Page 178 of Sexting the Pakhan

He grabs my wounded leg by accident as he falls, and the pain is so bright it blacks the room out for half a second. I roar, bring the gun down across his temple, then again, then once more until he stops moving.

Third man is the careful one. He never rushed the doorway. He stayed outside the kitchen line, waiting for the mess, waiting for me to commit.

A shot tears through the wall beside my head.

I drop behind the table, chairs skidding under me, splinters spraying across my face. He fires again. Wood jumps. A bowl shatters. Mila’s stupid pink cup flips and rolls across the floor.

He’s trying to pin me.

The third man fires again, and the shot tears through the side of the couch where my head was a second ago.

I hit the floor hard and roll behind the kitchen island, dragging my bad leg with me. Pain slices up my thigh so brutally I nearly black out, but there’s no time for it. The first two men are still moving. One is groaning on the tiles, trying to get his breath back after I smashed him into the wall. The other is up on one knee near the fridge, reaching for the gun he dropped.

I kick a chair at him.

I grab the nearest thing my hand finds—Mila’s plastic toy bin—and hurl it across the kitchen. It bursts open in the air, blocks and crayons and toy animals exploding across the floor. The third man flinches, just enough. I shove the island with all my weight. It screeches across the tiles and slams into him at knee level.

He stumbles.

That’s all I need.

I lunge for the front hall, half running, half falling, every step on the injured leg like being stabbed again. Behind me, one of them shouts, “Don’t let him out!”

Too late.

I hit the wall by the coat hooks, grab Zoya’s keys off the little tray, then yank the girls’ backpacks and jackets down with one sweep of my arm. The service door is no longer safe. They came through it. There could be more outside.

The front door. I slam the bolt back.

A hand grabs my coat from behind.

The first man. Back on his feet.

He jerks me backward. I twist, ram my elbow into his ribs, then drive him into the umbrella stand hard enough to send it crashing over. He still doesn’t let go.

So I grab the front door and throw my full weight through it.

The door flies open. Cold air hits my face.

The man loses his footing on the threshold, and I tear free. I stumble into the corridor and nearly go down. Inside the apartment, the second man reaches the doorway. The third is coming fast behind him.

I slam the door shut and throw the lock.

The handle jerks violently at once.

One hit. Two.

Wood shudders under the force.

I limp down the hallway, not waiting to see if it holds. My leg is buckling now, blood running down into my sock, each step uglier than the last. I hit the stairwell door with my shoulder and go through it sideways, grabbing the rail before I fall.

Above me, someone is shouting.

Below me, a neighbor’s television hums through the walls, absurdly normal.

The apartment is blown. Finished. Zoya can’t come back to it, not with the girls, not tonight.

I force myself down the stairs, one hand locked on the railing, the other holding the keys so tightly they cut into my palm.Halfway to the next landing, the apartment door upstairs bursts open.