He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 304

Chapter 304

voice matched everything else about him – deep, unhurried, and somehow more frightening for how calm it was. I felt the sound of it settle into my chest like something physical, and I had to consciously lock my knees to keep from swaying.

One of the men beside him answered quickly. “The security issue reported earlier.”

“So they’re not the ones I’ve been waiting for,” Volkov said. “Not the ones with DeLuca DeLuca.”

My heart lurched violently at the name, confirming with brutal clarity exactly how deep tonight actually ran.

“Just security issues, the man said. “Some teenagers.”

Volkov’s gaze slid back to us, and something shifted in his expression now curiosity and more like mounting inconvenience.

subtle, but present, his brows drawing together in a way that read less like

“So why,” he said, ‘are they wasting my time?”

The words carried a thread of irritation, though his voice never once rose to meet it.

His eyes fixed on us.

“Kneel.”

I opened my mouth, some small, panicked part of me actually considering telling him we’d rather save the kneeling for when we got home, before hands shoved into my shoulders from every direction and the decision was made for me.

cher went down beside me, still holding my mother steady, jaw tight with the effort of protecting her through the fall. His teammate hit the ground on my

other side.

And then…

“Kill them off.” Volkov said and I felt terror detonate within me.

“Kill them off,” Roman Volkov had said, but there was more.

“Drag the bodies away. We’ll deal with them properly once my prey arrives.”

The words landed so plainly, so devoid of weight, that for one full second my brain refused to process them as a real instruction rather than something I’d

misheard.

Then the guns came out.

Every one of them, raised in the same instant, aimed with the flat, practiced certainty of men who had done this exact thing enough times that it no longer required thought. No hesitation anywhere in their expressions. No flicker of doubt.

I looked at my mother.

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1:04 Fri, Sep 4 A

Chapter 304

She was still slumped across Archer’s shoulder, unconscious, face turned downward, entirely unaware of how close the ground beneath her had just become to the end of everything. My whole chest caved inward at the sight of her like that, small and fragile and completely unable to defend herself against any of

“Is/that one dead?” someone asked. One of Volkov’s men, nodding toward her with about as much concern as he might show a piece of furniture.

“No.” The word tore out of me before I’d fully found my voice. “She’s my mother. She isn’t dead. She’s sick. Please-”

“Lay her down first,” the man said, already gesturing to the others. “Kill her off since she’s sick anyway. We’d be doing her a favor.”

Hands grabbed her before I could do anything, before I could even finish the plea forming in my throat, wrenching her off Archer’s shoulder as he fought to hold on, shoved backward hard enough that he stumbled, still reaching for her even as three men forced him away.

They laid her down on the floor like she weighed nothing. Like she meant nothing.

“No.” The word cracked out of me, thin and useless. “No, please,

no-

I lunged forward and got exactly nowhere, two sets of hands locking around my arms, dragging me back, my knees scraping uselessly against stone as I fought a grip I had absolutely no hope of breaking.

Tears blurred everything in front of me, hot and immediate, my whole body shaking with a fear too large to actually hold.

Someone crouched beside her, adjusting the angle of his weapon, unhurried, methodical, his finger sliding toward the trigger like this was routine. Like this happened here often enough to no longer register as anything worth pausing for.

“Please,” I sobbed, thrashing against the hands restraining me, my voice cracking apart completely. ‘Please, stop, she hasn’t done anything, please-*

Nobody answered.

the barrel of that gun, the small, terrible distance between it and my mother’s still form, and the The world had narrowed down to exactly one point absolute certainty that I was about to watch the worst thing that could ever happen to me happen in the next half second, powerless to stop a single part of

Stop.

The word cracked through the room like something a

Everything froze.

I turned instinctively toward the man who’d spoken earlier, the one who’d delivered the order, certain it had come from him.

It hadn’t.

Volkov was staring, and something in his expression had changed completely- the flat, bottomless indifference replaced by something sharper. Interest. And beneath it, something I hadn’t expected from a man who’d looked so entirely unshakable a moment ago.

Confusion.

I didn’t read it as relief. My heart hadn’t caught up to whatever pause this was, still hammering, tears still streaming, every part of me still braced for the gunshot that hadn’t come yet and might still.

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