Page 22 of The Bratva's Nanny

Someone screamed. It was loud and high-pitched and sounded a lot like my voice. But I wasn’t sure until his head came up, and the iciest shade of blue met mine.

They lit up in surprise and then narrowed with fury. It turned out that the murder monster didn’t like surprises, and my presence there was an unpleasant one.

I wasn’t supposed to witness it.

I shouldn’t have been there.

He muttered a string of foreign words that sounded more like curses than anything good under his breath, and I heard movement behind the door.

I needed no interpretation to know that he had officially unleashed his men to get me.

Shit.

I fled.

As fast as my legs—and the freaking skirt—would take me. My heart hammered strongly in my chest like it would rip out at any minute, and adrenaline and the instinct to survive fueled my veins.

I ran, breathing in and out raggedly through my open mouth and nostrils.

I heard them, their boots pounding on the tiles as they hurled angry language at me. They didn’t care about being discreet. I even heard them shove one of the service guys to the floor.

“Out of my way!”

I didn’t bother to look back. One wrong move, and I could be the next person getting shoved.

My heart clenched.

At the moment, the most important thing to me—being number ten on the list of interviewees and getting called in at any moment—no longer held importance. Getting to safety did.

I increased my pace, pushed myself to the limit, and felt my lungs burn as I gasped for air.

The front doors weren’t an option. They’d come in through there earlier, and that meant they had more men stationed outside.

The back door it was, then.

As I got closer, two men lunged forward, grabbed my arms, and lifted me from the ground so my legs were running in the air.

“Let me go!”

But of course, they didn’t. They held on tight, determined to take me back to their boss before they chopped off my head.

I knew I had to act fast. I struggled in their grasp and didn’t stop until they dropped me to the ground. Then, I turned around and launched myself into a perfect air kick. My leg soared through the air, striking the first man squarely in the chest. He crumpled to the ground, gasping for breath.

The second one charged at me, but I was ready. They probably didn’t know it, but I wasn’t defenseless. He tried to scare me, advancing with a curled fist, even as he assessed the man on the ground with a hooded gaze.

When he was close enough, I delivered a swift roundhouse kick to his jaw. Like his dumb colleague, he stumbled backward, dazed and confused, and I took advantage of the momentary distraction and squeezed my way through their fallen bodies to escape.

The door clicked shut behind me, but I kept running. And I didn’t stop till I’d gotten to a blind spot, away from CCTV installations. It was a good thing he’d disconnected them when he came into the building. Now, he couldn’t recognize or trace me, save for the imprint of my face that he’d captured with his eyes.

I heaved, panted, and clutched my chest, the reality seemingly unreal.

My head spun, and a wave of nausea hit me.

I’d witnessed a murder.

What the actual fuck?

A real-life, gunshot-through-the-head murder. Cian, the man who’d screamed bloody murder, had gotten murdered right before my eyes. My emotions were a mess. They must’ve gotten scrambled during the chase because, at first, I felt numb. But now, it came rushing back: the screams, the pleas, the gunshot, and the blood as life oozed out of him.