AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The contractions are coming fast,” Alice said, looking at Alek. It was easier to focus on him instead of Nickolay.
“Answer my questions,” Nickolay snapped. “Why were you with Chloe? What were you trying to do?”
“Nothing,” she said, stepping toward him as Alek held onto Chloe. She was doubled over in pain now. He needed to get her inside as soon as her contraction passed. “I was just talking to her, explaining things.”
“I told you not to go to her house again. You can’t be trusted.”
“What the hell is going on with you two?” Alek asked, but Chloe immediately distracted him with a groan of pain.
“Dad? What’s wrong?”
Max’s question pulled Nickolay’s attention away from Alice, but she was distracted by a man that had just pulled into the lot and parked nearby. She wasn’t sure why the man caught her eye as he stepped out of his car, a bloody wound on his thigh, but she saw him notice their group.
His face transformed into a wicked smile as he reached back into the car and pulled out a gun. Alice’s arm snapped out, grabbing Max and yanking him behind her. With her other hand, she pulled out her own weapon from a holster under her jacket. She hadn’t been carrying it while she was undercover, but this morning, she’d strapped it on, knowing that she wasn’t going to be undercover anymore.
She’d never been more thankful for anything in her life. The man was pointing his gun at them, and she raised her own weapon just as Nickolay and Alek whipped around to see the threat.
But it was too late. The man pulled his trigger.
Nickolay fell backward, and her world seemed to shatter into a thousand pieces. Fear and rage welled inside of her, and she saw red. Without a second thought, she put two slugs in the man’s chest.
16
NICKOLAY
The searing painon the side of his head got worse as two more gunshots went off. Everything happened so fast that it was a blur in his mind. The last clear thing he remembered was seeing Alice grab his son and pull out a gun.
What the hell happened to him? He was lying on concrete, and the pain in his head didn’t make sense. Lifting his hand, he felt something wet.
Blood. The dark red liquid contrasted with his pale skin, and his stomach rolled. Or maybe that was caused by the pain.
“Max,” he croaked. His head turned as blackness closed in on the edge of his vision, and he saw Max still behind Alice. She lowered her gun to her side, and he thought he saw a body on the ground, but his vision was going blurry, so he couldn’t be sure. The one thing he was sure of was that Max was safe with Alice. In that moment, everything he learned about her was pushed aside, and he felt nothing but affection and security. She would protect Max.
With that certainty, he passed out.
* * *
Nickolay didn’t feel pain when he opened his eyes, but his throat was sore and his stomach rolled. All of that was easily ignored as the events in the parking lot came back to him. Things were clearer now, and he could remember looking at the man before the pain came. It was the bastard he and Alek tried to take out, the leader of the vigilantes.
It was just their shitty luck that he decided to come to the hospital as Chloe was about to give birth.
Max. Where was his son?
Looking around, he realized that he was in a hospital bed. There was an empty chair beside him, but the couch nearby held Vld and Max, who was asleep.
“Hey,” he croaked, drawing Vlad’s attention away from his phone.
“Fuck, you’re awake.” Vlad moved closer, holding a cup and water with a straw to his lips. Nickolay drank greedily, hoping that he didn’t throw it all up later. “That fucking vigilante shot you. Well, he grazed you. You’ll have a wicked scar along the side of your head.”
“He’s dead?”
“Oh yeah. That hot FBI agent shot him.”
FBI agent.If Vlad knew that, then Alek had to know.
Panic surged to life inside of him, and he tried to sit up. His head swam, and Vlad moved closer, pushing him back down with a hand on his shoulder.
“Whoa, where do you think you’re going?”
