He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 315

e Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly

Chapter 315

Tusy’s POV)

“Yes.”

I said it into his shoulder, wholehearted, no hesitation anywhere in it, and hugged him tighter, like proximity alone could make up for every hour I’d spent tonight not knowing if he was even alive.

“I missed you too, my Daisy.”

I felt it before I fully processed the words – the vibration of his voice against my ear, low and warm, and then the actual sentence caught up to my brain a half–second later and did something catastrophic to my heart rate. In the middle of an active warzone. With gunfire still echoing somewhere behind us. ty body had genuinely selected this exact moment to blush.

I felt safe anyway. Stupidly, thoroughly safe, standing there in his arms while the entire building around us tried to fall apart.

“I think we can hug later, Daisy,” my mother said. “We should be moving now.”

Right. Fair. Extremely fair, actually, given the circumstances.

‘You can hug your handsome hunk later, she added, which snapped something else into focus entirely – I hadn’t actually introduced them yet.

Right. I gestured between them. “Mother, this is Deluca.”

“Okay,” she said, studying him. “Your friend?”

Fopened my mouth. “Um. He’s my-”

I stalled out completely, and DeLuca stepped in smoothly, closing the gap I’d left hanging.

“Boyfriend,” he said, extending a hand to her. Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

I stood there frozen, and I genuinely couldn’t tell you why, because this wasn’t new information. I already knew this. He already knew this. But hearing it said out loud, to my actual mother, in his actual voice, hit some entirely different part of my brain than just quietly knowing it ever had. DeLuca is my boyfriend. I knew that. I’d known it for a while now. And somehow I was standing here relearning it from scratch anyway.

I surfaced from that spiral just in time to catch the tail end of whatever conversation had apparently been happening without me.

-yes, she’s one hell of a character, DeLuca was saying, “but that’s what makes her special.”

I stared at him. They’d had an entire exchange while I was busy having an emotional crisis over one word.

He caught my expression and gave me the smallest smile, resting a hand briefly on my shoulder.

“Now is not the time for questions.

Correct Dreply correct, actually, unce I had approximately four questions already lined up and ready to go.

We need to nuve, he sand, and started walking, one band finding mine while I reached back for my mother’s with the other. We moved as a group, harried

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15:03 Fri, Sep 4

Chapter 315

but steady, gunfire still cracking somewhere in the distance behind us.

brain, predictably, refused to stay quiet. It kept circling back- the way he’d finished my sentence without hesitation, the way my mother had gone from fragile to lethal in about four seconds flat back in that hallway. Both things sat there, demanding attention I didn’t have room to give them right now.

Later. Both of those were for later.

“What’s the plan?” I asked instead, as we rounded a corner. ‘How do we get past Volkov’s men? There are so many of them.”

“The plan is to get you both somewhere safe, DeLuca said. “Far from here. Then I come back and finish this with Volkov. As for his numbers – they’re

already falling.

“How?” I pressed. “How is that even possible?”

“Two rival empires finally colliding in a war this size doesn’t stay quiet,” he said, steady, unhurried, like he was reciting something he’d already planned three moves past this conversation. “The whole city feels something like this happen. Which means outside police, forces that answer to no one currently working for Volkov, are already moving in. More of them arrive every minute. His corrupted officers can’t cover for him against numbers that size.”

A tense kind of relief loosened something in my chest. That explained the injured men I’d seen limping through the hallway earlier – not hunting us, just trying to survive long enough to retreat.

Then my focus shifted to DeLuca himself, and the relief curdled instantly. Bruises darkened one side of his jaw. A shallow cut ran along his forearm, still fresh enough to catch the light. My grip on his hand tightened hard enough to slow us both down.

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