9. Kelly
9
KELLY
I shouldn’t have even tried to go to work after that man rushed after me. Jerome either had a lot of friends willing to do his work or the first one who’d been stopped got back up to come after me again.
Only the need to get to work and pick up my paycheck urged me to leave my apartment at all. I needed money to be able to keep this dumpy place, and I refused to be homeless ever again.
I went out a back exit from my building, hoping that this route wouldn’t be watched as much as the side door I usually came in and out of.
And the second I exited and stepped into the cool night air, I realized how stupid I had been to ever leave my apartment.
A man was waiting nearby, and as soon as I was clear of the lobby’s double doors, he rushed at me.
“Stop right there, bitch!” he yelled.
I froze, too far to retreat back to the building. I was too far out here, intent on rushing the whole way to the bar. I’d be safe there. I’d blend in and just be one among the many. If anyone tried to capture me or attack me in a public setting like that, others would witness it.
Out here, with no one else out and about, I was defenseless.
“No!” With another repeat of the fight-or-flight response, I sidestepped and broke into a run. Adrenaline fueled me to run hard and fast, but I didn’t have a chance to get away. This man wasn’t wounded from a recent fight. He was right here, too close. Within a few seconds, he had me in his grasp. Strong fingers circled around my wrist, and in his grimy grip, he tugged me back toward him.
“Let me go!”
“Shut the fuck up,” he growled, pulling on my arm until I swore it yanked out of the socket. I gasped out at the acute pain and flung to the opposite side to prevent him from whirling me around so he could hold on to more of me.
“Let me go!”
His hand made impact on my side. Those strong fingers had curled into a thick fist, and taking his direct punch knocked the breath out of me. Stunned by the ache that lit up like a fire along my rib cage, I doubled over and tried to draw a breath through the shock, fear, and pain.
I screamed, seeing him grab for me again, but the need to fight back came faster. All those moments of how I’d gotten my street smarts filled my mind. Former fights. Past threats. Previous scrimmages and issues of violence I’d had to survive to make it to this situation. Rearing back, I braced myself to lunge out and connect my foot with his groin.
He growled, bending over to dodge my hit. Instead of sending his balls up his spine, I hit the inside of his thigh. It still had to have hurt because he retaliated instantly. He lifted his hand to strike me. This time, the hard slap caught me across the cheek. I wasn’t going to cower. While he wound back to lash out at me again, I shoved at him. He didn’t fall back. Still with his arm up, he remained poised to hit me. Pure loathing shone from his slitted eyes as he scowled at me.
Then just as quickly, his fearsome, evil face morphed into something of surprise. He furrowed his brow as he was wrenched backward.
Someone was here!
I wasn’t alone!
Shoving at the man’s fingers manacled around my wrist, I strained to break free. In slow motion, everything passed as a blur. The man was pulled back as someone took hold of his bicep. Instead of unleashing his fury on me with another strong backhand across my face, he was forced away from me as someone else pulled on that upraised arm.
I swallowed hard at the change of positions. I was almost freed with the man further away, but he didn’t release me. The urge to scream rose again, to attract more help to come, but I couldn’t speak. My mouth and throat were so dry. I couldn’t manage this adrenaline rush, feeling so close to passing out from the stress alone. Panicked and stuck in a frenzy of too many strong feelings jumbling in my head, I focused on staying alert and not falling down. It was all I could do—until I heard his voice.
“Let her go!”
His voice.
I blinked, confused and worried I was imagining things, whether I was so full of anxiety that I’d lost my control on reality. My dreams were merging into the forefront of my mind. They had to be because there was no other explanation for how I would be hearing his voice.
“Let her—” A hard punch to the man’s gut forced him to release me. “Go!”
Rurik!
It was him. That was his voice I heard.
The tall, muscled bodyguard I couldn’t stop thinking about was here. He was the one forcing this man back. I couldn’t tell if it was another one of Jerome’s friends or if he was another opportunist coming to take advantage of and attack a woman. It didn’t matter who this bastard was. All that mattered, all that reached the functioning parts of my mind, was that Rurik was here.
Without Eva, his Mafia family’s princess, here to be protected, he would have no excuse to be on campus. As I watched him fight the man who’d struck me, I didn’t care. He was here, and I couldn’t tear my gaze off him as he pummeled his fists on the other guy. They fought hard in a grisly fight, grabbing hair, shoving and punching, trading kicks and trying to maneuver each other into tight holds.
Whatever the reason, Rurik was here, determined with gory and angry might to protect me.
The need to run faded. This instinct to survive was altered as I witnessed Rurik here. After all this time of missing him, of wondering what had happened to him and where he’d gone, how he was doing and if he ever would’ve noticed a plain, non-innocent woman like me.
I couldn’t run from him. I had spent far too long wishing I could run to him to entertain fleeing the scene.
Under his protection as he valiantly fought back this other man, I was safer. I was secure so long as he was in charge of deflecting this stranger from putting his hands on me again.
Rurik didn’t stop once. He didn’t hesitate, not even when the man pulled out a gun.
My heart thundered faster at this sign, though. The escalation of danger had me worried for him. Not myself. It would’ve been smarter to stick with my old mantra of lowering my head and minding my own business. It would’ve been wise to distance myself from this danger and remain anonymous and aloof.
“Rurik, watch out!” I cried out when the man moved the gun from under the flap of his coat to brandish it at the Russian I hadn’t been able to forget about.
All the muscles in my body tensed as I braced for a hit. In my arms and legs, I felt the tension of waiting for impact. My stomach clenched as well, and I resisted shaking from the potency of my fear.
The man didn’t shoot him, though. Rurik was too fast. He was too skilled. Moving so quickly that it seemed like he was a machine, he deflected the man’s moves. A quick jab to his side had the man dropping the opposite way. Another quicker hit from Rurik had the stranger shouting out in pain and lowering his arm. That was all the access Rurik needed to wrest the weapon away.
Then he used it. On him.
A shot was fired, but the racket of it didn’t deafen me. A silencer had been attached to it because no loud crack or boom came with Rurik pulling the trigger and aiming the shot directly at the man.
Again, he squeezed the trigger. Expertly, with the finesse a trained bodyguard and Mafia killer would have from years of this kind of experience, Rurik shot the man who’d rushed up to attack me.
The body slumped to the ground. His legs splayed out awkwardly on the path as blood gushed out his chest. Once more, despite the stranger lying unmoving on the sidewalk, Rurik prepared to use the gun on him.
Before he did, he looked up at me from his position of hunching over, one knee on the ground. “Don’t watch,” he ordered me.
I blinked, too stunned to speak. Then without realizing I was disobeying him, I watched as he pressed the end of the barrel to the man’s head and shot him again.
I flinched at the slight pop of the silenced hit. It was nothing different from the bullets that Rurik had aimed to pierce his heart and lungs. The man was already dead, and with the controlled range of the headshot, it wasn’t a gruesome mess like what they showed in TVs.
Rurik winced, looking back up at me. “I told you to look away.”
I did then. As the realization that this man was dead and could no longer hurt me, I instantly reverted back to that fight or flight. This man was dead. Rurik had saved me from him, but others could be hanging around. Just from the differences in body sizes, I knew this wasn’t the man who’d followed me to my apartment earlier. Maybe that guy was still out there. Backup could be waiting nearby.
Relieved when I saw no indication of anyone being near—either as a witness or an attacker—I let my shoulders sag. “I think…” I swallowed hard and tried to speak again after that croakiness. “I think he was working alone.”
“Who does he work for?”
I shook my head, glancing down at the dead man. “I… I don’t know.” That was the truth. I hadn’t seen this man near Jerome. If this guy was a friend of Jerome’s, then I knew all about him . With Rurik’s deep, dark stare so intense on me now, I couldn’t find the courage to explain a single word about my past, though.
“I was just walking to work and he came out and?—”
Rurik stood fully, grimacing as he moved his arm.
“Are you all right?” I was careful not to step on or near the dead man as I approached Rurik. Extending my hand, I moved toward him to help him. How, I had no idea. But if he was wounded at all—at the expense of keeping me safe—I wanted to at least do the minimum of offering him a comforting touch or a display of gratitude.
Of all the possible ways I ever could have been face to face and reunited with this strong and sexy man, this was not how I envisioned it happening.
But as it sank in that he’d put himself at risk to protect me , I couldn’t help the tide of gratitude and deep appreciation that came to me.
“You…” I shook my head, still marveling at the fact that he was here, apparently for me. But another wince lining his face had me tensing with worry. He was here, all right. It wasn’t an illusion or a dream. And he was hurt. “Your arm…”
He stopped me from touching him. Instead of waiting for me to come to him, he grabbed my hand and pulled me closer. It wasn’t to embrace me in a hug, but when he kept me close to his side and urged me to walk away from the dead man with him, it hardly mattered what he intended.
“My arm will be fine,” he said, so gruff and matter-of-fact as he took his phone out.
I was deprived of following up about what pain was causing him to grimace as we hurried away. Trusting him because it was him , I tried to follow the quick call he made to someone named Peter. I gathered enough of his call that it was an order to clean up the mess from that dead man there, but also to check for another body further back.
“You? That was you?” I asked after he shoved the phone back in his pocket. “You got that first man away from me when I was walking home?”
He nodded, giving me a quick glance. “And now you’re riding home with me to tell me what the hell is going on that so many assholes are waiting to jump at you in the dark.”
I winced as he held my hand tightly again. It wasn’t a punishing grip as if he feared I’d escape him, but a confident hold, nonetheless.
So much for the fantasies.
I’d dreamed of his returning to my life in so many ways, but in all of those visions, we’d been reunited because he wanted me. I’d fantasized about him sweeping back into my life with a grand need to be my hero.
And it hadn’t left me any time or energy to recall that he would only ever be here for a job, as part of his duty.
Not for me because he missed me, but because I was an accessory to whatever the Baranov Family was dealing with for business. That was all he could have interest in me for.
As he guided me toward the parking lot to leave, I vowed to stack up an even higher wall around my guarded heart. Now was the time to protect myself from the kind of stupidity a silly crush or pointless romance could bring down on me, even with the man I couldn’t stop thinking about.