Page 14 of Enforcer Daddy
"Interesting philosophy," he said. "But academic at this point."
I tried to run. Really tried, putting everything I had into twisting away, into breaking his grip, into reaching that door and the darkness beyond. He let me struggle for about three seconds, then simply picked me up and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
"Put me down!" I beat at his back with my free hand, the other still clutching the puppy. "This is kidnapping! This is—"
"This is keeping you alive," he said, walking toward the door like I weighed nothing. "You can thank me later."
"I'll never trust you, you psychotic—"
"Maybe not," he agreed, stepping over the lead man's body without even looking down. "But you'll be alive to hate me, which is better than the alternative."
The last thing I saw before he carried me out into the night was the storage unit—my failed sanctuary, now a crime scene painted in blood and bad decisions. The puppy whimpered against my chest, and I held him tighter, wondering if I'd just traded one predator for another.
"I wasn't asking, little one," Volkov said, and there was something in his voice that sounded almost like amusement. "I rarely do.
Chapter 4
Dmitry
ThedrivetoQueensshould have taken twenty minutes—straight shot down the BQE, no traffic at this hour, just me and the road and a problem I needed to contain. Instead, I had Eva in my backseat turning my Audi into a war zone, and the puppy whimpering on the floor like he knew exactly how fucked this situation was.
I'd put her in back because I didn't trust her in front. Too many things to grab—the gear shift, the steering wheel, my throat. The backseat seemed safer, contained, controllable. Big mistake.
The first hit came as I merged onto the expressway. Her elbow connected with the window hard enough to make the whole car shudder. I watched in the rearview as she wound up for another strike, her face set with the kind of determination I usually saw in men about to die for something they believed in.
"That's thousands of dollars of German engineering you're destroying," I told her, keeping my voice conversational even as the bulletproof glass started to spider-web under her assault.
"Bill me," she snarled, and drove her elbow into the window with enough force to actually crack through the first layer.
The thing about bulletproof glass was that it was designed to stop things coming from outside—bullets, rocks, whatever enemies might throw at you. It wasn't really meant to handle sustained assault from inside by someone who didn't care about destroying themselves in the process. And this girl definitely didn't care. She was all fury and desperation, throwing her whole body weight behind each strike.
"You realize we're going sixty miles per hour," I pointed out, watching her try to enlarge the hole she'd made. "Even if you get through, you'll die on impact with the asphalt."
"Better than whatever you're planning," she shot back.
The puppy started crying then, high-pitched whimpers that cut through the sound of breaking glass and highway noise. He'd pressed himself into the corner of the floor, as far from the violence as he could get, shaking like he was back in that cardboard box.
"You're scaring the dog," I said, surprised to find I actually meant it. Something about that pathetic little creature got to me, maybe because he was as fucked as she was, just in a different way.
I saw in the rear-view that Eva actually paused for a moment. She looked down at the puppy, and her whole face changed. For exactly one second, all that rage melted into something softer, something protective. Her mouth opened like she wanted to comfort him, to tell him it would be okay.
Then her walls slammed back up, and she glared at me in the mirror. "You'rethe one scaring the dog," she shot back, like I was the one destroying my own car.
Each impact shook the whole vehicle. She'd figured out to aim for the hinges, the weak points, using both feet like a battering ram. The leather on the door panel split under the assault,exposing foam and metal underneath. My beautiful A8, the one I'd had imported special from Munich, was being systematically destroyed by a hundred-pound girl with mismatched eyes and no sense of self-preservation.
By mile marker twelve, she'd torn through the seat leather with her fingernails, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. By exit thirty-four, she'd somehow managed to remove one of the headrests—those things were designed to be permanent fixtures, but she'd found the release mechanism through pure violent determination. Now she was using it as a club, slamming it against the window.
"If the glass breaks, you'll sever an artery," I warned her. "Then you'll bleed out in my backseat, and I'll have to explain to my detailer why the leather's ruined."
"Fuck your leather," she spat, but I noticed she switched tactics, using the headrest to try and break the lock mechanism on the door instead.
I should have been furious. This car cost more than most people's houses. Every piece of damage she inflicted would take weeks to repair, specialists to source parts. But watching her in that rearview mirror, raging and absolutely refusing to give up, all I felt was a grudging kind of respect.
Most people, when faced with the reality of their situation—trapped, overpowered, completely fucked—they folded. They negotiated, they pleaded, they accepted their fate. Not this one. She'd rather throw herself through broken glass at highway speeds than submit.
It was magnificent, in its own deranged way.
The women in my world—the trophy wives and mob daughters and high-end escorts—they knew how to smile while planning your death. They'd poison your drink or put a knife between your ribs while whispering endearments. They hid their violenceunder designer clothes and perfect makeup, wielded it like a scalpel, precise and clean.
