Page 78 of Enforcer Daddy
Three minutes to determine if I'd lost everything that mattered. Three minutes to find out if my weakness for normalcy—bookstores and food markets and pretending we were just another couple—had cost Eva her life. Three minutes that stretched like elastic, each second an eternity of imagining what I'd find.
The building appeared ahead, looking deceptively normal in the afternoon sun. No broken windows visible, no signs of forced entry, no bodies on the sidewalk. But that meant nothing. Professional hits were clean, quiet, invisible until you found the blood.
I slammed the brakes in front of the building, leaving the car diagonal across two handicapped spaces. Let them tow it. Let them arrest me. None of it mattered if Eva was gone.
The doorman's desk was empty, no sign of struggle but no sign of the doorman either. The elevator waited with doors open like a mouth, but elevators were death traps and would take too long anyway.
I hit the stairwell door at a run, taking the steps three at a time, my chest burning with the effort. Twelve floors. One hundred ninety-two steps. Each one a heartbeat closer to knowing if my world had ended while I sat in a conference room discussing territory reports.
Behind me, I could hear Ivan following, Alexei's voice on speakerphone coordinating with incoming soldiers. But all of that was white noise compared to the roar of blood in my ears, the desperate mantra of "please be alive" that synchronized with my footfalls.
Floor eight. My legs screamed. Floor nine. My lungs burned. Floor ten. Almost there. Floor eleven. One more. Floor twelve.
I burst through the stairwell door into my hallway, gun already in my hand, safety off, finger alongside the trigger guard. The hallway stretched before me, pristine and quiet, my apartment door at the end slightly ajar just like the security system had reported.
Too quiet. No sounds of struggle, no voices, no Bear barking. Just that horrible silence that could mean anything.
I moved forward, every tactical instinct screaming at me to be careful, to clear corners, to wait for backup. But Eva was behind that door, and careful wasn't in my vocabulary anymore.
I went through the door low and fast, gun swept up, ready for bodies, blood, violence—and nearly tripped over a bag of flour. Not a body. Not blood. Flour. The white powder exploded under my boot, creating a cloud that made me blink rapidly, trying to process what I was seeing.
The apartment was destroyed, but wrong. Not overturned furniture and broken bones destroyed. More like a tornado made of baking supplies had touched down in my kitchen and decided to redecorate. Flour coated every surface like snow. Sugar crunched under my feet. A trail of paw prints—small, puppy-sized paw prints—led from the kitchen through the living room in chaotic loops and spirals.
"Eva?" I called, gun still raised though my brain was trying to reconcile the domestic disaster with the tactical emergency I'd expected.
A crash from the kitchen answered me, followed by the skittering of claws on hardwood and a high-pitched "Bear, NO!"
I rounded the corner to find Eva standing in the middle of apocalyptic destruction, holding a dustpan like a shield, her hair white with flour, my t-shirt turned into an abstract art piece of ingredients. Bear shot past her, a grey blur covered in whatlooked like cake mix, tongue lolling out in pure puppy joy as he recognized me and tried to jump up with paws covered in... was that honey?
"I just went to pee for two minutes," Eva said, voice small and mortified. "Two minutes, Dmitry. He figured out the cabinet child locks and then it was like he turned into some kind of demolition expert and I tried to stop him but he was so fast and—"
The gun fell from nerveless fingers, clattering on the destroyed floor. My knees went weak, and I had to catch myself on the doorframe as relief hit like a sledgehammer. She was here. Safe. Covered in flour and holding a dustpan, but alive, unharmed, still mine.
I crossed to her in three strides that crunched through sugar and sent up clouds of cocoa powder. She barely had time to drop the dustpan before I crushed her against my chest, my hands shaking as they confirmed what my eyes saw. Real. Whole. Safe. The solid warmth of her body against mine, her heart beating rapidly against my chest, the way she made a small "oof" sound at the force of my embrace.
"Dmitry?" she said against my shirt, voice muffled. "Why do you have your gun? What's—"
"Thought you were taken," I managed, the words rough as broken glass. "Security system went crazy. Thought the Morozovs had you."
She pulled back enough to look up at me, those impossible eyes wide with understanding. "The glass break was Bear knocking over the water pitcher. The motion sensors were him doing zoomies after he got into the sugar. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—"
I kissed her. Hard, desperate, tasting flour and fear and overwhelming relief. My hands tangled in her hair, holding her against me like she might disappear if I let go. She made a smallsound of surprise before melting into me, her flour-covered hands coming up to frame my face.
Bear chose that moment to zoom past again, this time trailing what appeared to be an entire roll of paper towels, yapping in sugar-fueled excitement. He tried to turn too sharp around the kitchen island, skidded on the flour-covered floor, and slid sideways into the refrigerator with a thump that didn't slow him down at all.
"How much sugar did he get?" I asked against Eva's lips, still not ready to let her go.
"I don't know. A lot. There was a bag of brown sugar, and he got into the honey, and I think he ate part of a chocolate bar before I noticed and chocolate's toxic to dogs so I googled it but it was dark chocolate so it should be okay in small amounts and—"
"Breathe," I told her, pressing my forehead against hers. "He's fine. You're fine. Everything's fine."
"Everything is not fine," she protested, gesturing at the destroyed kitchen. "Look at this place! It looks like Betty Crocker had a mental breakdown. Your landlord is going to—"
"I own the building," I reminded her, which made her pause.
"You . . . what?"
"I own the building. Several buildings actually. The mess doesn't matter. None of it matters except that you're safe."
