AllFreeNovel
Share Us
NATASHA
My heart swells in my chest like it’s a balloon damn near ready to pop. Short, sharp pants stab at my lungs as a shooting pain explodes down my left arm.
Panic and uncertainty, the likes of which I’ve never felt before, ravage my mind and body. I can’t bear to turn my head, to see my worst fears confirmed. Searing hot tears scald my cheeks while I stare down at my father’s lifeless, bullet-riddled body.
A dull ache throbs between my ears, drowning out all sound. I know I should feel the loss. But I’m hollow inside.
When I think about my father — his last moments, his cold words addressing me before the wedding attack, the look of what I now realize was a faux helpless expression the night I was kidnapped, what I feel most is betrayal and disgust.
Instead, the man who stole my life and then breathed it back into me now commands my heart.
And now he might be—
“Natasha.”
Suddenly Luka is beside me. He pulls me against his chest. I clutch his shirtsleeves and skim my fingers over his ripped biceps to make sure it’s really him next to me and not some figment of my warped imagination.
His familiar scent swirls under my nose and I breathe him deep, drowning in everything he is and everything he’s given me.
“You’re alive. Thank God you’re okay,” I cry, sliding a hand down the side of his face.
He gently caresses the bruised lump on my cheek, his jaw twitching. “That bastard. He’s lucky he’s dead because if he wasn’t already, I’d gut his ass for laying a finger on you.”
“Well, actually it was a gun,” I say, my lips quivering.
“Nobody will ever touch you again,” he growls. “Never fucking again. And you will never do something as stupid as you did today again, do you hear me?”
“I had to. Once I heard Valentina was in trouble, I couldn’t just sit still and hope she’d get away from whoever was chasing her. Not after last time. I missed my chance to help her at the wedding. I couldn’t let you down again. And we didn’t have time to do anything else.” I drop my gaze to the bloodstained floor. “God only knows where she is now. We don’t even know who she was running from…if she’s hurt…”
“We’re gonna find her. She’s a smart kid, and if she made it this far on her own, I know she’ll be okay. She’ll get to us.”
But even as Luka speaks the words, there’s a slight waver to his voice. I’m not so sure he actually believes what he just said.
“In the meantime, if anyone gets a call like that again, it comes to me. No rogue rescue missions, understand?” Luka lifts an eyebrow at his siblings. He rises to his feet and pulls me up onto my wobbly legs.
“Fuck that, I’d do it all over again if I had to,” Tori calls out. “Anything for family, Luka. Sound familiar?”
“Yeah, and what happened to all those knife lessons, Tor,” he scoffs. “You should be able to do more than Ginsu an apple.”
“Screw you,” she says. “We’re alive, aren’t we?”
He turns toward Tori, still holding me close. “You could just as easily be as dead as these bastards.”
“At least I didn’t get shot like Nik,” she says.
“Because they needed you as leverage. You heard Resnov.” Luka drops his arm from around me and laces his fingers with mine after casting a look of disdain at my father. “Speaking of, I need to get Natasha out of here. Taras, get Nik and Boris to the doctor. And call the cleaners. Have them take care of all this. But not Dmitri. Leave him here.”
“What are you gonna do with him?”
“His father Denis can have him. Give him a proper burial. My peace offering to his family. I hand over the body, and we put this fucking arrangement to bed forever.” Luka grits his teeth. “After what happened today, I don’t think he’d be stupid enough to sic one of his other sons on us. Whatever Dad and Dima agreed to is buried along with them.”
Boris wheezes, clutching his midsection as he pulls himself against the wall. “Those motherfuckers. They waited on the beach for me and ambushed me after my run.”
“Christ, Boris,” Luka mutters. “No gun? You think just because you live in a twenty-eight-million-dollar estate with your own private beach in Surfside that you’re suddenly untouchable? What are you, Italian? You’ve been hanging out in New York for too long.”
“I had my gun. But there were too many of them.”
“I could have taken them,” Luka says. “And you and I need to have a conversation about that list once you’re patched up. Later.”
