Page 222 of Toxic Temptation
The woman shifts the bundled blanket in her arms, and I catch a glimpse of… fabric?
Not skin.
Not a baby.
Just fabric wrapped around something hard and metallic.
Understanding hits me a split second before she raises the gun.
She looks at me down the barrel and sighs. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “This is going to hurt.”
76
KOVAN
Of course it’s a fucking trap.
I knew it the second I saw that woman stumbling into our headlights. No crashed car. No explanation for how she got here. Just a bleeding woman with a bundle, appearing on the most deserted stretch of road between the restaurant and home.
But did Vesper listen when I told her to stay in the car?
Hell no.
Now, she’s standing ten feet away from me, frozen in terror, with a gun in her face.
“Take another step and I’ll put a bullet in her brain,” the woman snarls to me, dropping the fake baby and kicking it aside.
The doll rolls across the street and comes to stop at my feet, its plastic eyes staring up at nothing. Blank. Lifeless.
“It’s a doll,” Vesper whispers, her voice hollow with shock. “The baby… It’s just a doll.”
The woman with the gun is young. Maybe twenty-five. Wide-set dark eyes, a birthmark under her left eye, scar running along her throat. I don’t recognize her, which means she’s not Bratva. Hired mercenary, probably. The sort of disposable tool Ihor uses when he wants plausible deniability.
Her gun hand is already starting to shake. Amateur hour.
I take a deliberate step forward, testing her resolve.
“I will fucking shoot her!” she screams, jamming the barrel against Vesper’s temple. “Don’t you dare move!”
Her eyes check left, then right. She’s waiting for backup that should have been here already.
Good. That gives me an opening.
“Go ahead,” I suggest, my voice flat. “Pull the trigger.”
The woman’s face goes white. “You… you don’t mean that. They told me you’d do anything to keep her safe.”
Sweat beads on her forehead despite the cool night air. Her arm wavers just enough to tell me she’s never killed anyone before. Probably never even fired a gun outside a shooting range.
“They lied,” I tell her.
Her mouth falls open. The gun drops a fraction of an inch as doubt creeps across her features.
It’s all the opening I need.
I drop to one knee, pull out my gun, and fire.
My bullet catches her in the shoulder, spinning her away from Vesper. In the same motion, I launch myself forward, tacklingVesper to the ground as another shot rings out from somewhere behind us.
