Page 48 of Claimed in the Dark

Another man who lay dead on the floor so near me and my son.

I backed up so shakily, so stunned, that I hit the doorframe. The physical contact with something solid jarred me out of the dizzying, consuming rush of ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod that raced through the blurred mess of my brain.

Details couldn’t fill in. Logic wasn’t within my reach. No common sense came to me as I stumbled to get distance from yet another grisly demonstration of death.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God!

Nikolai shook his head at me in a warning to stay quiet. The authority in his dark eyes burned me, forcing me not to scream or make a sound. He captured me with the blatant authority in that firm stare. But this time, it wasn’t to avoid my calling attention to us, to prevent neighbors in my apartment building from hearing me.

He stared me down as if forcing me to ignore everything else but him. To shut out the panic and focus on only him.

He lifted his hands like he did the first time we met. A sense of Déjà vu crippled me as I tried to understand whether he was holding them up to calm me down, like I was a scared animal, or if he was bracing me to stay put and not freak out or run. Or both?

A couple of guards rushed up the stairs behind him. The movement caught my attention, and I tracked them rushing to help. They moved so quietly, like blurs of shadows, but I worried they’d make more noise.

No. No more noise.

I jerked my head to the side. Glancing in the direction of where Brady’s room was, where his door was still closed, I panicked that he’d wake up and somehow know that something was happening. That was what I had done. I’d heard something hitting the wall, then a couple of grunts, and I feared the worst. That was what prompted me to come out here and see, to investigate and get help.

Brady.

I couldn’t let him see. I didn’t want him to know how close we were to danger. He was too young to understand what the Mafia represented, what the Volkov Bratva stood for.

He can’t see this. I was struggling to erase the image of the dead man’s head lolling to the side as it was.

Nikolai gestured at the two men, giving silent expectations to handle this cleanup.

Retreating as a shivering mess, I prayed that they would. Like before, I dreaded my young son seeing danger and death so up close. Or at all. I didn’t want to see this.

Nikolai latched his gaze on me as he stalked toward me, slow and steady while the others tended to the body.

He held his hands out and approached me without flinching. Then he stepped over the man he’d just killed like it was nothing. Like he was nothing. That masked man had clearly been a threat, but now he was nothing but a corpse.

Oh, God…

“Louisa.” He whispered it as I backed up into my room. He closed the door behind him, still moving carefully without any rush. “It’s okay.”

A strangled sound left my lips, half a laugh and mostly a scoff. I felt like I was choking on air as I lost my sanity. Okay? Nothing about a dead man in the hallway could be okay.

“It will. It will be okay.” He came up to me, still keeping his hands out.

“I wish I could believe you,” I got out, stammering. I stared at his hands, so big and strong. Hands that could kill. He had. He’d just killed that man with his bare hands. “But…”

“No.” He shook his head. “You can believe me.”

“You just killed— That man was⁠—”

He closed the distance between us, wrapping me in a tight hug. All that taut, smooth skin of his chest branded me, searing me through the thin nightgown I wore. Without a shirt on, just those sleep shorts, he didn’t offer many layers between us. He wasn’t naked, but held in his embrace, tucked against the hard muscles of his tattooed, scarred, and powerful body, I felt like he was commandeering my common sense.

I wasn’t supposed to want a killer. I was supposed to be repulsed, to know that a dangerous murderer like him was my enemy.

Yet, I couldn’t. My body warred with my brain and my heart gave up completely.

As he held me in this hug, he proved that I was safe—because of him. Not in danger.

As I remained secure in his arms with his heart racing so close to mine, he showed how I could avoid this hysteria of fear—because of his automatic act to protect me.