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Chapter10
What the hell was he doing down there? As soon as I made it up to my door, which I could only get into thanks to the hidden key taped under my neighbor’s kitschy welcome sign on their door, I ran to the window to see if he’d abandoned me yet.
Abandoned me? What the hell was wrong with me?
I didn’t want him to leave. Fine. I could admit it. The fact that he was willing to let me go made me not want him to let me go. And now there was no way for me to ever contact him, and I’d probably never see him again.
Somehow, someway we had a connection, and that connection was going to snap in half and never form again. I’d never been interested in a man seriously in my life, and now I was obsessed with this dangerous anomaly for no good reason.
And here I was, staring out the window like a lost puppy instead of thanking my lucky stars that I was back home, safe and sound.
Turn around. Go back to your life. Go back to safety. Don’t run back to him. Just let him go. He’s telling me to leave for a reason. For my safety.
I should listen to him.
My muscles tensed to move away from the window right as a van slammed into Borya’s car.
I leapt back from the window, the crash echoing through me.
Holy shit. No, no, no, no.
Without thinking, I was back out the door and running down the stairs. What was I running for? What was I going to do?
By the time I reached the door, I hadn’t made any sort of plan, but that didn’t stop me from running forward. “Someone call the police!” I screamed. I would’ve, but Borya had taken my damn phone.
The van backed away from the wreckage, and three guys in suits were surrounding the crushed remains of Borya’s SUV. They were pulling his bleeding body out of the shattered window.
“Hey! Don’t move him! The paramedics are on their way!” I had no idea if that was true, but I had to say something. Maybe if I sounded confident enough, they would let him go.
There was a tall guy and a short guy holding onto a very unconscious Borya, while the third one turned to face me, opening his jacket to show off his guns very clearly.
I slowed down but didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Not when Borya needed me. These guys had to be the Black Thorn he was talking about.
If they got their hands on him, it would be over. “Please,” I said, holding up both my hands to demonstrate that I wasn’t a threat. “He needs a hospital.” Maybe I could stall them until some form of police or ambulance got here?
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, it was dashed as the men kept carrying Borya to the van. “We’ll take him to the only hospital he needs. Don’t worry about it.”
“You can’t do that!”
He laughed at me. Fucking laughed at me! “Do you think you’re going to stop me, little girl?”
Oh, the things I’d do to him if I had a gun of my own.
The squelching of tires sounded behind me, and the guy suddenly wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. He reached for his gun and started to fire at something behind me, so I dove for the ground, staying as low as possible to keep away from the bullets.
Whoever was behind me must’ve been someone scary, because the two guys who had been carrying Borya showed up to provide backup to their third, but none of them deemed me significant enough to pay attention to.
I took full advantage of the small advantage, crawling and trying not to freak out.
It was just like growing up with Daisy when our parents were on some drunken rager. The screams didn’t matter. The broken glass didn’t matter. All that mattered was keeping Daisy and Layla safe.
The guns didn’t matter. The bullets didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting to Borya. I pulled myself along on the burning hot concrete until I finally reached the relative safety around the corner of the van. At least now I could push up to my feet and open the door. I could see Borya’s unconscious body where it had been dumped on the floor of the van.
“Time to go,” I said as I climbed in and tried to get a better look at his injuries. The problem was there was no way I would be carrying him anywhere. If Borya was going to be moving, it would be on his own two feet.
If he didn’t wake up, there wasn’t much I could do. The gunshots outside the van stopped, and I knew I was running out of time.
“Fuck. Borya, I’m gonna need you to wake up, buddy. You told me to go inside and now I’m out here, so you need to wake up to yell at me, okay?” I scooted up to kneel next to his face and ran the backs of my fingers along his cheekbone. There was so much blood and shards of broken glass scattered all over him that I didn’t want to touch him anywhere. Weren’t you not supposed to move someone after a severe injury like this?
And now I didn’t just need to move him, I needed him to fucking run.
But there wasn’t even a flicker of his eyelids when shadows fell in the doorway of the van.
I’d run out of time.
I took one deep breath and tried to find any bit of bravery I might have left as I looked to see who won.
Well, I had no idea who was standing there, but it wasn’t the guys who had rammed into Borya in the first place. Who knew if that was good or not?
These two guys were both tanned with dark and shaggy hair, one with a goatee and one cleanshaven, each of Latino descent, which wasn’t uncommon in Miami. Was this some sort of gang thing?
They must’ve assumed I wasn’t a threat since they lowered their weapons once they confirmed that there was just Borya and me in the van. “It’s just the brother and a woman,” said goatee into a phone to someone unknown. “Will do.” He hung up and put the phone in the back pocket of his jeans. “Alright,” he said with just a hint of a Spanish accent. He wasn’t from Mexico or Spain, but I wasn’t familiar enough to identify it besides that. “We have orders to bring you both in. Alive and unharmed. To keep you safe. The cops are going to be here any minute, so we’re going to have to do this fast. Are you going to make this easy or hard?”
I looked between the two men blocking the exit, and Borya who desperately needed medical attention. “He needs a hospital.”
“Guys like us don’t do hospitals. His family will take care of him.”
Borya thought his brother was going to kill him, but just because of Daisy. If I could talk to Daisy, I could stop him. “I’ll go with you, but I’m not leaving his side.”
He rolled his eyes and said something in Spanish under his breath. Something along the lines of “crazy white bitch”. Probably not the best time to mention that I could speak Spanish.
He motioned for me to get out, and then he and his partner were taking hold of Borya.
He’d ordered me to get to safety, and instead I’d ended up in the middle of a gunfight, glued to his side. If the injuries didn’t piss him off when he woke up, the sight of me would.
Something to look forward to.
