Page 67 of Kept By the Bratva

Diego would never hunt for me again.

I wasn’t his. I’d never been his.

I belonged with Nik.

“Nik!” I whispered it, urgent with the need to see him alive.

No reply came. Mila scanned the view we had under here, shaking her head.

What was she saying? No, he hadn’t made it? No, don’t speak? The sounds of fighting faded. No more guns were fired. And it was too quiet.

“Nik?” I said louder, frantic. I released Mila as we both tried to crawl out from under the table.

“Nik!” I repeated a third time, desperate to see something out there.

He had to be okay. He had to live.

We had to survive and bring these babies into the world.

We belonged together, dammit!

I didn’t dare catch my breath as I crawled out on my hands and knees.

I couldn’t slow my racing heart, not until I knew that the man I loved wasn’t dead from the grisly end of that standoff.

27

NIKOLAI

“Nik!”

I’d never heard a sweeter sound.

Oh, thank fuck.She was alive!

Amy’s frantic shouts for me had me dropping to my knees to find her. She’d crawled under there when Diego lifted that second gun. From my vantage point of running across the room, I couldn’t see if he’d hit her.

I swore my heart stopped beating from the moment he pulled the trigger. The second he did, his attention trained downward, and I shot him. Again. And again. He wouldn’t survive a bullet to the brain, and if he tried to, hyped up on some will to live in his psychosis, the three bullets embedded in his heart wouldn’t let that happen.

He’d fired at me, too, but the searing sting on my upper arm wasn’t a worry.

All I could be concerned about was Amy. My woman. My love.

“Nik!” She cried it in relief as she surfaced from beneath the table. On her hands and knees, she crawled toward me. Tears slipped from her eyes and spilled over her cheeks as she hurried to me, frantic and impatient. Swinging and pumping her arms from side to side to kneel toward me, she showed no sign of being shot. Or injured. No blood stained her. Only a little at her hands from that knife.

“Amy.” I hauled her into my arms, rejoicing in the contact of her sweetness. She lived and breathed, crying and sniffling as she hugged me close.

I would never, ever let her go. With her arms around my neck, the force of her approach so strong that she rocked us back, I closed my eyes and buried my face against her.

Breathing her in proved that this wasn’t an illusion. Digging my fingers into her sides showed how unscathed she was.

But still, my heart beat so fast, ramped up on adrenaline and the most sickening fear I’d ever felt in my entire life.

“Amy—”

She cut me off as I backed up to look over her face. I didn’t want to assume she was uninjured, and I needed to check again.

Instead, I grunted against her lips, instantly falling into the punishingly strong kiss she plastered on me.