Page 140 of Bratva and Betrayal: Kirill

I freeze, but the rear passenger door opens, and another man grabs Violet. It happens in slow motion. All I see are her little legs.

“Mommy!” Her black patent leather shoes start kicking wildly.

The sound breaks me open.

High. Terrified. Mine.

“No!” The word finally tears free from my throat.

I lunge forward to grab her back. I wedge my fingers between the man’s hand and Violet’s arm to get her free. But a third man appears beside me out of nowhere. His strong hands clamp around my arms.

I twist and fight, but he’s too big.

“No! Violet!” I scream.

She’s crying and reaching for me. “Mommy!”

My guards don’t realize what’s happening because we’re on the other side of the gas pumps. Did they not hear her scream? Hear me scream? Maybe the traffic from the road is too loud. Two are still in their car.

Thoughts of my guards are wiped away when the man hauling me forward shoves me toward the open door. I stumble. And another hand catches the back of my coat. Panic detonates inside my chest. Still, I kick, claw, and fight, all the while yelling for them to let us go.

The man holding Violet disappears into the SUV. The one behind me follows, dragging me with him. They have my daughter. I have to go with them. I let go and hit the seat hard.

Violet scrambles across the bench and leaps into my arms. “Mommy.”

I grab her instantly, and my body curls around hers as the door slams shut.

“I’m here,” I whisper fiercely, my arms wrapping around her instinctively. “Mommy’s here. It’s okay.”

My hands are already checking her, touching her face, her arms. They pulled her so hard. Bastards.

“I’m right here,” I repeat, my voice somehow steady even though my heart is beating out of my chest. “It’s okay. This is just a mistake.”

The sound of gunfire and yelling punctuates all other noise. I cover Violet’s head and notice how quiet she gets. She was trained for something like this. Maybe it was at school. Maybe it was Kirill’s doing.

“Go,” the man in the backseat with us tells the driver.

The car lurches forward, and we start moving. Fast.

I press my lips to Violet’s hair, breathing her in, grounding myself in the only thing that matters. Her.

As we speed away, I catch a glimpse of chaos I left behind. One of the guards from the other SUV is on the ground, another is crouched behind the tailgate. There are more gunshots, but their sound vanishes the farther we get down the road.

Violet cries into my coat, her small body shaking. “Mommy, what’s happening?”

I force myself to breathe. In. Out. “We’re just going for a ride.”

I lift my head, my gaze snapping to a man pointing his weapon at us.

“Stay still. Don’t move,” he says in a thick Russian accent.

It’s not a voice I recognize. Still, Violet and I are all alone back here. I grip the handle, not that I’d jump out of a moving car.

“It’s locked,” the man with the gun says, his eyes cold, assessing.

“Please,” I say, my voice steadier than I feel. “You made a mistake.”

The gunman darkly murmurs, “We no make a mistake, Madam Volkov.”