After getting a cab, I sheepishly returned to our compound and went right to Carlos with fake intel. Hopefully it would keep them happy and busy long enough for Liam’s security team to catch on to their master plan. I hadn’t expected them to respect me when I’d walked in wearing the same clothes from yesterday. I knew they’d smell him on me. Still, I’d anticipated they’d be more grateful for my so-called sacrifice for our family and our father’s honor, instead of attacking me within seconds of getting in.
It seemed like everywhere I went, I was doomed to deal with hostile males.
“Your brother has a point, Natalia.”
God, I hated when he said my name. He always made it sound so dirty.
Jared entered the room, and immediately gave me a threatening to glare. I guessed that was the point. To remind everyone who was in charge, despite my meltdown. He also wanted to keep the job running smoothly. My best attempts to derail the plan were all futile. An overwhelming exhaustion washed over my body. Why was I even bothering when I knew they wouldn’t find anything? No matter what, I’d made Liam safe by telling him about the plan and risking everything.
The only thing that had broken in the process was my heart. My personal karma. It made sense that I too had to pay a price to keep him safe now, after doing precious little to tell him the last time. Back then, I was a weak and powerless onlooker. I shuddered at the thought. Jared’s thick fingers wrapped around my forearm. I jumped at his touch, surprised that he had crossed the room so quickly.
“You’ve done enough for us, sweetheart. I think you need a little break, don’t you? Somewhere you can be alone with your thoughts, maybe relax a little bit since you’ve been so hard at work for us last night. It was hard, wasn’t it?” He leered down at me, and I nearly threw up in my mouth.
Whatever he had planned for me it wasn’t as if I had a choice. Certainly no one else would stand up for me today, too busy putting together their arsenal to bother with a sister who’d continuously disobeyed and disgraced them. Better I didn’t look to them and merely went with Jared with a smile slapped on my face.
“What do you want?”
“Come with me and find out.”
“Sure, like that’s a choice.”
“Make believe is fun, isn’t it?”
Jared’s eyebrows waggled as the key slammed home in the lock and twisted with a sickeningly audible click. The noise clenched my stomach. I shot a glare in his direction, but he merely pocketed the key in his cut, shook the door of the cell as if to test it, and licked his lips with a smile of satisfaction.
After all, he’d led me down into the basement with minimal fight given that he’d had me in a death grip and his power hadn’t stopped humming along my skin. It burrowed deeper into me every time I drew breath to argue with him.
“There. Now you’ll be sure to stay out of the way while the big boys play with their toys. You should be familiar with this model, it’s just like the one out back in the shed where we had your boyfriend for a while. Oops, or should I say ex-boyfriend now? My bad.” Jared faked a look of shock, his mouth dropping open so that he could put his hand over it.
“You’re disgusting,” I seethed knowing it would only wear me out to throw a tantrum. “If you’re going to leave me here I don’t know what you’re waiting for because I’d rather deal with captivity alone than be stuck a room with you for another second.”
“Oh, ouch!” He clutched his chest and spun in a circle. “That hurt me. Truly.”
The only thing holding me back from screaming my lungs out was the knowledge that I could make as much noise as I wanted and I still wasn’t getting out of this fucking cage. Liam had pummeled, gnawed, and rammed his full body into the bars over and over with no result. I didn’t have his size or strength of weight on my side. I doubted I could be any more effective.
“Enjoy your stay, sweetheart. I’ll come down to fill you in on all the juicy details once your brothers bring back the cash.” He laughed, a hollow sound that didn’t do a thing to the expression on his face. “If, by some chance, we don’t find anything good at least we have our damsel in distress to seal the deal with the big badass. Once he finds out we have you locked up, I’ll bet a million dollars he’ll do anything to get you out.”
“You’re still using me? Fuck you, psychotic douchebag!” I launched myself at the cage bars making them rattle in their moorings as I snapped and bit at his hand. He held it an inch away from the metal purposefully taunting me.
“What, you didn’t think we’d have a backup plan, little girl? I’m not an idiot, don’t take me for one.”
With a wink, Jared flicked off the lights, and his heavy tread went up the stairs as I followed his footsteps on the floor above me.
There was a series of muffled voices. A door shut. Silence.
Which left me with two possible thoughts: what they would do to me when they found out there was nothing for them to steal, while I was stuck in this cage like hunted prey, and would Liam even care what happened to me? Both options were depressing. Better to count bricks down in the basement than entertain either of them. Anything to get away from the merry-go-round of memories from this morning in Liam’s bedroom that burned at the backs of my closed eyelids.
I’d even resort to the deck of cards I had pickpocketed from Jared’s cut while we were on our way down to the basement. Twenty million games of solitaire should clear my head. Or point me in the direction of a thousand other moves I could have made differently this morning so that I wasn’t curled up from regret for the rest of my life. At least I had the pleasant phantom pain in my abdomen from losing my virginity last night to keep me company.
There wasn’t a question that I’d waited for the right time and the right person. Both of those things were simply fluid and had changed on a dime. Still I didn’t regret the act. Maybe I would have waited until after breakfast to spill my guts. In hindsight, that probably would have been good. I exhaled, opened the deck of cards, and spilled them all over the grimy floor of the basement.
“Fifty-two pick up,” I muttered to myself knowing this wasn’t my first time being helpless nor would it be my last. All I could do was cope and pick up the pieces.
Chapter 27 - Liam
“Thank God you answered the damn phone. You don’t know how badly I need this right now.” I swirled the whiskey in my glass, easily losing count of the number of drinks I’d had as afternoon light shimmered through the expensive vintage. “Day drinking, real classy of me.”
“Hey man, lay off yourself. You’ve had a rough couple of months, not even counting the women troubles. Fuck, when was the last time you even got a vacation?” Derek Donovan, one of my friends I’d met during the charity circuit over the years, toasted me with a glass of his whiskey. “What do you think, brother?”
Drew raised one eyebrow and brought his glass of vodka in line with everyone else for a toast. More the strong, silent type, the brother had been mostly keeping to himself in their rehash of my morning. Both of them agreed that staying away from Natalia was in my best interest. Sure, I’d done the right thing. Damn if my heart agreed with my head’s solid choice.
“Stop. Thinking. About. It.” Derek snatched up his cell phone and wiggled it in the air. “Do you need me to call someone to get your mind off her? I have a couple of my favorites on speed dial, and they’d be here in an hour max. A little female company is sure to loosen you up, right, Drew?”
“The last thing he needs is another female in the mix, brother. They’re all confusing. Getting mixed up with another one only causes trouble.”
Derek rolled his eyes and shot a look my way. Something along the lines of “can you believe this motherfucker”. I took another long swig and shook my head. There was no reason why guys always assumed another woman would take their mind off the one they really wanted in the end, but the theory continued to prevail among them. Frankly, it kind of made my head hurt. I figured what was best for me right now was to dig into some bags of chips, p
lay a couple of games of pool with the guys, and not worry about stock margins or turf wars for a little while.
“Give it up. I don’t need anything complicated; this is good.”
“Your boring, anyone ever tell you that?” Derek smirked.
“I’d rather be boring than unsure of who I slept with last night, Playboy.”
“Ooo, going hard, are we?”
These two brothers were the gruffest men I knew. They happened to come from wealth too, but whenever I thought about having a good time with the boys, these badasses were who I had on speed dial. I rolled my shoulders leaning back into the black leather chair with a sigh of relief. Life wasn’t good, but it was getting back to something recognizable again. Before my kidnapping, I would have been down in the whiskey cellar with the boys for hours playing cards, or we’d head into Vegas for more interesting pursuits involving party buses and exquisite women. We’d grown up together, dabbled in life experience together, and where Rosalee friendship wasn’t enough, I could count on these guys. They got my logic, and they always had my back.
And these men weren’t associated with any crime organizations. They sure as hell didn’t go ballistic as a normal everyday thing. Unless I counted whenever someone tried to get Drew to do anything before eight o’clock in the morning. He became an angry bastard most people would steer clear of, even after a few cups of coffee in his system.
“Seriously, you did the right thing. I don’t know what else to tell you. She seems like a heap of drama you don’t need in your life. Me? I’m embracing the bachelor life for all its perks.”
“So you enjoy the idea of dying alone, Derek?” Drew shot his brother a shrewd look before looking back at the blaring TV.
“Ignore the buzzkill. I’m not entirely sure he’s even had a woman yet, let alone talked to one,” Derek got up for a refill and pushed his brother in his chair as Drew let out a scoff, folding his arms across his chest. “Only give in if she comes crawling back, otherwise, there’s another one where that came from, right?”
“You’re a sick motherfucker, brother.”
“I thought you were the shy one, Drew. Shouldn’t you be keeping to yourself about now? Especially about things you don’t understand?”
They ribbed each other all the time. Certainly something I was used to being in the middle of but this afternoon held a particular tension that I’d never sensed before between them. A level of aggression that made me tense in my seat. My relaxing afternoon was forgotten as I quickly sobered at the idea of having to tear my guy friends apart.
“Hey, can we all get back to me, please?” I inhaled and put my glass out for another heavy poor from Derek, but both brothers were ignoring me. Too busy shooting broody, threatening glares across the room at each other.
I closed my eyes, debating whether I should physically get up to separate them—and whether or not I could stand well enough to do it. A good bit of alcohol was swishing in the depths of my stomach. No amount of chips and dip was going to cure it. Not unless I got my hands on some serious grease. With another deep breath, I put a hand to my gurgling stomach and put down my glass. Maybe it was time I laid off for a bit. That seemed like a great idea when a musky, slightly spicy scent hit my nostrils full force as if I’d dunked my head in a tank filled with cologne.
“Do either of you smell that or am I really that drunk?”
Neither brother answered my question. Instead, they continued with the stare down of the century. Somewhere along the line, I’d forgotten how much fun being inside my drunk head could be. The numbness was actually a damn good sensation.
“Guys, seriously, do you smell anything?”
The irritating stink grew stronger until I thought I was choking on it. No matter how small a breath I tried to take it felt like my lungs were burning with the effort to draw in regular oxygen. There was something wrong with this picture. Still no one acknowledged me. So I threw an ice cube at Derek’s head.
Bad idea.
He whipped around to face me with angry hazel eyes. I nearly swallowed my tongue. My nostrils flared as I stared at him. My fingertips ached and when I looked down, I gripped the chair firmly.
“One of you better fucking start talking or I’m going to shove more whiskey down your throats until you ‘fess up. You’ll choke on it, mark my words!”
I gulped hard, making a concentrated effort to pry myself off the fine upholstery. I’d done enough damage for one day. I couldn’t have seen what I thought I did. It had to be a figment of my drunk brain. That had to be the answer as the scent of burning wafted through the room. Even without them saying anything, I knew—somewhere inside me, I knew what was going on between them.
I wish to God I didn’t know, but a few months ago I would have been clueless.
“Will you stop flexing your goddamned muscles and tell me what you’re doing in the other room?” I yelled into the small space making both their heads snap around to look at me in something like shock.
I rarely raised my voice in any kind of confrontation and knew the effect would be enough to bring the attention back around to my answers.
“It’s incense,” Drew explained.
They both blinked. Derek’s eyes were still downcast. Drew was no closer to adding a word.
“Talk. Now. Both of you. Why the fuck are you burning incense indoors?”
How had I never noticed before that they were like me? Did I secretly want to be oblivious? Was that easier for me, to live alone in my head where I could mope about my fate or did I desperately want them to be my badass, party-hard, fun-loving friends so I’d kept them that way? My ignorant and likely my self-absorbed nature slapped me in the face. The whiskey had made me loose and events of the morning with Natalia had made me impatient. As the boys wrapped up their stories, I sat there in shock.
“Russians took you during that trip to Belarus a couple years ago?” I repeated, both blank and on autopilot.
Drew nodded, face solemn, and offered me the whiskey decanter with an unreadable expression. There was a flicker of disgust that moved across his face, so quickly that I shouldn’t have been able to catch it. And then it was gone, as if someone had flicked all the lights on and off on his face.
“Well, you know what happened to me. My disappearance was all over the fucking news. Give me another big pour of that, Derek. I’ll give you the rundown on what those fuckers did to me.”
Chapter 28 - Liam
For notorious burglars, I wasn’t impressed with their skillset. My attackers tramped into my yard in the dead of night the next night taking out every camera in sight—but they didn’t take into account the ones they couldn’t see placed in trees, bushes, and hollow holes in nature. Kick3 Sports knew their stuff, and I was happy to pay them for that knowledge. So, even as their crew thought they were stealthy, I watched them on a dozen monitors with my cell pressed to my ear, Chuck on the other end.
“And you said they train their entire fucking lives for this shit?” Chuck’s disbelieving voice made me smile. “How long do you want to let this continue before we bust them?”
“I want to see what they try and take.” I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the monitor while my brain whirled with the possibilities.
What information had Natalia given them? She’d been in my house with me long enough while I was incapacitated to search, hunt, and otherwise turn my house into a burglar’s playground. They could be going for anything. She’d had two days to tell them everything. A stab of unease hit my gut, and I rubbed the back of my neck. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath trying not to concentrate on the anger still looming over my head, ready to destroy everything in my path.
“Surprise them when they nab something, all right?”
“That’s the plan.” I licked my lips watching as they extracted a window in the far corner of the house from a mostly unused room, so at least they’d gotten that right.
“Good stuff.”
I’d barely gotten out of my bedroom intact thi
s morning. All of my emotional shields were tightly welded in place while clear cut memories of her devastated face popped up at random. The day itself had been filled with time-consuming tasks that I couldn’t devote myself to entirely because all I could consider and reconsider was how I could still be with the woman I loved without risking our lives as well as the lives of everyone around us. There was no answer. So the anger lingered inside me, potent and flaring up at random.
The term “hot mess” didn’t really do my current emotional state justice. Meanwhile, I was riveted by the idea that maybe…just maybe…Natalia hadn’t given her thieving bunch any good intel at all. They were trailing through an unused sitting room. All of my valuables were locked in a safe eight feet deep under the foundation only accessed by an elevator, a retina scanner, and voice recognition software. Anything else on the top floor was either reproductions or safes set up for simple robberies like this one. A decoy until we could catch them red-handed.
Still none of them seemed to be moving toward any of the decoys. I frowned only realizing how tightly I gripped the phone when my fingertips went numb and tingly at the joints. All I could hear was the drumming of my pulse in my ears. They were bumbling around in the dark. Occasionally they’d break away to talk to each other in small clusters, gesturing with frustration. Either way, it looked as if they weren’t getting anywhere. Not anytime soon.
“Do they even know what they’re doing? Fucking amateurs. We should put them out of their misery.” Chuck tapped a few keys and one of the camera’s zoomed in on them. A man wildly gesturing with a cell phone to his ear. “That’s real discreet, buddy. Great job.”
“Do you want them to succeed here?” I asked the question offhandedly only able to focus on the fact that their mission was spiraling down the drain.
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