Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 95627 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95627 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 478(@200wpm)___ 383(@250wpm)___ 319(@300wpm)
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."
Artem's hot blood seeped from the wounds, warm and thick against my fingers. I pressed down with everything I had, desperate to keep his life force from escaping.
"Keep your hands exactly where they are. Move your knee. It's going to feel wrong, and trust me, it's going to hurt Artem like a motherfucker. But it's going to keep him alive."
"What?" How could he want me to cause this man more pain?
"Put your knee on that wound and press down. As much pressure as you can. We need to keep his blood in his body where it belongs."
I nodded, silently apologizing to Artem as I drove my knee into the wound on his side. When he didn't even groan in protest at the pressure, tears filled my eyes, blurring my vision.
With my hands pressing into his blood, I could feel the faint beat of his heart and his slow, shallow breaths.
They were weakening, but they were still there.
As long as I could feel that rhythm, he was with me.
"Hold on," one of them commanded as they rushed the gurney out of the bedroom. The men didn't slow down for a second. Even when they reached the stairs, they wordlessly lifted the stretcher and kept moving with grim efficiency.
“Take him to the kitchen,” the man who’d taken charge ordered the men, who wasted no time heading in that direction.
"How long until we get a doctor?" I demanded, never releasing the pressure on his wounds.
"No doctors," he said as he kicked open the door to the kitchen.
"What do you mean, no doctors? He needs a surgeon and blood or he's going to—" I couldn't make myself say it. I had wished for it so many times before, but now I was physically ill at the thought of it.
"“Someone find the fucking first aid kit,” he directed the men, ignoring me. “The good one."
The men carrying the stretcher maneuvered it into the kitchen, where they unceremoniously swept everything off the massive island counter with a crash of breaking dishes and scattered utensils.
"He needs a hospital," I screamed, hot tears streaming down my face. I refused to move my hands to wipe them away.