Chapter 11
Kolya
Her touch makes me twitch, and I almost react before I control myself.
The two men are barely worth noticing. They wear cheap leather jackets with too many zippers, and their greasy hair falls over vacant eyes.
A crude snake tattoo slithers up the neck of the one on the left like a drunk worm.
Not prison ink. Not even decent work. The kind of shit a sixteen-year-old does in his mom’s basement with a homemade gun and India ink.
The second man is even less memorable. Black hair. Pocked face. But just as suspicious.
They’re barely a step up from the market punks who tried to grab Chloe’s purse. Amateur trash. No real threat. Still, their posture and the way they keep shifting weight from foot to foot sets off warning bells. They’re inching closer, weaving between browsing mothers and retirees.
Snake Tattoo subjects Chloe to a slow, predatory appraisal, eyeing her like a piece of meat he’s deciding how to carve.
I adjust my position, blocking his line of sight with my shoulder. His attention flicks to me, then away. No direct challenge.
Coward.
“Do you think the yellow or the orange would look more fiery?” Chloe holds up two sheets of felt, completely ignoring the threat orbiting us. Her forehead furrows with concentration, as if picking the right color is the most important decision in her universe.
My attention never leaves the men as I watch Snake Tattoo whisper to his friend. Irritation prickles my neck when they both laugh. “Yellow.”
Does Chloe just attract this sort of chaos? First, those wannabe thugs at the farmers market, now these two. Random coincidences?
My gaze returns to her, so I can try to understand what they see. Young, beautiful, cheerful. Assuming the best about everyone. Not a hint of self-preservation as she smiles while lost in her own happy little world, oblivious to the bad that seeps across reality.
She’s a walking target.
Except, no way are these two in Hobby Hut for the yarn selection. And maybe they were in the sedan last night.
“Do you think we need green for the grass?” She turns the felt over in her hands, humming softly as she deliberates.
If she won’t protect herself, I will. “Green is fine.”
From fifteen feet away, the two men pretend to browse a display of wooden beads. Snake Tattoo glances between Chloe and the cash registers near the fabric cutting station. His friend’s hand dips into his pocket, then out.
Nervous. Or hiding.
“I need pom-poms too. For the smoke.” Chloe spins toward the cart, bumping the end with her hip.
The next part happens in slow motion.
The cart rolls backward, crashing into an endcap display. Bottles rattle. A wave of felt squares spill onto the floor, along with the pom-poms. A craft store avalanche.
Chloe lunges forward, attempting to stop the cascade. She only worsens the chaos, knocking falling packages into tilting stacks. Pipe cleaners and tiny beads scatter across the linoleum, transforming the store into a tripping hazard.
“Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry!”
People whip around to gawk.
A store employee starts toward us, his face a mask of retail resignation.
The two punks spot their opportunity.
Cutting through the disarray, they charge toward the cash register at the fabric counter, where a middle-aged woman counts bills into a drawer. As Snake Tattoo passes our aisle, he veers toward Chloe, reaching out to grab her arm.
Cold, clean rage slices through me, prompting me to act with no hesitation.
The objective is to stop them as efficiently as possible, not horrifically maim or question. Easy. Muscle memory and training take over.
I intercept Snake Tattoo, not with an elbow this time, but with a brutal, open-palmed strike to his throat. Cartilage gives way beneath my hand. He offers no resistance.
Simply drops, gagging and clutching at his neck. If he coughs, there’ll be blood. Scary, but not fatal.
Punk number two pivots while yanking an object from his pocket.
Knife.
A cheap, flimsy switchblade with a serrated edge. The kind sold at flea markets and pawn shops.
Mudakí.
Déjà vu hits me. This is the farmers market incident all over again. Do these dickheads all learn from the same thug playbook?
I sidestep, swivel, and lift my arm in a dance I’ve done a thousand times, the moves ingrained into my muscles like breathing. Taking down FNGs like this is child’s play.
I drive my elbow into his clavicle. The bone snaps with a wet crack.
I know from experience that it hurts like Satan’s pitchfork.
He screams, stumbling backward into a metal shelving unit loaded with more glitter and beads. His body crashes, rattling craft supplies.
Chloe’s eyes widen with horror. “Kolya. What did—”
“Stay back.” I step in front of her while scanning the store. These two weren’t alone. They’re too stupid to plan this themselves.
Broken shoulder boy’s still wailing like a wounded animal. Snake Tattoo chokes out wet gasps as he writhes on the floor, spitting blood.
I wrinkle my nose. Smells like he pissed himself too.
Shoppers scramble away, abandoning their carts and pulling children close. A woman shouts into her phone, probably communicating with a 911 dispatcher.
Chloe’s fingers dig into my arm, her nails leaving half-moons in my skin even through my jacket. “Just like yesterday. You hurt them.”
But did they die?
My attention is fixed on the end of the aisle, on a third man. The first two are mudaki, completely useless trash. This one, though, is taller than the others. Well-dressed. His eyes dart to his fallen companions, then to Chloe, and after that, to me.
They flicker with recognition.
Not of who I am, but of what I am. What I do.
He’s the man in charge. Unlike his friends, he might actually be a problem.
“Kolya?” Chloe’s voice sounds far away, muffled by the roaring in my ears as I calculate angles, distances, and weapons within reach. “Kolya, we should help them. They’re hurt.”
She doesn’t understand that—best-case scenario—they were going to kidnap her. She just wants to tend to the blood and the pain. Make things better. Apply a bandage and a kiss the way she does for her kindergartners. But there’s no making this better.
There’s only survival.
The third man lurches toward us. My body coils, ready for whatever comes next.
Everything about him screams professional. The way his eyes track movement, the controlled stillness of his stance, the careful distance he maintains. No visible tattoos. Just designer jeans, an expensive button-down, and eyes that have seen things.
This man has done things.
His right hand hangs loose at his side, poised to grab for his weapon. He shifts, distributing his weight between both feet.
A fighter’s stance. Reinforcing my theory that he’s no novice.
I shoot her a don’t you dare disobey me glimpse and add, “Go.”
Miraculously, she listens and sprints down the aisle.
The third man reaches into his jacket.
No time to spare.
I grab a metal shelving unit beside us, tall, heavy, and loaded with thousands of containers. With every ounce of strength I possess, I grip the edge and yank forward and down.
The shelves tilt, hover for a fraction of a second, then surrender to gravity with a deafening crash.
Metal slams into linoleum, followed by the percussive symphony of hundreds of plastic jars shattering. A sparkling cloud of pink, green, silver, and gold explodes into the air.
A non-lethal flash-bang. A tactical distraction.
People shriek and leap away.
A woman’s basket clatters to the ground. Someone shouts for management.
Through the haze of glitter, I spot the third man backing off with his hand still inside his jacket and his eyes narrowed against the cloud of craft supplies. He can’t see us clearly.
Good.
Chloe?
Cold panic flares in my chest. Did she run to safety like I insisted, or did one of the fuckers grab her?
I scan the mess, squinting through the shimmering dust.
There.
Kneeling in the middle of the aisle, with her back to me. So much for sprinting away.
She’s hovering over a small child. A little boy, maybe three, who likely got separated from his mother in the mayhem.
He’s wailing, his red face streaked with tears and silver glitter.
And Chloe, surrounded by disarray and danger, ignores everything else to comfort him, completely oblivious to the fact that these assholes are here for her.
What the fuck?
Her hand gently brushes glitter from his hair. She offers him a calming smile that seems to cut through the child’s fear. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s just messy play. See how bright it is? Like fairy dust. Isn’t it pretty?”
As his sobs slow to hiccupping cries, she wipes his cheeks with her hand, streaking glitter over her palm.
For a second, I’m rooted to the floor.
Stuck in place by the sheer incongruity of the visual before me. In the middle of disaster, while people scream and flee, with armed men just feet away, Chloe stopped to comfort a frightened child. To heal instead of harm.
She’s everything I’m not.
She creates. I destroy. She nurtures. I defile. She is light. I am nothing but shadow and violence.
The absurdity pisses me off. And, still, I can’t look away.
An alarmed store manager rushes toward us with a phone pressed to his ear. “Yes, a robbery! Same as last week. This time, they tried to grab the cash drawers from the fabric station. Some guy stopped them.”
Behind him, a security guard hovers. A retired cop, going by his appearance.
His hand rests on his empty hip, where a gun would have resided in his previous life.
He’s staring right at us, but he doesn’t really see us.
He doesn’t connect me to the men groaning on the floor or register Chloe kneeling in a pool of glitter with a child who isn’t hers.
Everyone’s attention is scattered, diffused by the havoc of shouting shoppers, sobbing children, and the whirling cloud of glitter still spinning through the air as the ceiling fans keep it aloft.
Perfect.
We’re invisible in plain sight.
A frantic woman pushes through the crowd while calling a name.
The child glances up. “Mommy!”
Chloe rises to her feet and hands the boy to his mother with a reassuring smile. “He’s okay, just a little scared. Don’t worry, the glitter’s nontoxic.”
Disbelief grips me. Despite the attempted robbery and confusion all around, she’s consoling a stranger about glitter.
Always the teacher. Always thinking of others.
I grasp her arm, my fingers leaving streaks in her glitter-coated skin. “Side door. Now.”
This time, she doesn’t argue or ask questions. Simply obeys immediately.
Just the way I like it.