Page 51 of Ruthless Rustanovs

“Open the door. Open the door and pay for this pizza. NOW!” The easygoing pizza guy was gone, his voice deeper and carrying the trace of a faint accent. “Open this door now, bitch!”

Sam went still as her instincts came online. Thanks to her training at the shelter, she knew when to confront an angry man at the door and when that man was high-risk enough for her to immediately involve the police. She knew exactly where she and Pavel stood with this guy.

“Pavel,” she whispered, tugging at the little boy’s arm now instead of vice versa. “Let’s go. We need to—”

A gloved hand smashed through the thin side window to the right of the door, and went straight for the deadbolt. It was one of three locks on the door, but in this case, it was the only one that she’d locked.

Sam’s heart went cold with fear. Yeah, there was no way the man on the other side of the door was the local delivery guy.

“Back Up, here girl!” she called while pulling Pavel from underneath the table.

Back Up trotted over and Sam managed to get the little boy out, just as the door came crashing open.

“C’mon!” she yelled, picking up Pavel and running into her bedroom with Back Up on their heels. She slammed the door behind all of them, looking around for a phone. She needed help, but her phone…

She cursed, the memory of it bouncing off the bed to places unknown when she’d thrown it in frustration coming back to her.

Did she have time to look for it? No, she decided. Better to put as many doors between them and the bad guy as she could. With frantic breaths, she ran into the bathroom with Pavel in her arms. Slammed that door behind her and placed him in the tub.

Pavel was crying now. “He’s going to kill us!”

“No, I won’t let him hurt you!” Sam said, her eyes scanning the bathroom for something she could use to defend them against the maniac at the door.

There was a metal towel rack was bolted solidly to the wall but no amount of her frantic tugging pulled it off. Sam soon gave up, her eyes once again scanning until they landed on the small window right above the tub. It was too small for her to fit through.

But maybe Pavel could.

She bent down to talk to the little boy crouched in her empty bathtub.

“Pavel, I’m going to push you through the window.

Go around the cottage, and run as fast as you can to Ruth’s House.

” She gave him six numbers, the date of her mother’s death, then said, “That’s the code to get in.

Climb out the window and don’t look back, no matter what.

Just get to the shelter’s back door, okay?

Then call 9-1-1.” Sam put her hands on both sides of the boy’s frightened face. “Okay?”

Pavel nodded, solemn as a tomb. “Okay, I’ll go, but I don’t want you to get hurt like Papa.”

She wished she could tell him she wouldn’t, wished she could reassure him, but it wasn’t true and there wasn’t enough time. She settled on not letting her terror show as she bent down further and helped Pavel climb up on her shoulders and out the window.

His feet disappeared just as the bathroom door rattled with the force of someone banging his shoulder against it. The sound of someone trying to get in.

Back Up once again went to the door the bad guy was trying to bash through, sniffing at the crack beneath it with more curiosity than anything else. Sam loved her bullie, but this was one of the times it might have come in handy not to have a total sweetheart of a dog.

“Go away!” Sam yelled. “I have a rabid pit bull in here and she will tear you from limb to limb if you don’t go away now!”

Back Up looked over her shoulder at Sam and snuffed like, “Who me? I’d do no such thing! In fact, dogs of my breed are way more likely to be kidnapped because we’re so ridiculously friendly and trusting!”

Seriously, she’d seen teacup poodles show more menace than Back Up was displaying now. But maybe the guy on the other side of the door believed her because the rattling came to an abrupt stop.

With her heart in her throat, Sam waited. But no sound came. Minutes passed that felt like hours. And soon the fearful anticipation was replaced with dread. What if he hadn’t been scared… what if he’d left? Left because he’d gotten what they’d come for?

Sam’s heart seized with those thoughts and without thinking, she opened the bathroom door. She had to be sure, she just had to be…

The bedroom was now empty. Its door standing open, knocked off one hinge in ominous testament to the fact that someone had aggressively barged inside. Before leaving.

No, Sam thought to herself. No! No! No!

She ran through the broken door, down the narrow hallway, and into the living room, her shoes crunching over the broken glass as she rushed outside onto the wide expanse of lawn that sat between her and the shelter.

Only to stop short.

Pavel was standing in front of the back entrance to Ruth’s House…

having what looked like a solemn conversation with Nikolai Rustanov.

At least she thought it was Nikolai Rustanov.

He was turned to the side and had swapped his tuxedo for a black pea coat and skull cap.

In fact, he was dressed all in black as if he’d set out to match the large black Escalade parked, not in one of the special parking spots for Ruth’s House, but on the lawn itself with the passenger door hanging open, as if he’d skidded to a stop and leapt out.

But even turned sideways, she knew it was him, if only by the sharp planes of his face, like a gargoyle come to life.

She stood there, mouth unhinged, trying to figure out what was going on before she approached the unexpected scene.

Back Up, though, wasn’t nearly as wary. She barked happily and ran over to Pavel, nearly knocking the poor boy down in her eagerness to lick him after a whole five, possibly ten, minutes apart.

Nikolai watched the scene with narrow eyes, his body tense as if he were trying to figure out if Back Up was a danger to Pavel. He must have decided she wasn’t, because his head swiveled towards Sam as she also came running across the lawn toward them.

The only evidence that he recognized her was a slight widening of his hooded eyes, before his face went to another setting, one that rearranged the harsh planes of his face into an expression of angry accusation.

“This,” he said, his voice dangerous and low. “This is what you call taking care of my nephew?”