Chapter 10 Natalie
NATALIE
Paranoia had me looking over my shoulder after I picked up Maisie at Irene’s apartment.
Daria was out of town for a procedure and couldn’t babysit tonight, so I had to take Maisie to her classmate’s apartment, a couple of blocks over.
Irene was the only backup I had, and the only catch was that she wouldn’t come to my home to babysit.
That was the only reason I could’ve been caught outside at two in the morning, carrying my sleepy daughter home.
I wasn’t used to being on that side of town at this hour, and for good reason. Too many scary gangsters seemed to hang around there.
Two of them seemed too interested in my coming and going from Irene’s building. When I couldn’t ignore the sixth sense feeling of someone watching me, I peeked over my shoulder again and again.
Each time, they blended into the shadows, but they got closer, bolder, not even trying to hide the fact that they were chasing me.
Masks covered their noses and mouths. But in their evil, taunting stares, I knew they were smiling as they ran after me.
Fuck.
Fuck!
God, what do I do!
I couldn’t stop and call for help.
No passersby were out on the sidewalk.
In the city that never slept, no one was around to ask for any assistance.
After a long night tending the bar and trying not to be disappointed when Sergei didn’t show up, my night had to spiral into further heart-stopping chaos as these men chased me.
“Go get her!” one of the men ordered, his voice thick with a Russian accent. “Go!”
I clutched Maisie tighter, no longer able to be concerned about whether I’d wake her. Running with her wasn’t so easy anymore with how big she was getting. Tightening my arms so I wouldn’t drop her, I sprinted the best I could.
Air couldn’t fill my lungs fast enough. My heart thumped wildly.
A panic attack melded with the adrenaline rush of facing danger, and I prayed with all my might, for anyone who could be listening, that I would save my daughter from these men.
Stuck in the need to flee, I lacked the time to imagine all the worst-case scenarios.
I couldn’t think. I could only run and whimper in fear.
Frantic and fearing the unthinkable, I dared to look back once more.
A blur of something dark and large swept into my view. Someone had rushed in behind me. The obstacle blocked my view from the men chasing me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Sergei? I spun again, blinking through the dizziness threatening me. I was so worked up, so terrified, that I doubted I was thinking straight. My eyes had to be playing tricks on me.
Sergei wouldn’t be here. He only knew me from the bar. I hadn’t let him walk me all the way home to know how to find me near my building.
But it was his voice. Dark and lethal, serious and scary.
As he stood between me and the men, he lifted his arm and aimed a gun at them.
The men skidded to a stop, bringing up guns as well.
Oh, God.
Oh, fuck!
My panic escalated, soaring to the stratosphere.
Guns? I strained not to pass out at the violence so near me, so near my precious daughter.
Dropping low in the deepest crouch I could manage without losing hold of Maisie, I held my breath.
I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut at the idea of being caught in a gunfight.
Sergei was armed. That alone was shocking. I suspected he was a “bad boy”. He looked dangerous. But I hadn’t imagined he was armed.
The others having guns didn’t surprise me. They were clearly criminals, gangsters with the worst intentions toward me and my daughter.
But Sergei was armed. He was more dangerous than I could’ve imagined.
And he was outnumbered. Only him against those two didn’t seem good.
As grateful as I was that I wasn’t alone and that he’d magically shown up when I needed him the most, I couldn’t escape the horrible fear that he’d be killed protecting me. That we’d all be killed.
“I asked you what the fuck you think you’re doing?” he said in a sinister snarl.
Unafraid.
Brave and furious.
He wasn’t backing down.
But as a van pulled up at the curb and two more masked men slipped out to join the fight, I gasped. “No!”
Now we were seriously outnumbered. There was no hope. Backing up to Sergei, I huddled Maisie close to me and tried to hide behind this big stranger who’d kissed me.
“Mommy?” Her tiny, sleepy little voice sliced at my heart. “Mommy, what’s going on?”
I hugged her tighter, no longer able to hide how much my arms had to be shaking. I was trembling all over in the scariest confrontation I’d ever found myself in.
“Shh.” I tried to shush her as I scanned the men closing in on us.
Sergei put his other arm out, as if to barricade me and urge me to hide behind him.
But it was already over. There was no hope. There were too many of them and only one of him.
“That’s what we wanna know,” one of them taunted of him. “What’s an Orlov doin’ all the way on this side of town?”
“This isn’t Popov territory,” Sergei said.
“And that ain’t your woman, is it?” another asked around cruel laughter. “So fuck off and mind your own.”
“She’s not yours,” Sergei replied in a low snarl.
Gunshots went off all at once.
“Mommy!” Maisie screamed. Her tiny fingers clutched my hair as she tucked her face against me. I cried out, too, shaking and delirious with fear. Holding her close, I bent over to protect her with my body.
My ears rang. I couldn’t breathe fast enough, hyperventilating with this closest brush to death that I’d ever experienced.
But no pain registered. No piercings of a bullet, no blood gushing out of me. Maisie cried, holding on to me as time settled in the microsecond following the fight.
She was alive. I was alive. Neither of us seemed hurt, not by a bullet.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
The fight-or-flight instinct rose in me again.
I was still standing. So was Sergei. Miraculously, Sergei was behind me, not on the ground, bleeding out.
I could barely think straight, let alone marvel at the miracle that we hadn’t been hit.
It seemed so impossible, but as I opened my eyes and lifted my head a little, actions that couldn’t have taken more than a couple of seconds, I saw that the danger wasn’t over.
“Fuck you! Goddammit, fuck you!” One man roared it, raising his voice louder than the others. Groans and more curses came from the two men who were down. The one near my feet didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
Bile rose up my throat as I realized he was dead. Sergei had killed him. Shot him right in the face, leaving a gaping, gory wound above his nose.
Oh, fuck. Fuck!
I swallowed hard, feeling flush and too hot with the instinct to vomit at this gruesome sight.
“Mommy!” Maisie shivered and smashed her face against me.
A man who hadn’t been shot—who didn’t have a gun—lunged at me, and I screamed. Holding Maisie tighter, I backed into Sergei and debated making a run for it. I couldn’t fight back. I had to flee. I had to get out of here!
“Stay with me,” Sergei ordered, as if guessing I was about to do the opposite. “Natalie.” He fired at the man, who dodged his aim. More men came rushing down the sidewalk. “Stay with me, Natalie.”
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t stay here near harm like this. I couldn’t keep my daughter near all this danger. My apartment was just right there. The door was so close. I could run and—
A scream ripped from my throat as another man dove at me, trying to knock Maisie out of my arms. I fell hard, smacking my hands and knee on the pavement as the man wrested my daughter out of my arms. I didn’t have the chance to hold her close as I rolled into the fall, protecting her.
He yanked her away as I slammed on the pavement.
“No!”
I screamed it so loud my throat was on fire. “No!”
Sergei was still firing at the men. But when he spun and saw me on the ground, he shifted his furious stare to my daughter.
She stood there, falling out of the man’s rough capture. Crying with tears down her face, she looked so out of place. Alone. Terrified. No child should ever be near gunfire, and there she was, like a target in the open.
“No!” I scrambled to get up, reaching my arm out to her to reclaim her and protect her.
Before I could, Sergei dove in front of her.
He knocked into her, wrapping her in his arms and tucking her head against him as he blocked her with his body.
Rolling away from the nearest thug who tried to take her, he didn’t wait.
Mid-roll, he brought his arm up again and shot the man dead center in the forehead.
I flinched, rearing back at the shot so up close in this range. Maisie’s screams and cries didn’t fade. But all that told me was that she was alive. She wasn’t hit. She was alive, all thanks to Sergei.
Gratitude would have to come later. Relief would be an afterthought. He’d saved her. He’d risked himself to save her. And me. But as he got upright on one knee, firing at the men with accuracy, he steered me to take Maisie and to get behind him.
I scooped her up, huddling her close as I stood at Sergei’s broad back. Then as he backed up toward my apartment door, he kept firing at the men who tried to get close.
“Get inside,” he ordered me.
I didn’t need to be told twice.
A car pulled up and a couple more men appeared, seeming to fight back the thugs who’d chased me.
“Get in. Go.” Sergei didn’t lower his arm, keeping his gun up to ward the men back. Not until we’d gotten into my building did he look at me.
“Sergei, I—”
He shook his head. “Not now.”
“Thank you. I— You—” Words failed me. I wanted to cry with relief that he’d saved me, but he was too tense and still in a protective mode to listen.
Shocked and stunned, I couldn’t even think of what to do, much less to say.
“Mommy, is he a good guy?” Maisie asked in a small voice.
I licked my lips, willing my heart to slow down as Sergei guided me across the lobby, further from the front door as if he were bracing for someone to bust in.
Good guy?
He had to be a good guy. He’d saved us. He protected me before and he risked his life to do so again. In the unlikeliest moment, when I hadn’t expected him at all, he was there as my hero.
“Yes,” I whispered to her, pressing her head against me as I held her and carried her.
But as I watched him with wary eyes, I had to wonder how bad he was, too. How dangerous and sinister he was to be able to act like a militant and warrior, armed and clearly practiced with shooting. At ease and unworried about the fact that he’d killed at least one person tonight.
Shivers tracked through me. Being this close to violence, to a street fight and senseless deaths, terrified me. Maisie had already lost her father to a street fight.
I couldn’t stomach how close she’d come to losing me, or her own life, in the same way.
She didn’t. I didn’t.
We’re alive.
Forcing down a hard swallow, my mouth so dry, I stared at Sergei and knew I owed him for that miracle.
I was alive because he’d saved me…
But at what cost?