Page 44 of Bratva Baby

The driver takes a bend too fast, gravel sprays the undercarriage, and the back of the sedan fishtails before the tires catch again. My stomach drops. Anton’s arm comes harder around me, steady and infuriatingly effective. “You know everyone,” I mutter.

He looks out the rear window. “That’s why I’m still alive.”

A clear shot explodes with a crack, then another, then the sound of glass giving way somewhere behind us. The front passenger ducks and swears in Russian. The driver jerks the car left and then right again.

“Tire?” Anton asks.

“Rear panel,” the driver shouts back in a voice stretched with panic. “They’re testing.”

“How flattering,” I mouth.

Anton actually smirks. “There’s a farm road ahead. We can lose the road there and cut for the fallback.”

“And if they anticipated that?” I ask.

Anton’s mouth curves. “Then they get to find out I anticipated their anticipating it.”

A laugh nearly escapes me, which feels deranged under the circumstances. Then another shot lands, this one closer, and the rear window caves in with a violent burst. Glass flies across the back seat. Anton throws himself over me, one arm shielding my head while I fold into him on instinct I’d rather deny.

“Jesus,” I gasp.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and he doesn’t raise his voice. He’s calm, and that means he’s exactly where he knows how to be.

The driver veers onto the farm road, pushing the car through a rut deep enough to make my teeth click together. Mud and water kick up on both sides. The headlights carve over fencing, dead grass, and the glint of something metallic ahead. “Blocker!” he breathes.

Anton is already moving. “Out.”

The car hasn’t fully stopped before his door is open. He catches my wrist, drags me after him, and shoves me down behind the rear wheel. The front passenger is out on the other side with his gun already up. The driver gets out lower and slower, then hisses through his teeth and grabs his arm.

I look at Anton. He doesn’t waste one second looking surprised. He checks the road, the ditch, the tree line, then the car ahead. Two men. One behind the engine block. One trying to angle around.

“Stay down,” he says.

I stare at him. “That’s obvious.”

He almost smiles. “Good. You’re still useful.”

He rises just enough to fire. One shot. Pause. Another. He isn’t wild, and he isn’t angry in the way bad men get angry. He places each round like he’s settling accounts. A man near the block car drops with a sound cut short halfway through it. The second ducks back.

The front passenger fires from the driver’s side and shouts, “Left!”

Anton grabs the back of my coat and hauls me up just as a round snaps through the space I was crouched in. He half carries me through the ditch, my boots sinking into mud and icy water. I slip. He catches me by the waist. I hate how natural that grip feels now.

“Move, Sofiya.”

“I am moving.”

“You’re doing it badly.”

I shove his shoulder as we run. “Then let me panic with dignity.”

He laughs once, and the sound follows me through the trees while branches slap my coat and wet leaves stick to my hair. Behind us, the gunfire turns ragged and then fades. Somebody shouts in Hungarian. Somebody else answers. The sound gets swallowed by distance and trees.

We cut uphill through a patch of brush and over a low stone wall. Anton drops behind it first, then pulls me down beside him. The front passenger appears seconds later with the driver leaning on him, blood dark through his sleeve now.

“Can you walk?” Anton asks the driver.

The man spits into the mud. “Can drive.”