Page 70 of Mafia Daddy

“I’ll cause a diversion,” he says, voice steady. “Draw them away. You go straight to the top floor, toy stock room. Lock yourself in. I’ll meet you there.”

“No!” The word rips out of me. I lunge forward, grabbing his coat. “You can’t! Maxim, please! Daddy!”

He catches my face in both hands, thumbs pressing against my cheeks. “Listen to me, little one. You are my priority. Get safe. I will come for you. That’s a promise.”

Tears spill over now. I can’t stop them. “You better, Daddy. I swear to God, if you don’t…”

He kisses me hard, cutting off the rest of my sentence. It’s brief, bruising, full of everything we don’t have time to say. Then he steps back and slams the elevator door shut between us.

“Maxim!” I scream, pounding on the metal.

The elevator lurches upward with a mechanical groan. I’m trapped inside, rising through the building while the man I love stays behind in a shooting gallery.

Gunfire erupts below once more, sharp, rapid cracks that echo up the shaft.

I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the cold floor, knees pulled to my chest. My breath comes in short, ragged gasps. Zoop isn’t here to hold. I only have my own arms, wrapped tight around myself, rocking slightly as the elevator climbs.

Please, please, please, I pray silently, the words looping like a desperate mantra. Let him be okay. Let my Daddy make it out. I can’t lose him. Not him. Not after everything.

The elevator seems to take forever. Each second stretches, filled with imagined horrors. I picture Maxim moving like a shadow through the parked cars, picking off attackers with that terrifying precision I’ve only glimpsed. I see him taking a hit, blood blooming across his shirt the way it did on Kobek’s. The thought makes bile rise in my throat.

I force myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth, just like Charles taught me during one of our late-night panic sessions back at Harvard.

It barely helps.

My mind keeps flashing to the park, to his hands around my throat in the gentlest claiming touch, to the way he bathed me like I was something precious. To the chessboard and the quiet promise in his eyes.

Daddy has to make it. He has to.

The elevator dings softly as it reaches the top floor. I wipe my face with the sleeve of my blood-stained sweater and force my legs to work. The doors slide open onto a wide, dimly lit stock corridor lined with towering shelves.

Plush toys, designer dolls, gift boxes: everything innocent and soft in brutal contrast to the violence downstairs.

I step out on shaky legs and sprint toward the toy stock room Maxim mentioned. My sneakers squeak on the polished floor. Behind me, distant shouts and more gunfire drift up through the building.

My heart clenches so hard it hurts.

The stock room door is heavy, unmarked. I shove it open, slip inside, and lock it with trembling fingers. The space is huge: rows and rows of unopened inventory, giant stuffed animals still in plastic, shelves of sparkling tiaras and fairy wings. It would be heaven on any normal day.

But right now it feels like a cage.

I sink down behind a massive display of giant teddy bears, pulling my knees up again. The fabric is soft against my cheek. I press my face into one, breathing in the new-toy smell, and let the tears come properly this time.

Gunfire continues in bursts below. Closer now? Or is my mind playing tricks? I can’t tell.

Every shot makes me flinch. Every silence is worse.

“Daddy…” I whisper into the bear’s fur, the word cracking. “Come back to me. Please come back.”

I close my eyes and picture him: tall, commanding, that silver-threaded hair and those icy eyes that only soften for me. The way he calls me malysh. The way he spanks me and then holds me after. The way he makes me feel small and safe and utterly owned in the best possible way.

I won’t let this be the end. Not when we’ve only just started.

Minutes blur into what feels like hours, though the clock on the far wall says it’s only been twelve. My ears strain for any sound: footsteps, the elevator, his voice. Anything.

A single, sharp volley of shots rings out, then nothing.

The silence presses down on me like a weight.