Page 74 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

She’s bleeding down her chin and one of her eyes is bruised.

Another man sits on her table with my son on his lap and a pistol laid across the boy’s thigh. “There he is.” He bounces Felix a few times like he’s just a doting uncle here to visit. “Petrov said you’d come. I didn’t believe him.” The Chechen accent is thick with this one.

Raina’s eye finds me and she whimpers.

The minute she does, the one holding her head jerks her violently and she whines.

She’s terrified; I can see it in her eyes. But thankfully Felix looks more sleepy than scared.

“Come and look at him.” The one on the table turns Felix by the chin so I can see my son’s face. “Look, he’s got your mouth on him. Isn’t that precious?”

This man thinks I’m here to play games. He thinks I won’t fire this weapon. What he doesn’t know is that since I was a boy I’ve lived so detached that at times I feel nothing.

Like right now.

My life was already planned out as of twenty-four hours ago. Raina was gone, Felix was all but dead to me. The reward of having them back is worth the risk.

I lift my weapon and point it at his mocking expression and in one quick shot I put a round through his teeth.

His head snaps back and blood spatters the wall behind him. Akim and the men move in, and Felix slides off the man’s lap screaming. Akim scoops him up before anyone can think to touch him, as the one with Raina’s hair lets go, reaching inside his coat. I’m on him with my bare hands before he can blink.

I take his wrist and slam it on the counter, letting Raina drop to a heap to be collected by Demid, and his gun clatters in the sink. He grunts when I drive my knee into his groin then give a hard undercut to his jaw, snapping his head back. One hard blow to the back of his head with the butt of my pistol and he’s down for the count.

Raina crawls across those boards on her hands and knees straight past the man I’ve just torn apart, and pulls Felix away from Akim into her arms, folding herself over him. He screams now, a loud shrill that hurts my ears, but he’s safe.

“No.” She drags Felix backward across the floor with her. “No, no⁠—”

“Raina—”

“Don’t you touch him.”

I’ve waited for this moment for five years. There’s no way in hell I’m walking out of here without them. Besides my enemies won’t quit now. The identities she’s been living under to keep them both safe are burned. She can be tracked and anyone will be able to find her.

Including me.

“Get up. There’s more of them coming and that lock wouldn’t hold a child out.” I holster my gun and hold my hand out to her. “Look at me. Get up.”

“Boss.” Akim stands in the doorway looking over his shoulder. This time of day a shot like that will draw attention. “We need to move.”

Raina doesn’t take my hand, but she doesn’t fight me either. She rises slowly on unsteady legs, hoisting Felix into her arms, and I steer her by the elbow around the man lying dead on her floor and out toward her door.

“Why are you doing this!” she hisses, but I don’t bother answering. At this point it’s for her own safety, though when I find out why she ran, she may need someone to protect her from me.

“Get in the car,” I grumble, shoving her toward the back seat.

She climbs in, sitting with Felix in her lap and her face turned to the window. He’s still crying in fear now, and she sobs so hard her whole body shakes. It makes my protective instincts flare again, overpowering the anger I have toward her.

The car is anything but silent, but at some point, the boy quits crying. He lays his head on her chest and watches me over her arm. When Raina’s sobs simmer to sniffles, Felix gets braver, sitting a little taller, studying me curiously.

“Who are you?” he asks, blinking his large brown eyes. Petrov’s man is correct. He looks just like me, which is a shame. I’ve missed so much, including the way his looks transformed. When he was born he looked so much more like his mother.

“Felix, hush.” Raina drags him back into her chest and presses her hand over his hair, pinning him to her chest. She still won’t even look at me. It’s probably fear on her part, and she’s probably right for feeling it.

“I’m your father,” I tell him. “We’re going home where it’s safe.”

That make’s Raina’s head snap my direction. “I won’t stay with you,” she hisses, clinging to that boy with her life.

“You’re in my car.”