He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 337

Chapter 337

Tared down at mine.

I couldn’t have told you the model, the caliber, or a single technical detail about it. What I could tell you was that it looked heavy, complicated, and entirely capable of ruining someone’s entire life in under a second, which felt like a lot of responsibility for an object I hadn’t asked to be handed.

DeLuca had already explained the point of this. Not to fight. Just to have some chance at defending ourselves if the situation ever demanded it. A completely reasonable, genuinely thoughtful intention.

It still terrified me.

One by one, the others picked theirs up, until I was the only one left standing there, staring at mine like it might do something unprompted if looked

away.

“Fuck it,” Mabel muttered as she reached for the gun. This can’t be harder than fixing a sloppy lipstick.

I looked up at DeLuca then.

!

He gave me a small, steady nod.

I trusted that nod more than I trusted my own judgment right now, so I bent down, picked up the gun, and let that trust carry me the rest of the way.

By the time we reached the makeshift range they’d cobbled together out of scrap wood and old cans, three hours had already burned away, and the results were exactly as uneven as you’d expect from a group made up mostly of people who’d never held a weapon before this morning,

Tessa and Nathan stood off to one side, still working through their targets without much luck. Everyone else had landed a fair number of hits by now, scattered but real progress. Mabel had opted out entirely, seated on an overturned crate, more concerned with the state of her nails than the state of the

exercise.

I wasn’t standing with the group who’d finished either.

I was standing at the front, and everyone – Aria, my mother, Archer, several of Volkov’s men, DeLuca a short distance off – had gathered to watch, because apparently I’d stopped missing targets a while ago and hadn’t started again since.

It hadn’t started that way. My first attempts had gone wide, clumsy, entirely what I expected from myself. But somewhere in the last hour, something had clicked into place, quiet and effortless, and every target DeLuca moved further back, I hit anyway.

‘One more, DeLuca said,

I raised the gun toward the farthest marker yet, barely visible at this distance, and let the shot go without letting myself think about it too hard.

It hit dead center.

A ripple went through the small crowd behind me; someone actually clapped, and I lowered the gun, equal parts stunned and strangely giddy about it.

Deluca crossed over, taking the weapon from my hands gently, smiling in a way that reached all the way up into his eyes.

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15:04 Fri, Sep 4 14

Chapter 337

You’re a natural,” he said. “Turns out that blood is useful for something

Dreamed

I understood exactly what he means, and exactly whose blood he was talking about. I didn’t want to sit with that particular implication too long the idea that whatever precision lived in my hands right now had come from him, from Roman Volkov, the same inheritance that apparently ran through Aria top.

So I didn’t. I deflected instead, the way I always did when something felt too big to hold directly.

‘Well, I said, ‘I guess you should be s

‘Don’t get too full of yourself.”

started shooting when I was nine.”

My eyebrows shot up des

I raised both hands

1. us.

You win.

le laughed, low and easy, in a way that felt like its own small victory after everything the last two days had cost

Torres

could say anything else, phone still in hand.

Salvatore DeLuca,” he said. “We’re ready to move on him now.”

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