7. Nina
NINA
For a second, I forget how to breathe.
Not in the romantic, stupid way I’ve been forgetting around Luka all day, not because he is too close or because his hand is on my waist or because I can still remember the heat of his mouth between my thighs.
This is different.
This is my lungs locking shut because a bullet just tore through the space where my head had been.
Luka’s body covers mine, heavy and hard and immovable, one arm around my waist, one hand pressed to the back of my head, forcing me down behind the armored car.
My cheek’s against the cold concrete. My knees hit the floor badly enough to sting.
Somewhere above us, metal groans from the impact of another shot, and the entire garage goes black so suddenly it feels as if the building itself has closed its eyes.
I hear myself breathing now in pathetic little broken pulls of air against Luka’s coat.
But he’s silent.
And that scares me more than the gunfire.
His hand leaves the back of my head for half a second, and then I hear a sound I’ve only ever heard in films before: the clean, mechanical slide of a gun being drawn.
Except this is not a film.
This is not one of the rumors whispered about him in hallways. This is not my brother lowering his voice when Luka’s name comes up. This is not me joking about Bratva politics as if danger is something stylish and distant, something that wears black suits and sits behind glass desks.
This is real.
This is Luka Kazan’s body between mine and a bullet.
Another shot explodes through the dark.
I flinch so hard my teeth snap together.
Luka shifts instantly, pulling me tighter against him, his arm locking across my back as if he can fold me into his ribs.
“Don’t move,” he says, his voice low, controlled, terrifyingly calm.
I nod, though I’m not sure he can see it.
My eyes are wide open, but the garage is almost completely dark, broken only by the red emergency strip lights glowing along the far wall. They flicker once, twice, washing the concrete pillars, cars, and shadows in pulses of blood-colored light.
A shout comes from somewhere near the ramp. Then another.
Security.
Someone yells in Russian. I catch only pieces of it, enough to understand that men are moving, that someone is down, that no one knows exactly where the shooter is.
But Luka does. Or maybe he just guesses faster than everyone else.
He raises his gun and fires once into the dark.
The sound is so loud at this distance I cry out before I can stop myself.
His hand comes back to my head immediately, fingers firm in my hair, grounding me even as his attention stays fixed somewhere beyond the car.
I smell gunpowder. Burnt metal. His cologne. My own fear.
The combination is so strange and sharp that my stomach twists.
“Luka,” I whisper.
“Quiet.”
Something moves near the next row of cars. A shadow, maybe. A man, maybe. I cannot tell. My brain keeps trying to turn shapes into ordinary things because it does not want to understand that people are shooting at us in the private garage beneath his building.
Luka fires again.
A man grunts in the darkness.
Then the whole garage erupts.
Luka’s security men respond from two directions.
More gunfire cracks through the concrete space, ricocheting in brutal echoes that make it impossible to know where anything is coming from.
Tires burst. Glass shatters. A car alarm starts screaming, then dies abruptly after another shot punches through it.
I clamp both hands over my ears.
Luka drags me lower.
His body moves with awful precision, one knee braced, one shoulder angled toward the open side of the car, keeping himself between me and everything else.
This is my first real taste of his world.
And it tastes like blood, smoke, and panic.
I think of Misha. My brother telling me he trusts Luka with his life. With mine.
I understand now what that means.
It does not mean Luka is safe. It means Luka knows exactly how unsafe the world is.
A flash cuts through the dark from the left. I see it before I hear it. Luka sees me see it.
His arm slams around me and he twists, hauling me beneath him just as another shot cracks through the air.
His body jerks barely enough for anyone else to notice.
But I feel it.
I feel the hard, sudden shock that runs through him. I feel his breath leave his chest in one violent exhale. I feel his weight dip over me for half a second before he catches himself on one hand.
My heart stops.
“Luka?”
He doesn’t answer.
He fires twice over the hood of the car, controlled and brutal, then drops back down beside me.
The emergency light flickers red across his face.
That’s when I see it.
Dark crimson spreading across his shoulder.
At first, my brain refuses to understand.
It looks almost black in the red light, soaking through the fabric of his coat near the upper arm, spreading too quickly for anything else.
Blood. His blood.
Because he moved in front of me.
Because the bullet meant for me hit him.
“No,” I breathe.
His jaw is tight, but his eyes are clear, colder than I have ever seen them. “I said don’t move.”
“You’re shot.”
“I know.”
“You’re shot,” I say again, louder, because apparently repeating it might make the universe take it back.
His gaze cuts to mine. “Nina.”
The way he says my name snaps something into place. Not calm. Nothing that generous. But function. Enough of it, anyway.
I crawl closer, ignoring the scrape of concrete against my knees, and reach for his shoulder.
He catches my wrist. “No.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“It’s not important.”
I stare at him.
A hysterical laugh almost comes out of me. Not important. Of course. A bullet hole in his shoulder isn’t important because Luka Kazan has apparently filed basic human injury under administrative inconvenience.
“It’s very important to me,” I hiss.
His expression flickers. Just once.
Then another shot hits the ground on the other side of the car, sending sparks off the concrete.
He shoves me down again, his body covering mine so completely I can barely see past his chest. I can feel the heat of his blood now, warm where it has soaked through his sleeve and brushed against my hand.
Something inside me turns cold.
Not fear this time.
Anger. Sharp, bright, insane anger.
Someone fucking shot him.
The details don’t matter yet.
All I know is that a few minutes ago, I was furious because he left me in a boardroom, and now I’m on the floor beneath him while his blood gets on my fingers.
A man appears at the front of the car.
I don’t see his face clearly. Just the shape of him, the gun in his hand, the movement of his arm lifting.
Luka starts to turn, but he’s slower now.
Only a fraction. Enough.
I grab the first thing my hand finds—my fallen handbag, ridiculous and small and completely useless except that it has a metal clasp heavy enough to hurt—and I throw it with everything in me.
It hits the man in the face.
It smacks him hard enough to startle him, and his shot goes wild, cracking into the ceiling.
Luka does not waste the opening. He fires once.
The man drops out of sight.
For one second, I stare at the place where he disappeared, my hand still outstretched, my breath gone.
I think I have just helped shoot someone.
No. I distracted someone so Luka could shoot him. What the fuck. What. The. Fuck.
Luka looks at me.
Even in the dark, even bleeding, even with gunfire still echoing somewhere across the garage, I can read the disbelief in his face.
“What?” I snap, voice shaking. “It was the only thing I had.”
Then, absurdly, he almost smiles.
Before he can say anything, two of his security men appear from the far side, moving low and fast between the cars. One is Pavel, I think. The other is broader, older, his gun raised, his face stone.
“Sir,” I hear Pavel’s voice, “east exit is blocked.”
Luka answers in Russian, too quick for me to catch completely. His voice is steady, but I feel the tremor in the arm braced beside me now. It’s controlled. Hidden from everyone but me.
The older guard looks at Luka’s shoulder. His face changes.
“Car,” Luka orders.
The guard says something back.
Luka’s voice cuts through him like a blade.
The guard obeys.
He shifts his weight, and I see the pain hit him then, brief and terrible. His mouth tightens. His breath catches once through his nose.
I reach for him again.
This time he lets me. Only because there is no time to argue.
My hand presses over the wound, and blood immediately seeps between my fingers.
I go dizzy. Not from the blood itself. From the knowledge that it is his.
“It’s too much,” I whisper.
“It’s a shoulder wound.”
“Oh, thank God, then. For a second I thought you had been shot.”
His eyes flick to mine. “Still talking,” he says.
I can’t stop myself from blurting out the words. “I’m scared.”
“I know.”
The older guard gets the rear door of the armored car open.
Luka grabs my wrist with his good hand. “Move when I tell you.”
“Can you run?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes.”
I stare at him, horrified, and he says it like there are more urgent things than honesty, which apparently there are.
Another burst of gunfire erupts near the ramp.
Security returns fire.
The whole garage flashes red and black and white.
Luka pulls me up so suddenly my knees nearly buckle.
His arm clamps around my waist, and we move.
Not elegantly. Not like two people escaping in a movie.
We stumble, ducking low, half running, half falling toward the open car door while bullets hit somewhere behind us with sickening, metallic thuds.
I hear myself gasp. Luka grunts once.
I feel his blood slick under my hand.
As he drags me toward the open door, I make the mistake of looking back.
Two bodies are on the concrete near the far row of cars, one face-down beside a shattered headlight, the other twisted at an angle no living body should hold.
My stomach turns violently, and for one awful second I think I’m going to be sick right there in the garage, with Luka’s blood on my hand and death spread across the floor behind us.