again and Batya swears under his breath, jamming it back in and twisting with both hands now. The gunfire hasn't stopped, and I can hear someone running down the hallway, heavy boots that pound the floorboards and make dust fall from the ceiling with every step.

"Batya, please."

"I almost have it." He twists the pick and something catches inside the mechanism. He twists again, harder, and the lock clicks. When he yanks the door open, the hallway is dark, but the sounds continue assaulting my eardrums. Shouting, gunfire, breaking glass, and underneath all of it the high sharp wail of a child screaming.

"Oh my God, that's Lex," I say, grabbing Batya's arm. "What if they have him?"

Batya leads me into the chaos of the hallway just off the kitchen. Smoke drifts through the air, and I can see shell casings scattered across the tile and a guard I recognize lying on his side near the kitchen doorway, not moving. The front door's blown open and the rain pours in from outside, mixing with the smoke. Gunfire continues from the direction of the living room and I hear men shouting at each other in Russian, voices I don't recognize.

Batya grabs my wrist and pulls me toward the kitchen. "This way," he says, keeping low in a crouch as he moves. "The backentrance is through here and we can get to the alley before they come around."

"I can't!" I hiss quietly hoping not to let anyone know where we're at. "They have Lex. I have to get to him."

"Emory, we have to go right now," Batya says, pulling harder on my wrist. His eyes are wild, and he keeps looking over his shoulder toward the front of the house where the gunfire hasn't stopped. "If we don't move in the next thirty seconds we're going to be trapped in here with all of them."

"I'm not leaving without my son." I yank away from him and swipe at my eyes, turning back toward the noise.

"We don't have time to go upstairs. The whole front of the house is a war zone and the stairs are right in the middle of it." He's angry now, clawing at my wrist, which I keep pulling away. The thought of living without my son is too painful; I'd rather die here than leave without him.

"Then I'll go through the middle of it." I pull my wrist free from his grip. "You can leave if you want to, Batya. I understand if you have to go. But I'm not walking out of this house without Aleksandr."