Page 11 of Enforcer Daddy
I kept my mouth shut, jaw clenched in defiance. Fuck him and his questions. Let the Morozovs come. At least then this would be over.
He gave me a little shake—not painful, but attention-getting. Like shaking a snow globe to make the fake snow swirl.
"Answer me, little one." The pet name made my skin prickle in ways I didn't want to examine. "How many?"
"Why do you care?" I shot back. "You're probably going to kill me anyway."
"Blyat, If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead. How many men saw you?"
The voices were getting closer. Someone laughed—harsh, mean laughter that promised violence. A door slammedsomewhere nearby, metal on metal, the sound of systematic searching.
"Three," I admitted, hating myself for answering. "Maybe four. I wasn't exactly counting while I ran."
"Did they see which unit?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. I thought I’d lost them. Came in from above—the roof.”
"Then through the gate?"
"Uh-uh. Padlock’s damaged. And I can pick them."
He looked at the lock, then at me, then back at the lock. Something that might have been approval flashed across his dead eyes.
"Resourceful," he said.
The voices were getting closer, someone rattling the door of the unit next to ours with enough force to make the metal scream. Russian cursing, crude and violent, promises of what they'd do when they found me. My body wanted to curl into a ball, to hide, to disappear into the corner with the puppy and pretend none of this was happening.
But the man was already moving. He pulled me toward the back corner where I'd made my pathetic nest, but pushed past the blankets and newspapers to a section of wall that looked exactly like every other section of wall.
His hand found something invisible in the darkness, pressed something that didn't seem to exist, and a section swung inward on silent hinges. A hidden compartment I'd never noticed, never even suspected. How many times had I leaned against that exact spot, thinking I was safe, never knowing there was another space behind it?
"Get in. Now." His voice brooked no argument, but I hesitated anyway because small dark spaces and men with guns had never been a good combination in my experience.
He didn't wait for compliance. Just picked me up like I was a bag of groceries, one arm under my knees, the other around my shoulders, and deposited me inside the compartment with the same efficiency he'd used for everything else. The space was tiny—maybe four feet by three feet, ventilated but dark, smelling like metal and old wood and something chemical I couldn't identify.
I started to scramble back out, survival instincts screaming about being trapped, but he was already bending down, scooping up the puppy with surprising gentleness. The puppy whimpered once, confused and probably scared, before being pressed into my arms.
"Not a sound," Volkov said, and there was something in his voice that made me believe he'd kill me if I disobeyed. Not malice, just fact. Like stating water was wet or gravity pulled things down. "Not a whimper from you or the dog. Understood?"
I wanted to tell him to fuck off. Wanted to scream. Wanted to do anything except obey this man who'd gone from pointing a gun at me to hiding me in the span of five minutes. But the puppy was warm and trembling in my arms, and those Russian voices were getting closer, and sometimes the devil you didn't know was better than the one you did.
"I need verbal confirmation," he said, patient as a bomb timer counting down.
"I understand," I whispered.
"Good girl." The praise shouldn't have made my stomach flutter, but it did. Something about the way he said it, like I'd done something genuinely worth acknowledging. Like being quiet was an achievement instead of just survival.
He closed the false wall, and darkness swallowed me whole. Not complete darkness—there was a crack where the panels didn't quite meet, maybe a quarter-inch of light that let me see into the storage unit. I pressed my eye to it, needing to see whatwould happen next, needing to know if I'd just traded one death for another.
Through the crack, I watched him move to the center of the unit. He didn't hide. Didn't position himself strategically behind boxes or furniture. Instead, he stood in plain sight, pulling out his phone like he was checking messages. Casual. Bored. Like armed Russians searching storage units at 2 AM was beneath his notice.
The puppy stirred in my arms, and I pressed him closer to my chest, willing him to stay quiet. He nuzzled into my neck, his breathing raspy but thankfully silent. I could feel his tiny heartbeat against my palm, rabbit-quick with fear or fever or both.
The storage unit door rolled up with a metallic shriek that made me flinch. Three men entered.
"Dmitry Volkov," the lead man said, and there was respect mixed with surprise and wariness in his voice. Like finding a tiger in your kitchen—you acknowledged its majesty even while calculating how fast you could reach the door. "This is Morozov territory."
"Is it?" Volkov sounded genuinely curious, like this was news to him. He pocketed his phone with deliberate slowness, every movement broadcasting how little he considered them a threat. "I must have missed the property deed. This unit's been in my name for three years."
