I stood over him, my heart pounding like a drum as reality crashed around me. He had promised he would let me out, and he kept his word.
They had shot him—twice—and still he came for me, because he said he would.
Now I had a choice.
I could help him—save him the way he saved me—or I could run.
My freedom hung there, tantalizingly close, but the taste of it was overwhelmed by gunpowder and the metallic bitterness of his blood.
Blood spilled protecting me.
The house had descended into complete chaos. Men shouting at each other in Russian and English, occasional gunfire punctuating their threats. This was my chance to disappear.
Or I could stay.
I could help save the man who had shoved me into that tiny closet so I would be safe while he gunned down intruders like a demon unleashed from hell.
The voice in my head screamed at me to run, but my heart had already decided.
My knees buckled, and I dropped to the floor, pressing my trembling hands against the wound on his side.
I had no idea what I was doing, but I'd seen enough movies to know that the last thing you wanted was for someone who'd been shot to bleed out.
"Help!" I screamed as the Russian voices grew closer. "I need help back here now!"
My pulse roared so loudly in my ears that everything else seemed muffled. Artem looked ghostly pale. The world moved in slow motion, yet somehow I still couldn't catch up. It wasn't until someone grabbed my shoulders and yanked me away that I realized I wasn't alone anymore.
Three men surrounded him, and I tried to claw my way back. What if they didn't know what they were doing? Who were these men? What if they were the enemy?
"Hey." A man with impossibly sharp cheekbones and midnight blue eyes seized my shoulders and slammed me against the wall hard enough to snap me back to reality. The pounding in my ears gave way to a dull, persistent ringing. "Do you want to help him?"
"What?" I could see his lips moving, but the words weren't registering.
"Do you want. To help. Him." Each word punctuated like a bullet.
"He saved me," I said, as if that answered everything.
"Yes, he fucking did. Now, do you want to help save him? I need your help, but if you're just going to be hysterical, you can stay here and cry about it."
"No," I said, the shock finally receding. "I need to help."
"Good." He gave me a curt nod. "Stay right here and do exactly what I tell you."
He turned his back before I could say anything else, and I noticed the room had filled with more men, one of them calling out that the house was clear. Some resembled Artem, all wearing expressions that mixed worry with merciless determination.
This was his family. It had to be.
Someone brought in a stretcher, and two men who looked the most like Artem lifted him onto it with practiced precision.
"Get on top of him," the sharp-faced man barked at me.
"What?"
"No questions. Just fucking do it," he snapped.
Another man—built like a tank—lifted me effortlessly and positioned me on the stretcher, kneeling over Artem's unconscious body.
"Put pressure here with your hands," the first man ordered, grabbing my blood-slicked hands and positioning them where he wanted them. "Really lean into it."
