Sold to the Mob Boss: A Mafia Romance (Lavrin Bratva) Nicole Fox (most popular novels TXT) 📖

beat-up metal exterior of the car. God only knows what we’ve run over or through in our mad dash from the safe house. I find myself thinking about how much it will cost to hammer out all the dents, and I have to catch myself and wonder why I’m focusing on such a ridiculous detail. I should be worried about surviving, not ding repair.

“Goddammit,” Nikita snarls under his breath.

In the side mirror, a set of angry headlights has reappeared, not too close behind us but gaining speed fast. The sharp ping of a bullet slicing through metal and glass explodes inside the cabin once more. Nikita presses down on the gas pedal. We lurch forward, back to top speed. We’re approaching a Y-shaped intersection that I’m familiar with. The right-hand lane leads back into the grid of the city. The center takes us onto a highway, one that’s sure to be busy, even at this time of night. And the far left is an exit ramp of traffic flowing in the opposite direction. Surely ...

Nikita accelerates again and takes us into the left, oncoming lane.

I scream wordlessly, white-knuckling the center console, as the cacophony of pissed-off drivers erupts around us. Nikita growls through clenched teeth as we dodge left, right, left, into the bare shoulder of the road, back in the middle again. Headlights glare into our bullet-riddled cabin, with shouted curses flitting in from the cars we’re barely missing as they stream past us.

The enemy car behind us keeps up, though thankfully the bullets have stopped for now. My head is on a swivel, looking ahead and behind. There’s danger in every direction, but Nikita handles the wheel expertly, narrowly avoiding a collision every moment. Spying an opening, he cuts across three lanes. Our enemies are right behind us.

Time slows to a crawl. I see the semitruck coming from the left-hand side before Nikita does, but there’s nothing either of us can do. We’re committed now, helplessly in the hands of gravity and inertia. Either it hits us and we die, or it misses and we live. It’s that simple.

I hold my breath as our vehicle glides through the gap. A space of no more than an inch or two separates us from getting clipped by the eighteen-wheeler.

We make it.

Our enemies are not so lucky.

The sound of the massive truck T-boning them is a scream of metal. Sparks fly through the smoke of destroyed engines and the stench of rubber melting on concrete. Watching over my shoulder, I see the momentum of the eighteen-wheeler drive the sedan into the concrete barrier separating lanes of the highway. There’s another sickening crunch, and then everything stops.

But we keep going, swept away in the flow of traffic heading out of the city. The scene of terror recedes behind us, becoming smaller and smaller, until a bend in the highway hides it from sight. The only sounds now are the whispered wind streaming through bullet holes and the ragged pant of my own breath.

“Those poor people,” I say.

“They were trying to kill us,” Nikita says.

“Not them,” I whisper. “The innocent ones.”

Nikita re-grips the steering wheel. “No one is innocent,” he says in a strange tone. I’m not sure if he’s even talking to me, but it doesn’t really matter. Instead, he continues to speed down the highway.

Neither of us talks for a long time.

***

I can barely see the city lights in the distance behind us anymore. The traffic has dissipated for the most part, filtering out into the various veins of highway that lead into the heart of the suburbs. We keep going. Skyscrapers become strip malls become housing sub-developments and eventually are reduced to the scrubby forest lining the highway. The steady hum of the engine is like a lullaby. At some point, I’m not sure when, I fall asleep.

“Annie, wake up.”

I open my eyes to find Nikita gently shaking my shoulder. We’re stopped on the side of the road now. Outside the window, mountains stretch up to stab into the night sky. They dominate the dark horizon every which way I look. The range is high to the west and low to the east, curling at the end like a tail.

I blink the sleep out of my eyes. Silence fills the car like a heavy cloud. The fear that had gripped me from the moment the soldiers had appeared on the terrace is gone now. No more panic firing like a cluster of spark plugs in my abdomen. No more tension seizing hold of my limbs. My breathing is low and slow, and the only sensation in my body is an overwhelming ache, tinged at the edge by a hint of pain lingering in my feet.

Nikita remains silent so all I hear is my breath. He doesn’t look at me, just stares straight out ahead into the night.

I turn to Nikita. “You think we made the news?” I ask.

He looks back at me, that familiar stern arrogance wrinkling his brow. He appears to consider my question seriously for a moment. Then, to my surprise, he bursts out laughing.

It catches me off-guard. Since the second I entered his company, he has been powerful, in control, deadly serious. But the last few hours have been the exact opposite—he’s been a man running for his life, unsure of how this will all play out. And somehow, my question made him laugh.

I didn’t mean it as a joke. Part of me is curious if our high-speed chase will end up on the TV. Maybe deep down, I’m hoping the cameras caught my image so that my friends and family know where I am. That they’ll inform the cops of my identity and that I need help.

But Nikita is laughing, and soon, I am, too. It’s the kind of laugh, half desperate and half overwhelmed, that starts suddenly and doesn’t end soon. We’re laughing and laughing and laughing, until we’re clutching our sides and tears are pouring down our faces. The crickets in the night and