Page 224 of Dance of Defiance

“It’s just a graze!” he yells, grabbing my hand and pressing it to the shirt. “Keep pressure on it!”

When he stands, I frown. “Where?—”

“Stepan is still down there!”

Suddenly, he’s dropping to his knees, cradling my head, kissing me fiercely.

“I love you,” he rasps.

He presses something heavy into my other hand. I look down and blink when I see the gun.

“You know how to use this?”

“I…watch movies?”

Roman smiles grimly. “Be right fucking back.”

Then he’s gone, rushing back across the street and crashing through the front door of the abandoned club. Smoke is billowing out the door as it swings shut behind him, and I can smell the burning from here.

The seconds tick by. My heart thunders against my bloody chest as lethal, horrible dread twists and snakes around my middle, cinching tight.

Don’t die on me, motherfucker.

You don’t get to fucking leave like this, wreckage.

…Yeah, fuck this.

I grunt as I struggle to my feet and start to stagger back across the road. My head is swimming, and goddammit, my chest hurts.

The frosted windows of the club begin to glow.

Smoke is streaming freely from under the door.

Roman.

I force my feet to move faster, stumbling across the street.

And then four things happen.

“YOU!”

I stop cold, my pulse hitching as I see Pavel Nikitin, blood pouring down the side of his head, staggering out from an alley next to the club, the gun in his hand pointed right at me.

His face is twisted with fury as his eyes blaze into mine.

“Youlittle fucking?—”

The second thing that happens is the door to the club crashes open, flames and smoke billowing out as a shirtless figure emerges, a second figure draped over his shoulders.

Roman.

That’s when the third and fourth things happen, almost simultaneously.

The gun in Pavel’s hand goes off.

…And Roman hurls himself in front of me.

The world narrows to a single pinpoint. Everything else blinks away. All other thoughts, dreams and hopes leave my consciousness and I watch in slow motion as the man I love grunts, doubles over, and drops motionless to the ground.