Page 155 of Mile High Ex's Dad
That’s when I hear it. A crack from somewhere beyond the hedge line.
For one second, my mind doesn’t understand it. It’s too out of place. Too harsh against the wedding lawn and the flowers and the murmuring guests.
Then comes the second shot, and everything breaks at once.
Someone screams.
The sound tears through the lawn, high and raw, and all the pretty stillness of the morning disappears. Guests drop, duck, scatter. Chairs scrape across the grass. A bridesmaid falls. Somebody shouts to get down. Music stands crash sideways near the quartet.
Viktor moves before I fully understand what’s happening. One second he’s turning toward the sound, the next he’s grabbing me and dragging me down with him behind the nearest row of chairs.
“Down.” His voice is in my ear, hard and controlled, one arm around me, the other braced in front of my body like he can shield me from everything with force alone.
Another shot. Closer this time.
Or maybe it only feels that way.
My heart is hammering so violently I can barely breathe. Grass presses against my palms. My dress is twisted under my knees. Somewhere to my left Ethan is shouting something I can’t make out. Alina’s voice cuts across the chaos, sharp and furious. Anna is yelling for people to get inside. Guests are running in every direction at once, which somehow makes the lawn feel even more exposed.
Viktor lifts his head just enough to see over the chairs. “Stay here,” he says.
I grab at his jacket without thinking. “No.”
His eyes cut back to mine. For one terrible second I see the whole truth of him there. Not the father of the groom. Not the man from the plane. Not even the man who just had his mouth on my body hours ago.
Something older.
More dangerous.
Made for this.
“Sienna,” he says, and his voice changes just enough to make me stop fighting him. “Do not move.”
He lets go of me only when he knows I’ve heard him.
Then he rises into the chaos.
Yuri is already moving toward the hedge line with two of the men from earlier, no longer pretending to be anything but what they are. Ethan is on the ground near the aisle, half covering his head with his arms, staring up in shock. Alina is crouched beside one of the overturned chairs, white-faced and furious, while Anna pulls at her shoulder trying to force her toward cover.
Everything is noise now. Screams. Running feet. Someone crying. The thud of bodies hitting the grass to get low.
I stay where Viktor put me because the baby is kicking wildly now and fear has made my body feel too tight, too shaky, too strange. I curl one arm around my stomach and try to breathe through the panic while watching him move across the lawn toward the sound of gunfire like it’s a thing he has done too many times to count.
Another shot cracks across the lawn.
I flinch so hard my teeth hit together.
Someone screams again, closer this time, and I can’t tell where it’s coming from because the whole world has turned into movement and noise and people dropping to the ground in terrible, graceless panic.
Viktor doesn’t hesitate. He cuts across the grass with Yuri’s men fanning out around him, low and fast, using the overturned chairs and flower stands for cover as they move toward the hedges. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t need to. He already placed me where he wanted me, and some stupid part of me takes comfort in that even now.
I hate that.
I press my hand harder over my stomach and try to breathe.
In. Out.
Again.
