With This ring

by Le Carre, Georgia

  I didn’t disagree. I liked it too.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Freya

  I danced with Britney and Aldie, but couldn’t help sneaking peeks at the cube above the dance floor. Suddenly, I realized he wasn’t even sitting there anymore and felt silly for being so obsessed with him. I let out my pent-up anxiety and tried my best to have fun with the girls. Britney came close to me as she danced.

  “Do you think I have a shot?” she asked over the loud music, and gyrating bodies around us.

  “What?”

  “A shot!” she yelled into my ear. “With Tom.”

  I stared at her with surprise. “Uh… I don’t see why not. He looked pretty interested.”

  “He smells fucking amazing. I swear I couldn’t breathe properly when he was next to me.”

  “You know he is the lawyer for a criminal family, though,” I reminded her.

  She laughed. “I think I can handle it. There’s nothing a smoking hot guy with great dick moves can’t resolve, right?”

  “Oh, there’s Maxim,” she suddenly called out.

  My heart jumped in my chest. I turned at her nudge and saw him with the manager who had taken our order earlier. They were standing on the top floor and over the railing. The manager was gesticulating with his hands to emphasize whatever he was saying, and Maxim looked around while he listened, until his gaze collided with mine.

  I instantly turned away.

  “He just looked at you,” Britney squealed.

  My phone began to vibrate then. I pulled it out of my pocket. It was Bianca.

  “Food is here,” she said.

  “Be right there,” I told her and informed the girls. Aldie managed to pull away from the man she was dancing with, and we were on our way. Tom had received a call on our way down, and stepped away to receive it before we’d gotten to the dance floor so I didn’t know where he was.

  We returned to the room to find Levan’s hand quite high up Bianca’s skirt. He didn’t want to pull away when we arrived, so she smacked him away.

  I knew whose hand I wanted that high up my thigh, but he was nowhere to be found. This I told myself was how it would be. Outside the bedroom we were nothing more, but as I watched Levan unable to take his eyes from Bianca, I became more and more sad and even envious of their love and passion. We dove into the food, and soon Tom returned and joined us. He made a point of sitting next to Britney, which made me wink at her.

  I was happy for her, but I needed a breather from it all, so I excused myself.

  “There’s a private bathroom just down the hall. Go past the mural and take a right,“ Levan said to me. The code is 3768.”

  “3768,” I repeated, and went out.

  I stepped out of the box and began to head down the hallway in search of the mural. I found it easily enough, but just as I turned to the right… I saw Maxim. The manager was speaking to him along with two other men in suits.

  At first, he didn’t notice me, but then he lifted his head and saw me. His gaze lingered on me, but I quickly escaped and headed over to the bathroom.

  My cheeks felt overheated. I wanted to pat some water on them, but I was worried that would ruin my makeup. So I just washed my hands, fixed my hair and exited the room.

  And almost passed him, if not for the fact that all the hairs on my body tingled with a familiar awareness. I stopped in my tracks and turned to my left. He was leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest and just looking at me. I felt my knees go weak.

  His eyes ran down my body, a knowing smile on his face, and it reminded me of what he had done to me that afternoon. I couldn’t help the heat that ran up my cheeks.

  “I didn’t know you were going to be here,” I said.

  “If you did, you wouldn’t have come?” he shot back.

  I straightened my shoulders and flipped my hair back airily. “Don’t be so big-headed. Bianca invited me and I had no reason to refuse.” I paused and raised an eyebrow. “Would you rather I wasn’t here?”

  “I’d rather you were on top of me,” he said.

  The pang of arousal in my belly was real. I turned away, but he stepped forward and caught my hand, and drew me towards him.

  I accepted the fact I had no will anymore when it came to him. Then he slipped his hands around my waist, and held me tightly to him, his face in my neck, and his nose breathing in my scent.

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t and I never wanted to. It stunned me how such a simple, intimate touch, could mean so much. To the rest of the world he was so strong and impenetrable, but right now it felt as though he were in the palm of my hands.

  I drew back to look up at him. I felt as if I was drowning in his eyes. The way he looked at me terrified me. There was so much intensity in his gaze. My hand moved to the side of his face.

  If, or more like when, our relationship ended there was no doubt it would haunt me for a very long time, maybe even forever.

  I stood on the tips of my toes to kiss him, and my heart felt as if it was close to bursting with emotion. The kiss was soft and sweet until he deepened it.

  My legs left the ground as his hands went around my ass to lift me up against him. I giggled when he turned around to place my back against the wall. I was thankful for the billowing dress I was wearing because it made it easy for me to wrap my legs around his waist.

  “Do you know I’ve always loved your hair?” he asked. “It was the first thing I noticed about you.”

  I began to grind my sex against his hardness.

  “The first thing I noticed about you was how beautiful but cold your eyes were,” I told him. “They don’t seem cold anymore, though.”

  “That’s because I’m looking at you,” he said.

  I felt my heart stop. For the longest time, we just looked at each other and it seemed as if we were in a world of our own. A beautiful world where there was only him and me. Then I realized we had company. I whirled my head around and found Britney was staring at us, completely astounded.

  “Uh... I-I’m sorry,” she stuttered. “I was told the bathroom is this way.”

  Maxim put me down gently.

  “It is,” I smiled at her. “Come on, I was just about to go too.”

  Maxim to my surprise, placed a kiss to my cheek, and left me staring dazed after him as he took his leave.

  Britney approached me carefully, as though she didn’t recognize me and then we went into the bathroom together.

  We used the stalls then washed our hands under the faucets. I looked at Britney in the mirror and she looked at me curiously. “I thought you said it was purely sexual.”

  “It is,” I said.

  She looked at me incredulously. “You didn’t see the way he was looking at you? I know you don’t have much experience, but let me tell you that man is completely and utterly enamored with you, Freya.”

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Maxim

  “I’m going to Spain in the morning. Meeting with my father. I’ll be back Sunday evening. Will you have time for me?”

  Her reply was almost instant.

  I will indeed.

  I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. Having Freya in my life had done something to me I never thought would happen. I felt lighter in her arms, more excited about things around me, more hopeful. It only served to affirm my earlier prediction that if we had married things would have been good between us.

  I put the phone away, and that was when I noticed the old Holden Calias Sedan. It had been parked at a corner close to the bar. What had drawn my attention to it was a girl using their window as a mirror, but she jumped and moved away after a few seconds when she must have suddenly noticed the passengers sitting quietly inside it.

  A man got out and started walking quickly up to me. Immediately Viktor placed himself in front of me, but I knew from the man’s expression he was not there to hurt me. He was a messenger.

  “It’s all right,” I said to Viktor.

&nb
sp; As he moved the man thrust an envelope into my hand and walked away without saying anything. I tore it open and there were pictures of Freya. Working at the bar, walking on the street, at her window with a towel around her head, arriving at my home wearing a pizza delivery man cap. There were hundreds of pictures and there was no part of her life that had not been captured.

  I could feel my hands start to shake with fury. My phone rang and I picked it up and said nothing.

  “Right this minute your girl is wearing a rather fetching navy-blue dressing gown, drinking tea, and working furiously at her desk. She has big, ambitious plans for her design company, poor thing doesn’t know there is a sniper in an apartment across from her. One word from me and her brains will be splattered all over her designs. All her young dreams will be gone. It would be a pity because as you know, it’s not her I want.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. I want you to tell your team to stand down. Then I want you to drive to the carpark of your building. My men will meet you there. If you would be good enough to go with them it will make things much easier.”

  Roman had just pulled up to the curb. He got out of the driver’s seat and hurried over to pull the passenger door open, but I stopped him and held out my hand for the keys.

  “Dismantle the surveillance on me and don’t follow me,” I said harshly.

  “What?” he muttered.

  “You heard me. You and Viktor get to Freya’s apartment immediately and take her to a safe house.” Then I got into the driver’s seat, and drove away. The Holden Calias Sedan followed me from a safe distance.

  I headed straight to my apartment complex and pulled into my parking spot. There was a gun in the car. I got it ready and looked at the ring I had been given on my eighteenth birthday. There was not a day it hadn't been on my little finger since then. Then I got out of the car and waited for them to make their move. Soon enough, I would know exactly whom had been pursuing me for the last few months.

  There were three of them. They had their guns pointed at me. They had masks covering their faces, but that was probably because of the cameras.

  “Lose your gun!” One of them roared, and I instantly stilled, but I knew that their goal was not to just kill me. They wanted to take me with them.

  I moved my hand to the back of my pants.

  “There are three guns pointed at your head and heart right now,” one of the men warned. “If you even blink the wrong way, you will be dead. Throw the gun away, over there!”

  I took a deep breath and did as I was asked.

  “Tie him,” one of them ordered, and another moved forward with a plastic tie in his hand.

  “Don’t even think of trying anything funny. Your men are racing to your girl, aren’t they? But they will be too late if we get any trouble from you.”

  The man bent forward, secured the tie around my wrists. I saw his yellow teeth through the face cover just before he raised his fist. He was a gigantic man, just about a head shorter than me but disturbingly thicker, so I wasn’t surprised at the power that the punch packed.

  The impact of his fist driving into my jaw made me stagger away. As I tried to recover from the agonizing blow, I heard his roar. I looked up, and saw the knife slicing through the air.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Maxim

  Excruciating pain woke me up. It felt like my shoulder was on fire. I tried to touch the wound, but I couldn’t move my hands. I realized I was still tied up.

  Through the haze of pain, I blinked and looked around. I had been tied to a chair in a room that stank of rust, oil, and a foul stench of death. I turned to the throbbing wound and found darkened blood. My body felt weak, incredibly so, and sweat beaded my skin all over. I had to get out of here.

  Through the small, barred window in front of me I could see that the sun was now high in the sky, which meant I had been held for about six or seven hours. In that time, I had been stabbed, beaten close to death, and still not been told why. I wondered why Levan had not found me yet. Then I looked at my ring and saw why.

  My ring was gone. I also noted my watch was gone, which hopefully meant they didn’t realize the significance of the ring. I looked desperately around the room for it. It didn’t have to be on me but it had to be at this location otherwise they would never be able to use the tracker inside of it to find me. For the first time since I had been taken, I panicked.

  “Where’s my ring and watch?” I demanded to the camera watching. My voice was gruff from the torture.

  I heard voices and footsteps approaching. The door was banged open and in walked the three men, who had long discarded their masks. They didn’t care if I could see their faces any more because I wouldn’t be walking out of here alive.

  Otherwise I would come for them.

  Nevertheless, I committed them all to memory. Life had a funny way of throwing you a line when you least expected it.

  None of them however, I was certain, was the boss.

  The bald one with the beaky face laughed aloud. “He’s awake!” He raised his hand in the air for a salute and stomped his feet on the dirt blackened floor in a parody of respect. “The almighty Ivanov.”

  “Almighty my ass,” the skinny one, who was almost certainly Albanian, piped up.

  “If by some sick luck he gets out of here alive, I hope you understand that you’ll be running from him for the rest of your lives,” the only Russian among the trio said. I could feel the fear in his voice even though he tried to hide it.

  “Well he’s not getting out—”

  The door was pulled open suddenly, and all three men quickly arranged themselves. Whoever had come into the room was obviously the boss. I turned to finally see who it was.

  It was indeed Boris Arakas, just as Levan had suspected.

  He was a short, bulky man with the face of a bulldog. In his eyes was a bitterness I could almost taste. The other men quickly and quietly moved to the edges of the room, while he dragged a chair and sat across from me.

  He watched me for the longest time before his ugly face split into a smile. From a simple smile, it grew to a full out grin, until he could no longer contain himself and he broke into uproarious laughter. When he was done, he rose to his feet, his hand on the chair, and with a deafening roar of rage swung it at me.

  I shut my eyes as I awaited the impact. The metal chair smashed against my head and threw me to the ground. The pain was soul splitting.

  Everything around me began to darken, but before I could catch my breath he rained me with kicks. His heavy boots slamming into my body while he cursed me.

  “You. Fucking. Bastard. You’ve. Ruined. My. Life. Every. Fucking. Thing. Around me.”

  He stopped to catch his breath, and I shut my eyes to contain the strength I still had in me. With a cry of rage he rolled me over on the floor so I was flat on my back and then slammed his feet into my wound.

  I roared out at the pain, and prayed to God that Levan was on the way.

  Then he calmly picked the chair back up and then sat on it in front of me. “Do you know me?” he asked.

  I was so close to passing out even the sound of his words were becoming faint to me, but I could still grasp some of what he was saying. I knew if I blacked out, I would truly be finished, so I held on as long as I could.

  It was just as Levan had discovered. It was revenge for the death of his brother and the way his life had fallen apart after that. I had destroyed him and now he wanted to return the favor.

  However, he had his demands.

  He grabbed my shirt and pulled at me until I was almost sitting up. My head was drooping low from the torture and exhaustion. With one hand around my neck, he held me up till I was at face level with him.

  “Open your eyes,” he ordered.

  I managed to do so because I wanted to remember him. To commit every feature of his to memory.

  “Marlow! Marlow!”

  The Albanian stepped forward.

>   “Bring the gas!”

  My breathing quickened.

  A red can was brought in, and through the blood dripping down my eyes, I watched him uncap it. He brought the red can to my nose, and forced me to inhale.

  “Do you smell this?” He cackled like a demented man. “I am going to fucking burn you alive.”

  He began to squirt the gasoline all over me, even into my mouth. He raised it over my head, and I was doused with it until I was drenched from head to toe. I heard laughter both in the distance and in my ears.

  Afterwards he threw the empty can aside and asked for a cigarette.

  I spat out the gas that had gotten into my mouth, and tried to open my eyes, but the mixture of blood and gasoline as it dripped down my face and into my open wound, stung with unimaginable pain. I wasn’t certain how long I’d be able to hold much longer. I felt myself hanging on by a thread.

  I watched as with a wicked laugh he lit the cigarette in his mouth. He took a long puff and then came forward to blow it into my face.

  “How does it feel?” he asked. “Being so close to your end? You don’t deserve to live Maxim… the things you’ve done... so ruthlessly, so selfishly.”

  “To save your brother you kill another’s, to fill your pockets, you empty another’s?”

  He inhaled deeply again.

  “You have behaved like a monster, but I just might spare you,” he said, “after all every man deserves another chance. Do you think you deserve another chance, Maxim?”

  I found I didn’t want to nod. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  He frowned with irritation. He had expected me to beg him for another chance. He pulled out his phone from his pocket.

  “This is what you’re going to do,” he said. “You’re going to dial your brother, and you’re going to tell him to admit to every crime your family has ever committed. The murders, the thefts, the bribery, the fraud. Everything. Within three days. I want it all in writing. That is the only way, that I’ll let you go.”