Chapter 37 Natalia #2
I don’t look back. I run.
The stairs are right there. I take them two at a time, one hand on the banister, the other locked around the stun gun.
Behind me, the floor thunders. Boris is fast for his size, faster than he should be, and I can hear him gaining on me as I hit the landing and round the turn toward the lower flight.
His hand catches my collar. The fabric pulls tight against my throat, and my feet stutter on the step.
“Little bitch,” he growls.
I wrench forward, but he catches a fistful of my sleeve and slams me back against the banister. Pain flashes along my spine. His hand clamps around my upper arm hard enough to bruise.
“Let go,” I hiss.
He drags me up a step, then another, hauling me backward toward the hall with all the ugly certainty of a man who has never once doubted his right to put his hands on me.
I fight him like an animal. There’s no dignity left in it. I kick. I twist. I jam my free elbow backward and catch him somewhere soft enough to make him grunt. He tightens his grip until stars spark at the edges of my vision.
“Stop.” His breath is hot and furious near my ear. “Before I break your fucking arm.”
I jam the stun gun into Boris’s side and pull the trigger.
The crackle explodes through the stairwell. Boris’s body does the rest. His muscles seize, his grip releases, and his weight shifts backward onto a foot that isn’t planted on anything solid.
I see it happen. That horrible half-second where gravity decides.
Instinct surges through me. I grab for him.
My fingers catch fabric and slide.
Boris falls.
The sound is nothing I will ever be able to unhear. Not a single impact but a series of them, heavy and wet and wrong, his body folding over itself as it tumbles down the remaining stairs. The last sound is different from the others. A crack, dense and final, and then silence.
He lands at the bottom in a shape that no living person makes. His head is turned too far, past the point where the cervical spine holds. I don’t need to check for a pulse to know what I’m looking at. His eyes are open and they’re staring at nothing.
I press my back against the wall and slide down until I’m sitting on the step. My hand is still raised, the stun gun warm against my palm. I can’t feel my fingers. I can’t feel anything.
The house is quiet. The terrible, loaded quiet of before, except now there is a dead man at the bottom of the stairs.
Whether I meant for that to happen or not does not change the fact that it did.
It means I have minutes, not hours. It means whoever comes through that front door next will find Boris and it will be over for me.
Move. Move now.
I force myself down the stairs.
But—keys first. I need keys.
My fingers shake as I search Boris’s pockets. I find a ring of keys, a wallet, his phone. I take all of it. The phone screen lights when I press the side button, but it needs a face to open.
I stare at Boris, bile rising in my throat.
Then I make myself do it.
The phone unlocks, and the homescreen blooms to life.
His text messages. My father’s number is at the top.
I scroll with my thumb, reading fast.
We’ve got him at the place on Boulder. Nik’s starting on him soon. Keep the girl in her room. I’ll send for her when we’re ready.
On it.
Sent an hour ago.
Starting on him soon.
The words seem to swell on the screen.
My grip tightens around the phone until my knuckles ache.
Boulder. I know the street name, but that’s not enough to go tearing through it on my own and somehow find the right building before my father does something irreversible.
For one wild second I picture trying anyway, taking Boris’s car and driving every block until I find the right place.
Then the thought runs headlong into reality. Even if I found it, what would I do? Walk into a building full of dangerous men with a stun gun and expect that to be enough?
There’s only one place left to go.
The Andrettis.
The family my father has spent years teaching me to fear. The family of the man sent to kill me.
A shiver works its way through me. I don’t know what waits for me if I go to them. Suspicion. Guns. Questions I don’t have time to answer. But they are Luca’s family, and if anyone can get to him before it’s too late, it’s them.
And they’re going to want more than my word.
I force myself to look at Boris one more time, open the camera on his phone, and take the picture.
Luca had mentioned the hotel before. The one his father uses for business.
It’s not certainty. It’s not safety. But it is a place to start.
I switch off the screen lock feature, pocket the phone and the keys, and shove myself to my feet. My vision swims for a second, the marble floor rolling under me, and then it steadies and I’m moving.
I cut through the back hallway and into the kitchen, every nerve in my body strung tight, listening for footsteps that never come.
The door into the attached garage opens without resistance.
Boris’s SUV is parked closest to it, black with dark tinted windows.
I get in, jam the key into the ignition, and start the engine.
At the gates, the guard looks up as the SUV rolls toward him. I keep both hands on the wheel and my face angled forward, every muscle in my body locked tight. For one awful second I think he might step out, wave me down, make me lower the window.
But the windows are dark enough that all he really sees is Boris’s car coming back out.
He gives a lazy dip of his chin and reaches for the control.
I think I might actually stop breathing.
The gate opens. I drive through at a normal speed, not too fast, not too slow, and I don’t look at him as I pass.
My hands are white on the steering wheel as I pull out onto the empty street.
My arm still aches where Boris grabbed me.
Tears are drying on my face, and my mother is dead, really dead, murdered, and the man I love is somewhere in this city with my father and I am driving a dead man’s car to the doorstep of the family that was supposed to be my enemy.
I press harder on the gas.