by Rie Warren
Blyad, for all I knew he’d flown her back to the motherland . . . out of immediate reach . . .
The mouth on Sasha could either get her dead faster or save her life, and I really didn’t want to take any chances.
This was my penance for trying to protect the woman I’d treated abominably for so long it became second nature. Until I’d finally shed the built-in impulse to bite back at her to find out what really mattered . . . her. To discover what I most wanted . . . her. Only to have her snatched away from me.
Information came in torrents, everyone rushing to the aid of the mighty Zolotov Bratva in getting the printsessa back, and hoping to get their hands on the reward. A fee of one million dollars sweetened the deal for the intel we needed, and I would pay that from my own profits.
As one day became two, most of the communications relayed to us from second and third parties was shit, but I followed every lead until I was dead on my feet.
I returned to the apartment, maintaining I’d stay there in case Sasha escaped and came back to me. Which meant either Kirill, or Arkady, or Yury, or even Grigor was with me at all times as well as an army of soldiers.
I fell into bed the night of the second full day, mine and Sasha’s bed.
There were so many things to regret, but uppermost was the last night we’d been together here. I’d wasted those final hours sitting in a fucking chair instead of sating myself inside of her and glorying in her release too.
I had squandered an entire night of holding her against me, her silky hair tickling my nose, her breath warm and slow against my throat.
For that, I probably deserved to be alone.
As usual, I punched the pillow behind my head into submission. Then, unable to help myself, I dragged one of Sasha’s over and held it to my nose. If only to smell her scent one more time.
I’d give anything—kill everything—to have her beside me again.
I finally fell half asleep like a dumb-fuck heartsick suka.
21
Sasha
MY PULSE RACING TRIPLE time, I lifted my pounding head away from where it had smacked against the side of the moving van.
I guessed Oleg didn’t approve of my spirited nature. Or my backtalk.
He was gonna learn a hard lesson if he thought he could break me down with one or two beatings.
I was made of tougher stuff than that. Kind of like the Kevlar he attacked first as his creepy kidnapper van shot down the road, away from Papa’s estate.
Holding in a yelp, I kept a dispassionate look on my face when Oleg yanked at the straps keeping the vest in place. Then he brought out that great big knife, and I sucked in my belly and tried to disappear my breasts just in case he decided to be done with the whole thing and get his butcher on like he’d threatened.
Just like he’d excised the breasts off the other Alexandra simply because she wasn’t me.
As he shredded the vest clear of my torso, he said dryly, “Clever idea. Unfortunately for you, not enough to stop me from hurting you.”
I glared at him before putting on a simpering smile. “Oh, thank god you got rid of the thing. That was so not my color. Bad for my skin tone, ya know?”
Jawline turning hard, Oleg growled. But it wasn’t the sound that made me shudder. It was his bottomless eyes.
After denuding me of the vest, he quickly set about disarming me.
With my Glock and my dagger in hand, he didn’t forget about my phone. He barely glanced at the cell before flinging it against the bare metal wall of the bumping-along van.
When he had gathered everything up again, he stepped toward the back door, bracing himself like he was a sailor on a moving ship.
And, with no further comment, he tossed my only lifelines out onto the road.
I wasn’t real familiar with the concept of dread but I was living and breathing it now. It was a dense and despairing emotion that sat like a weight on my shoulders.
“Oleg, someone is firing at us up ahead,” the driver hollered back.
“It is Maksim,” Oleg said evenly, and he moved to glance out the windshield.
Hope spread wings inside of my chest.
Then the dread weight grew even heavier when—with spine-chilling glee—Oleg propped open the back of the van again.
We’d blown right past Maksim, and now he was running behind. He didn’t shoot, and I knew he held back solely because of me. Because I could get clipped in the crossfire.
Triumph curling through Oleg’s voice, he shouted about how he’d make Maksim a widower soon. “Unless I find some use for Alexandra in one of my brothels. I hate to waste good Russian bitches!”
I caught a last glimpse of Maksim. The torment on his face contorted his features horribly.
I’d really thought that was the worst thing . . .
“Now, where is it?” After closing the door again, Oleg crouched in front of me as I sat unrestrained and practically pinballing around the interior of the vehicle.
“Where is what?” I blinked up at him, not quite acing the innocent act.
Let’s face it, ingenue was not my strong suit.
That hunter’s knife made another distressing appearance.
The flat of the blade was like the cold kiss from a corpse when it whispered across my already swelling cheek. “I am assuming the great Yury Zolotov is not entirely ignorant although he has seemingly treated you like a precocious pet instead of beating you bloody.”
Prickling, I was about to spit more viperish words at Oleg when that long, serrated knife trailed down my jaw to my chin. He pricked skin there, and the welling of my own blood was warm on my skin.
The knife continued, along the column of my neck and across the place where my pulse drummed away.
The tip pressed into flesh.
Hunkering closer, Oleg’s lifeless irises dilated. He quirked his head.
“You are the pakhan’s prized possession and the Bratva printsessa, and he would not want you lost. Also”—the blade came back up, the pointy end digging into one corner of my mouth, threatening to slice open a gruesome Glasgow smile—“given that your mongrel hunted you down when Jimmy was holding you . . . there must be a tracker. And no one is dumb enough to just ping cellphones anymore in our line of business, are they, precious? Must be one implanted in your body.”
I gulped. He couldn’t have known I’d forgotten to put on my bracelet with the chip in my rush to get to Papa. Somehow, though, the psycho had figured out my biggest secret.
“Where . . . is . . . it, Alexandra? Hmm?” His head tilted in the other direction. “Or should I just start hacking into you?”
Closing my eyes, I hated the fact that hot tears burned behind my lids.
I said nothing.
His breath—cloying and sweet—brushed across my cheek. “I will start with your neck then.”
I screamed in my mind when the knife arced into the flesh down by the crux of my shoulder.
The tip mined around inside my skin, setting off shockwaves of pain but, in the midst of it, I opened my eyes to stare him down.
Oleg murmured a curse in Russian and, even though the fucker was apparently intent on mutilating me, I felt powerful.
He could slaughter me to pieces, but I’d never tell him.
The other side of my neck got the same treatment to no avail. Then he moved to the side of my tummy, the crest of my breast. With each wound, he became more impatient, the cuts deeper and less deliberate.
The agony made me sweat. I ground my teeth. I tried to goddamn meditate through the pain, but—come on—I’d never been a namaste kind of gal.
Then Oleg’s fingertips pulsed along my bicep.
His shout victorious, he didn’t bother with anything so basic as a tourniquet when he dug the tracker from inside the flesh of my inner arm.
Ouch!
Way more than ouch. I’d been under a light general anesthetic when the little unit had been implanted. In the aftermath of Oleg gouging the chip out of my bicep, I became dow
nright queasy.
It wasn’t just the physical pain.
Asshole was making it impossible for Maksim to get a bead on me.
One good thing about all the hurt, though, was that it made it difficult to focus on critical things like how damn long this drive was taking—miles and miles away from the Bratva. Or, what exactly Oleg had planned for me. Would he fast track me to the motherland so he could sequester me in one of his whorehouses and slut me out like he’d said to Maksim? Or, was he just going to spend the night taking his evil time killing me until nothing remained but a blood puddle?
I didn’t know how long we’d been on the road when Oleg pulled out a big black sack and a length of raw corded rope.
Before I knew it, he fashioned that sack as a hood over my head, using the coil to tie a nice tight knot around my neck.
Pretty much the same deal one would use before a hanging.
Lovely. And I thought the bulletproof vest went against all my haute couture sensibilities.
I was hustled—clumsily—from the van. Then plonked into seemingly another vehicle, but at least this one had cushy seats.
Before we got moving again, I heard the distinct whooshing noise of . . . fire bursting into flames. I felt the heat, smelled the acrid smoke.
Evidently, Oleg was scorching the van and burning all the evidence, and presumably leaving my tracking device where Maksim could and would find it.
The thought of him . . . he would be ballistic by now. I tried not to fall into the trap of utter despair as everything went from bad to worse to oh god what now?
Terrified and in the dark. Prisoner to a really sick bastard.
This was not a good place to be.
For all I knew, by the time we stopped again, night had fallen. That would remain a mystery, though, because someone roughly tugged me from the car and ushered me into a building.
A door shut.
A key locked.
“Up,” Oleg ordered in a disembodied voice. “Stairs.”
If he just took the damn hood off, I wouldn’t have to fumble my way along.
I stumbled twice, scraping my shin then my knee, and there was no chivalrous hand to help me back to my feet.
A door opened.
Shut.
Another lock . . . no, many locks. Most likely deadbolts and the like.
All at once, the hood was gone. I blinked and squinted and blinked some more.
Where was I? Not a clue. Not a single clear clue.
Well, except in some kind of apartment. On the second floor judging by the stairs we’d navigated.
My eyes adjusted to the light—just a bare bulb dangling down from a rubber-coated wire—and I scanned the interior.
A kitchenette that seemed to come straight out of the seventies with linoleum and Formica and the avocado green-style appliances in miniature.
A very hideous sofa and tacky shag rug.
On the opposite side of the multicolor multifunctional space there were several doors. With lots of chains and locks and—yep—deadbolts.
“How do you like it?” Oleg asked as if he was a realtor showing me the goods.
“Honestly? I would definitely fire your decorator.” I played along even through the screaming pain in my arm and elsewhere.
Bastard had nicked me—and worse—all over, but at least nothing life threatening.
So far.
He laughed a mirthless laugh, but seemed oddly . . . relaxed?
When his dead-eyed levity ended abruptly, I wondered what had bit him in the ass because a scowl formed so suddenly he looked downright thunderous.
With jerky motions, Oleg stalked over to that unsightly sofa and gathered up the three burnt orange velour throw cushions. Mumbling a curse, he carefully and systematically fluffed each cushion before placing them on exact diamond angles equidistant across the back of the sofa.
When he stood back to appraise his work, he looked like he wanted a handyman’s level to make sure the angles lined up.
Then, he spied the hood he’d tossed aside and stomped over to it. Snapping out the cloth, he folded the dead man’s mask precisely and put it—along with the neatly coiled rope—into the drawer of a hideous particle board console.
Ahhh, and that was why—even though the place could be termed a shithole—there wasn’t a dirty dish or speck of dust or piece of trash to be seen.
Wow.
Yeah.
The sociopath had mega OCD tendencies too.
My anally obsessive abductor rapped his knuckles on one of the mystery doors. “Feliks, I have returned with the prisoner.”
Oh, shit.
Felix was his second in command. The one I’d stabbed the night of the wedding.
When the large man entered The Brady Bunch room, he didn’t seem as rock solid as before. Not that that mattered. Oleg was a walking talking nightmare, more than capable of doing away with me probably while folding a load of laundry.
“Oh, hey. I was wondering why you missed the party.” I used the snark-snark to cover the fear that had started leaking from me just like my dripping blood.
If Oleg didn’t watch out, I was going to make a mess on his pretty shag carpet. Oops.
Then the green-around-the-gills guy gave a grin that was a matched-set to Oleg’s most vile of smiles. “I am glad she is here. We have much to . . . discuss.”
Yeah, he didn’t really mean chitchat so much as tit for tat of the stabby kind.
“Your pal’s not looking so good,” I mentioned in an aside to Oleg. “I’m medically trained. Maybe I could check out the wound?”
I’d stabbed Feliks in the stomach, which was a really bad place to get jagged and he was not recovering well. On the flip side, even though Maksim had gotten a shot off on Oleg that same night, the bastard didn’t seem all that injured. I blamed myself for that as well. In my full hysterical meltdown, I’d caused Maksim to miss. Just one more thing to regret.
Considering my dicey position, if I stitched Feliks up properly maybe I’d be able to earn my keep—maybe even keep my life—without having to spread my legs.
They huddled together, holding an intense and quiet conversation. Meanwhile I was reminded I wasn’t looking so hot myself.
In the end, Oleg curtly nodded. “Da. See what you can do.” Then his hunting knife shot out like a pointer finger. “If anything goes wrong, remember the other Alexandra’s fate.”
As if I could ever forget.
“A bathroom would be easiest for this.” I appealed to his hyper-neat freak nature, and was escorted along with Feliks into a small cubicle-like room.
More harsh lights belted down, but at least the nauseating fluorescents meant I’d have a better viewing field of what I was doing.
“What supplies do you have?” I asked as Feliks drew off his top and settled onto the closed lid of the toilet seat.
In addition to the bright lights, the bathroom too was antiseptic clean.
Oleg moved down to one knee in front of the repulsive Pepto pink vanity, and I stepped aside, all but crunching myself into a corner.
That was when I saw myself in the mirror. Shocker. I looked about as wan as Feliks except for the colorful welt across my cheek and the myriad oozing cuts on certain parts of my body where Oleg had done the stab-and tracker-grab on me.
Rising from his squat, he hauled out a heavy medical bag, almost as big as mine. He left with a warning glance to return seconds later with a tray table. After setting up the flimsy thing, he unzipped the pack and backed toward the doorway because there was literally no other room to be had.
Washing my hands thoroughly, I took a tally of the supplies, which were adequate. Impressive really. But when you were a total psycho you were bound to get harmed once in a while, and we were not hospital people.
I used the term we loosely.
I pulled on a pair of gloves and moved to Feliks. When I reached for the gauze taped to the left of his midsection, cold feelers screamed up to my hairline as I heard the telltale c
lick of a gun chamber loaded.
I didn’t have to look behind me to know I was being targeted by Oleg. It was a game of one wrong move and your time is up.
Clearly, Oleg’s OCD tendencies didn’t extend to cleaning wounds because, when I peeled back Feliks’s bandage, the stench hit me first. I almost dug my nose into my shoulder as my eyes teared up. I had definitely done a number on the dude, but I was smart enough to keep the gloating to myself.
I got down to business, turning into a professional instead of a prisoner.
Feliks sat unmoving throughout although the pain had to be the ball-clutching kind. The wound was infected, green-yellow puss liquefying from the angry red edges of the cut. At least Oleg or somebody else had stitched him together, not very precisely though.
“You need to lean back as far as you can. This is going to hurt like a bitch,” I advised.
“Like you, you mean?” he said.
Who knew Feliks could make a funny?
When I doused the whole area in alcohol, I reminded myself I hadn’t taken the first do no harm oath, so it was okay to get off on the sight of Feliks when he jerked like a puppet on the toilet seat.
After disinfecting the mess, I took up a pair of surgical tweezers. I alternated between dabbing away the puss and plucking away dead tissue. With the wound one hell of a lot cleaner, I doused the entire field with another healthy splash of alcohol.
Feliks’s pain tolerance was impressive. He had hardly flinched during the whole ordeal, and he sat placidly while I redressed the wound.
“That needs to be cleaned and changed at least twice a day from now on.” And, by the way, thanks to me for not hitting his bowels with my blade because he’d have already died from septicemia.
I glanced back at Oleg while his underboss fixed his shirt. “Do you have antibiotics of any kind?”
Reaching over, Oleg picked out a pill bottle then tossed it to me.
I eyed the label. Penicillin. Just like in the Cold War days when that shit was a precious commodity to fighters. Made sense.
Even if nothing about this macabre scenario made any sense at all, really.