by Alyssa Cole
He was strangely calm as he climbed the stairs, the only noise the quiet breathing of the agents behind him. His entire being was focused on completing this task and finding Salomeh.
As they reached the top of the steps, a voice nearly as familiar to him as his own cut through the silence, turning his blood to ice. The voice was deeper and more confident than the last time Julian had heard it, the accent nearly erased, but it was definitely Bardhyn’s. Something had disturbed his meeting, and he was none too happy about it.
“This is not the time, Linda,” Bardhyn said. “I’ll deal with this after the meeting is completed. If you really want to be useful, you would extricate the information about Julian’s whereabouts yourself instead of wasting these gentlemen’s valuable time.”
There was a sharp yelp, one he had heard recently when their car had spiraled out of control.
Salomeh.
A door slammed. In the silence, Julian gave his agents the signal to move forward and took a deep breath before they burst through the door.
Several heads turned in their direction: Alexi and a couple of Bardhyn’s men, as well as the men he had seen enter the club.
Only one person moved with ease, as if this interruption had been completely expected.
Cold blue eyes latched on to Julian’s from across the room, sending a riot of emotions ranging from disgust to nostalgia roaring through him.
“Julian,” Bardhyn said in a ruthlessly quiet voice as he rose from his desk. “Welcome back.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Salomeh shook with rage and fear as Linda escorted her from the office where Bardhyn had just calmly dismissed them. He had looked at the women as if they were the hired help interrupting a dinner party, despite the fact that Linda held a gun aimed at Salomeh with shaking hands.
The woman was unhinged, her eyes glassy and flat but her behavior manic as she pulled Salomeh away from the meeting. Salomeh was waiting for the right moment to put up a fight, but it hadn’t arrived. So she let herself be dragged to another office, this one smaller and less opulent, and flung onto a chair.
She stared at Linda as the woman walked over to a desk, pulled open a drawer, and snatched up a bottle of prescription pills. She could hear the susurration of the pills moving against the bottle in Linda’s trembling grip. After a brief struggle with the childproof cap, the woman knocked a pill into her palm and swallowed it dry.
As she watched the obviously disturbed woman, Salomeh couldn’t help but think of how Julian’s face had softened with pain when he had talked of his parents and sister. How would he feel when he realized just what his sister had become? Salomeh was counting on him to show up and save the day but wished he could do it without having to see this shell of a woman who claimed to be his sister.
“So you don’t go by Ryli anymore?” Salomeh asked in calming tones as if she were talking a cat down from a tree. The woman’s gaze darted to her, and Salomeh’s heart hurt with how much she looked like her brother in that moment.
“Julian told you about me?” Linda asked. Her voice had returned to its refined coolness or a slightly slurred version of it, but there was a hint of surprise in her tone. “I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to mention my name after what he did to me.”
Salomeh leaned forward in her seat. “What did he do to you?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, Saint Julian didn’t tell you what happened to his family?” Linda asked. “How he sentenced my parents to death? And, of course, sold his darling little sister into slavery.”
Salomeh’s blood ran cold. For the briefest instant she considered the story, but then she pushed the possibility away. She might have only known Julian for a short while, but the man she knew, the man she had come to care about, would never do such a thing.
“You think he sold you to Bardhyn?” Salomeh asked carefully.
“I know he sold me,” Linda said vehemently. “It was Bardhyn who saved me when Julian ran off with the bounty of his betrayal.”
“That’s not true,” Salomeh said and wished she had kept her thought to herself. But the words had slipped out before she could censor them.
“I see my brother can still wield that charm to get whatever he wants.” Linda laughed grimly. “I suppose you think he’s some kind of hero. I used to think he was too. When you wake up to the smell of your parents’ burning flesh, you start to reevaluate bestowing such titles so easily.”
Salomeh looked at the pain etched into the woman’s face and was nearly overcome with despair. Linda believed it. She really thought her own brother had sanctioned the horror that had befallen her, and because of that she was willing to do anything Bardhyn told her to.
Salomeh had to keep her talking, and she had to make her see the truth. If she failed at either, she would likely be dead very soon. “Linda, I don’t know what you think, but Julian told me a very different version of that story.”
“Of course he would,” Linda spat. “He’s a lying dog.” Her voice rose on the last words as if she were trying to convince Salomeh—or herself.
“He’d told Bardhyn he wanted to leave their gang and go straight, and Bardhyn didn’t want to hear it,” Salomeh said, summarizing Julian’s interrogation room confession. “Bardhyn hated that he couldn’t have his way, so he told others that Julian had broken the Besa. It was Bardhyn—”
“You lie!” Linda exploded, tightening her grip on the gun and pointing it in Salomeh’s direction. “You know nothing but what he’s told you. You have no idea what I’ve been through, and it’s all Julian’s fault! Bardhyn told me the truth of what happened!”
“And you believe him? A man who makes his money from shredding people’s souls?” Salomeh gestured in the general direction of the bedroom where they had left Yelena. “A man who keeps girls chained to beds and plies them with drugs? Do you really believe his story over your brother’s, the brother who has spent his life trying to avenge what happened to you?”
Linda screamed in frustration, and Salomeh thought she had found the moment to attack, but then Linda’s eyes were on her, dark and unreadable. When she spoke, her voice had lost its veneer of refinement; she sounded eerily like a young girl.
“It doesn’t matter what happened that day,” she said. “He left me to this life, and he never came back for me.”
“He’s coming now,” Salomeh said gently, hoping to assuage the woman’s anger.
Linda stalked over to Salomeh, quaking with emotion. Salomeh couldn’t tell which one.
“Stand up,” she said, a sneer marring her pale face.
“Why?” Salomeh asked, stalling.
“Because I’m going to take you into one of the rooms and let Alexi stick his dick into whatever orifice he wants. After that, if you can walk out and tell me that everything will be just fine when Julian arrives, maybe then I’ll consider anything you say worthwhile.”
Salomeh’s stomach plummeted.
“No, please don’t,” she said, pressing herself down into her chair as if sheer will could keep her there.
“Doesn’t sound so appealing, does it?” Linda asked tartly. “Imagine being violated in that way for years, body and soul, and then ask me why I should care about Julian Tamali.”
Salomeh felt her head spinning. She had failed at the one thing that could help her obtain her freedom, and worse, she understood exactly where Linda was coming from. But that didn’t excuse her aiding and abetting Birdie for all this time.
“If it was so terrible for you, how could you do it to all these other girls?” Salomeh asked. “How could you force that life on them?”
Linda’s lips trembled, and a tear slipped down her cheek.
Finally, I’m getting through to her, Salomeh thought.
“You can judge me as you wish,” Linda said in a thick voice. “But if I weren’t here, do you think it would be better for these girls? I know what happens when their survival is at Bardhyn’s whim, or at that of any other man. So I took charge of that.
I take care of them.”
Salomeh felt a bit of sympathy for the woman, but it was quickly eclipsed by anger. She had spent her life trying to help children, trying to set them on the right track so that they wouldn’t have to suffer the Bardhyns of the world. Salomeh couldn’t understand why Linda hadn’t just done the simple thing.
“If you really wanted to help them, you could have turned Bardhyn in,” Salomeh said.
Linda hardened then, any emotion she felt hidden behind the invisible walls she erected to protect herself. The change in her demeanor was frightening, like seeing a warm-blooded person transform into a mannequin.
“You’re right,” she said. “Maybe I just enjoy it. Much like how I’m going to enjoy killing you before my brother’s eyes.”
A loud bang exploded somewhere in the corridor, followed by the sound of shouts and gunfire.
Linda smiled at Salomeh, her eyes glittering with anticipation. “Sounds like the family reunion has begun.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Julian hadn’t known what would happen when he actually came face-to-face with Bardhyn after all these years. In his head he had envisioned an epic clash. Instead, in the first moment of recognition, he and Bardhyn simply stared at each other as the two groups of men waited for their cue, unsure of what was actually happening after Bardhyn’s welcoming words to Julian.
And for a moment, Julian felt something that bordered on relief at seeing the man.
Wasn’t expecting that, he thought. And then he heard Nichols shift restlessly behind him, which was enough to remind him of his sense of purpose.
Julian kept his gun on Bardhyn as he took a step forward. “I’m Agent Julian Tamali, representing the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is a raid. Put down all your weapons, and things won’t get ugly. You have the right to remain silent—”
A movement caught his attention, and his body acted on instinct, turning to catch one of the potential jihadist’s bodyguards pulling an AR-15 semiautomatic from the pile in front of him.
“Qiff!” Julian shouted, switching into Arabic, the language he had built his career on. “Alqi silahak!”
But the man didn’t drop his weapon. Instead a grimace of determination hardened his face. In the split second before the man would have him in his crosshairs, Julian fired twice.
The man crumpled, no longer a threat, but that was when all hell broke loose. Shouting in Albanian, Arabic, and English filled the air.
“Take cover.” Aimes grunted as he dropped behind a chair, just as a bullet ripped through the door casing behind him. Julian and Nichols followed him. Nichols briefly popped up from behind a couch to return fire, unleashing a hail of bullets.
Julian crawled over to Aimes.
“Brilliant idea to raid a fucking arms deal,” the agent said drily before popping off a few shots at the heavily armed bad guys.
“Sorry,” Julian said, trying to figure out where Bardhyn was in this melee. He couldn’t let him escape now, after coming so close.
Julian peeked around the edge of the couch and saw Alexi pushing Bardhyn out the office’s front door. “No,” he growled, taking a shot at the fleeing man. He missed Bardhyn, but Alexi’s left leg buckled under him as the goon collapsed, still fulfilling his duty by slamming the door behind Bardhyn.
Aimes and Nichols got off a volley of shots that sent the jihadists ducking for cover, and Julian rose to follow Bardhyn. A hail of ammunition flew in his direction and sent him diving back behind the couch.
Fucking Alexi, Julian thought. Still covering Bardhyn’s ass even as the man left him to die. He wished he had just shot him on sight when he had seen him dragging Salomeh into the club.
Just then the door flew open, cracking into Alexi’s head.
Yates stormed into the room like an Amazon, her face calm and collected even as she dropped and rolled to avoid the bullets flying her way.
Alexi swung his gun in Yates’s direction, and she pumped two bullets into him without hesitation, a clean double-tap if ever Julian had seen one.
I guess I can mark that off my to-do list, Julian thought, impressed.
Her team of men followed, and within a moment, the sound of bullets had died out, leaving Julian’s ears ringing in their aftermath. The agents swarmed over the remaining thugs like ants, cuffing them and searching them for additional weapons.
Julian brushed past Yates on his way out the door.
“Bardhyn ran out a minute ago. I’m going after him,” he said. He didn’t wait for a response but heard her bark out an order and follow behind him. He ran up a flight of stairs, reasoning that Bardhyn would have had to pass Yates to get out the front. When he got to the landing he turned to her.
“I’ll start checking the rooms on the right at the end of the hall,” he said, choosing his direction on his gut instinct and hoping he was correct. “Do you want to grab one of the guys and start at the other end?”
“You don’t seem to need one of ‘the guys’ to help you, and neither do I, chauvinist,” she said with a smirk and took off.
Julian had to admit, the fact that Yates could hand him his ass in the middle of a raid and not even slow down made him respect her even more, but accolades would have to wait. He had to find Bardhyn, and more importantly he had to find Salomeh. If anything had happened to her…
“Get off of me!” Salomeh’s voice rang out from behind one of the doors ahead of him. She sounded angry instead of scared, which heartened Julian. An angry Salomeh was a healthy Salomeh.
I’m coming, zemer, he thought as he raced toward her voice.
He reached the door and opened it carefully, hoping to have the element of surprise as he walked in on the struggle. However, it was Julian who received the shock of his life like a blow to the gut. Before him was a scene straight out of a nightmare: Salomeh, grappling for a gun with a woman who looked too familiar to be true.
“No,” he said, ruining any chance of surprise as both women whipped their heads in his direction. The woman was tall, far too thin, with short black hair and a face obscured by too much makeup, but it couldn’t be anyone else.
“Ryli?” he croaked, his heart feeling as if it would tear in two at the sight of her.
She took advantage of the distraction to move the gun out of Salomeh’s reach before knocking her to the ground. She scrambled behind Salomeh to grab her by the hair and pull her up onto her knees.
Julian’s mind whirled as he took in the scene, one that should have been impossible. Ryli was dead, and even if she wasn’t, she had been kind and loving, not the cruel woman smiling as she tugged Salomeh to and fro. Panic flashed in Salomeh’s eyes, and she reached behind her, trying to free herself. Ryli tugged roughly at her hair and shoved a knee into her back, pushing the gun against Salomeh’s skull.
This has to be a trick, Julian thought. A twisted, soul-destroying trick. There’s no way this could be real after all these years of suffering and guilt.
As if reading his mind, his sister let out a cruel laugh. In all the times he had remembered her sweet laughter ringing in his ears, he’d never imagined it could sound like that.
Her eyes were wide and dilated as she stared at him, a vicious smile marring her face. “Did you finally remember you left something behind?” she purred in an ice-cold voice. “Or am I just interrupting your search for her?”
She nudged at Salomeh’s head with the gun.
“I didn’t know you were alive, Ryli,” he said. “How could I have? The house was burned to the ground, and they said you were dead—”
“And you couldn’t be bothered to come back to find out?” she shouted. “It took you only a couple of hours to find this teacher, but you never came for me! You aren’t even here for me now!”
She looked deranged, but he couldn’t blame her. The sight of his sister after all these years, knowing she had been with Bardhyn all this time… He was feeling deranged himself.
“I didn’t know you were here,” he said, feeling
the agony of a million different emotions tugging at him at once.
“Well, now you do. And now that we’ve been reunited, we’re going to play a little game, just like old times,” she said with a grim smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
No, Julian thought.
“Kush mendoni ju zgjidhni, vëlla?” Her voice tore through his heart, the childhood game that had already haunted him taking an even more macabre turn. “Who will you choose, brother?”
He shook his head. “I won’t play that game with you again,” he said. “It won’t change what happened. Salomeh has nothing to do with this.”
“I asked you to choose!” she yelled. “Her or me, brother? Who deserves to live?”
He looked at Salomeh. Tears streamed down her face, and she shook with sobs.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked plaintively. He had thought seeing his family burn had been the worst moment of his life, but a new low had been reached. Seeing this husk of his sister and the pain in her eyes as she glared at him. He couldn’t imagine what she had experienced at Bardhyn’s hands over all this time.
“I suppose she learned it from me,” a voice said from behind him.
Shit.
He felt the muzzle of Bardhyn’s gun against his back.
“Thank you for the distraction, Linda. You’ve done well, as always.”
Chapter Thirty
“So, who is it going to be, Julian? Do tell,” Bardhyn said, obviously relishing the agony Julian and his sister were experiencing.
Salomeh tried to gather her thoughts as the ghoulish battle of wills played itself out around her. Old friend versus old friend, sister versus brother, and Linda versus Bardhyn in trying to see who could inflict the most pain. Once again Salomeh found herself in the middle of a fight that had nothing to do with her.
But then her eyes locked with Julian’s. His were desolate. Gone were the glinting mischief, the heated passion, and even the dark frustration she had come to know so well. His body was still large and strong and tensed to pounce, but it seemed his soul had deflated, was hunkered down in some hidden recess where this new betrayal couldn’t reach it.