“Thanking you?” I said, still surprised and apparently looking clueless. “Harper and I practically pulverized each other over this.”
“Yes but you didn’t,” Big Daddy said with all assurance. “Lizzy and I knew that you two wouldn’t take each other down. Anybody with eyes can see you two are in love, son. “Now, I don’t want you to let this ransom situation to get out of hand,” he said changing the subject before I could work myself up into a frenzy. “This is Lizzy’s only child, and first grandchild. Potentially my grandson’s at stake here. Tell me how I can help you Nicky. I’m here to support you, son.”
“I’ve got this under control father,” I said, still in a bit of a state of disbelief and trying to pull my wits together.
Motherfucker. Damn. Is nothing sacred around here? Big Daddy and Elizabeth planned this bullshit of pitting Harper and I against each other? I knew Big Daddy had the capacity to reach all kinds of lows, but Elizabeth? She was more of a shark than I gave her credit. No wonder Kitten knew how to cut me off at the pass most times. She was trained by a female ninja bottom feeder. Worse, everybody and their brother knew that Harper and I were going to be having a baby.
Jesus. I wasn’t sure what Harper was going to do when she found out this little tidbit of information but I knew what position I was going to take. Nothing was going to change. Nobody, not even my father, the senator, or Elizabeth was going to prevent me from keeping my woman and my baby safe.
Lucia opened the balcony sliding door. “Nicholas. We have her. We know who, we know why, and we know where,” she said. “Jesus, Nicky, you’ll catch pneumonia out here. It’s a freaking thunderstorm,” She looked at me and Big Daddy as if we were crazy to still be out here. She watched us move back inside. We were both soaking wet.
I nodded at Lucia as I trailed Big Daddy back into the great room of my penthouse. Lucia handed us towels. I hugged her and held on for a beat. I wanted her to know how much she meant to me.
“I know Nicky,” she said. “We’ll get her back. Stephen has promised me we’ll get her back. Otherwise I will cut his balls off and then feed them to him.”
Lucia was serious as a heart attack. I would not want to be Stephen. But then again Stephen was never one to fail.
“What’s the deal? Who are we dealing with?” I asked.
“Try the Moskovski Group,” Lucia said, looking extremely concerned. “Tatiana Gukovu is the go-to person for the Group.”
“Fuck me. How in the hell did Brooks Fitzgerald McKenna get himself mixed up with the Moskovski Group?” I asked.
“Word on the street is that they are known for international money laundering. While it’s never been fully proven, the belief is that they are entangled with the Russian mob,” Lucia said, for the benefit of the others in the room.
“They are the Russian mob,” I said, letting out a breath of exasperation through my nostrils.
Lucia had mentioned several weeks ago that McKenna Textiles was having some financial problems. But fooling around with this group was beyond the pale. These were some dirty players.
They were the front group and face for a lot of shell and dummy corporations. If you dug deep another level, you’d find there was nothing there but air. The group was on several federal agencies’ and the SEC’s watch lists. One of its corporate members was on the CIA’s no fly list. Rumor was that particular individual was a family member who was well connected to a suspected terrorist imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Brooks would have been better off going bankrupt than to connect his business interests with this group of lowlifes. And now they had both my babies. This news drove my anxiety level up another notch.
“So now that we know who we’re dealing with, what’s the plan?” I said.
I was tired, exhausted, and hungry. I felt sleep deprived. But there wasn’t a motherfucker alive that was going to keep me away from Kitten and my baby. Nobody. This group was going to go down.
Lucia grabbed my hand and we all headed for my dining room. There were plenty of seats, as my dining area sat twelve. We each took a seat with me at the head of the table.
“What’s the plan?” I repeated.
“We give them the money,” Elizabeth said.
“We trade her for Brooks,” Malcom said.
“We kill them all,” the senator said.
“This doesn’t sound much like a plan people,” Big Daddy said.
“We don’t need media attention on this,” Stephen said, “so here’s the plan. Based on where Scott is positioned, we have the GPS coordinates, schematics, and satellite photographs of the property. There are security cameras on all corners of the property, so they’ll see us coming”
“Scott says there are two watchdogs on the front door,” Malcom interjected. “They are a formidable enemy.”
“Yes, their security system is upscale but it’s not impenetrable,” Stephen said. “Scott can disconnect the cameras and monitors pretty rapidly.”
“How will we know where she’s located?” the senator said. “If we go storming in there, won’t we put her life at risk?”
“We can wait until everyone is asleep and go in with a surprise attack,” Malcom said. “Stephen has infrared scans that can read the heat signatures of anybody inside.”
“You people are not going to get my daughter killed,” Elizabeth snapped back. She was directing her words right at the senator.
“I can give them an extra five million, Lizzy,” Big Daddy added, hoping to console her.
“Make a call,” Stephen said. “I say you let me have at this, Nicholas. We can open up the gates of hell on these rogues.”
“What do you want to do Nicholas?” Lucia said.
Images filled my mind of a broken and hurt Harper. I’d almost lost her once ten years ago. I wasn’t going to lose her again. I let out a deep exhale. I could hear my own heaviness in my voice. “They expect us to have intel and a proper plan. They aren’t even making a real effort to conceal who and where they are located. They want to ambush us.”
“They don’t know that we have Brooks in our custody. I say we use him to our full advantage,” Stephen said.
“Good point,” Malcom added.
I got up from the table and began pacing the floor. No one said anything to me, but everyone at the table stared in my direction. I was seriously worried if we could pull this off. There were ten thousand things that could go wrong and failure was not an option. We didn’t say it, but we all felt it and we all knew it. I moved across the other side of the room and pressed a code into my security panel. Doors began to open up to my safe room that was hidden from view. Another wall opened with all the manner of weaponry and gear that one could imagine for every kind of scenario. It was where Stephen’s special weaponry was kept. Stephen and I were the only ones that had knowledge of this room.
Malcom was the first to walk forward into the room. He looked like he’d died and gone to heaven. Lizzy’s mouth fell open. Big Daddy rose from his seat shrugging his shoulders and moving to pour himself a drink.
“Nicky always did like to play soldier when he was a little boy.”
“Nice going Nicholas,” the senator said, fully impressed. I’ve got to get me one of these,” he said.
“Obviously you have your own plan Nicky,” Lucia said, completely unfazed.
“Yes I do. I suggest we walk right through the front door and remind them never ever to fuck with me and what’s mine.”
Chapter Twenty
Harper and Nicholas
I could hear the wind howling and rain beating hard outside when the heaviness of my eyelids gave way to my being able to open my eyes. I found myself in a strange house. Ugh. This wasn’t some nightmarish dream that I prayed for when I could no longer keep my lids open. No, this wasn’t a dream. This was real. My heart sank.
The ice queen was still in the room, her glare seemingly even more intense. I wondered what was wrong. Did Nicky not agree to give her the money when she spoke with him? Surely that wasn’t the ca
se. Why had her demeanor changed? She had gone from somewhat amenable to downright hostile in just a few hours. How many hours had passed? Maybe several. I could see daylight peeking through the windows now.
“Ah . . . Sleeping Beauty awakens . . .” she said with all iciness. “I’ve been staring at you most of the night,” she said. “You talk in your sleep about a baby. You’re pregnant, no?”
“I am,” I said, squirming in the chair that I had fallen asleep in upright. My mouth was dry. My back and legs throbbed. I felt like I had cottonmouth. I looked down at my hands and noticed that I was now bound at the wrists with plastic ties. Things were starting to get even scarier.
I could see that the sun had risen. It was early morning. My stomach was starting to cramp from the stress of sitting upright sleep in a chair most of the night. Lord knows I needed real food and rest. I didn’t want to re-live the events of my miscarriage a decade ago and lose this baby this time. I knew I needed to take care of myself if I was going to get through this pregnancy. Dr. Richards had explained that to me more than once. Taking care of myself and the baby was of the utmost priority. This experience didn’t come anywhere close to my being careful. I remembered that I was ten weeks pregnant today. I felt like I was going to throw up. I forced the bile back down my throat. This was no time to be weak and helpless.
“Ummm. You’re having his baby. Two for the price of one,” Tatiana said coldly.
My mind drifted back to my call last evening to Nicky. I could hear his breath catch when I told him I needed help. I was as heartbroken as he sounded. I was well aware that Nicky would move heaven and earth to save me. That much I was sure. And now that he knew I was carrying his baby, there was no way Nicky was going to stand for any of this ransom bullshit.
Nicky wasn’t the typical trust fund baby. He was very good at what he did. Over the years he had multiplied his own personal wealth beyond his family’s wealth tenfold. While he had a keen sense of integrity, that character trait didn’t overshadow the fact that Nicky could be ruthless if you crossed him and messed with his family or friends. His enemies rarely stood a chance.
Brooks had really dragged the both of us into some kind of nasty game. What the ice queen failed to understand was the depth of the shit storm that Nicholas would rain down upon her and her little friends. The enemy of my enemy was my friend . . . or in this case my lover and the father of my child.
Okay, so I had my moments in the past where I thought Nicky was a first class wrecking ball, a ruin-er of things. But, there was no way that Nicky was going to let this Russian bitch make off with me and his baby. Nicky loved us. That much I knew for sure. If I had to place bets, my money would always be on Nicky. He was a worthy adversary by my own standards and I knew him better than anyone. The ice queen was going to be in for a rude awakening.
I tussled with my hands to try and squirm out of the plastic ties with no success.
“I’m sorry I had to restrain you, but I suspect things to get a bit tenser today so I had Ivann tie you.”
Ivann was in the corner of the room looking out the window.
“As if Ivann isn’t a big enough skinhead disguised as a bloated dumbbell to restrain a woman like me without handcuffing me,” I squawked.
“Don’t you fuck with me, you little cunt!” Ivann turned and shouted at me.
“Or what? You’ll squat on me? You moronic son of a goat,” I said.
Wham . . . Ivann smacked me hard across my face practically knocking me out of the chair.
The tears filled my eyes as I pulled my tied wrists up to caress the side of my face. I spit on him.
Wham . . . he smacked me again harder. I flew out of the chair this time and hit the floor with no way to catch myself and break the fall. Ivann stood over me yelling at me in Russian. Words I didn’t understand.
“Стоп! Стоп! Stop it right now!” the ice queen demanded, alternating between Russian and English.
“We won’t get a dime for her if she’s hurt,” she said, speaking another flurry of words to him in Russian.
Ivann picked me up off the floor and sat me back onto the chair. I was glad that I had landed on my side and not on my stomach. I prayed my baby wasn’t injured. Thank God the fall to the floor wasn’t so far. My face hurt. I knew I was bruised. If anybody in this group was going to kill me, it was going to be Ivann.
The woman in the uniform that came last night was back again with food. She sat the tray in front of me but I turned my head so as to suggest I wasn’t interested.
“Eat,” Tatiana demanded.
I turned my head and rolled my eyes at her. My feelings were hurt. I was angry. I wanted out of here. I wanted no more of her pretend kindness. She didn’t have my interests at heart. That whole business of wanting me to be comfortable was just some bullshit. She and Ivann were playing good cop bad cop and I was the pawn here.
I wanted no more of her fake hospitality. I wanted out of here.
“The rain storm is predicted to end soon,” Tatiana said. “If the money does not arrive, we’ll be planning to leave when the rain ends,” she said.
I said nothing. I was through talking to her. This whole business of holding me hostage for the likes of Brooks Fitzgerald McKenna was just so wrong on many levels. Unfortunately my captors didn’t care about what I thought or what I was feeling. This was all about their greedy desires. The need to use me as a scapegoat for Brooks’ liabilities was just plain appalling.
I swung my tied-up hands and swiped all the food off the small table and watched as it went flying across the floor.
The dishes cracked into a thousand pieces, startling everyone in the room. Food flew everywhere. It was just as well too, because the sausage looked greasy and the eggs were undercooked. While I wondered which one of them would have to clean up the messy floor, I could hear the sounds of helicopters outside the manor. The noise level was so pronounced, it sounded as if someone was making a landing on the front lawn.
Ivann ran out of the room yelling in Russian, simultaneously pulling a gun out of the back of his waistband and heading for what seemed to be the rear kitchen area. Two men that I hadn’t seen before came running out of the same place Ivann had just disappeared to. One man crouched down near the window and the other by the front door. Someone from the outside kicked the front door open. The Russian man whom I recognized as the driver of the SUV fell through the front door, beat up and bloodied. He’d been shot in the shoulder.
“Snipers,” he said, spitting up blood. “Silencers.” He coughed and shouted more words in Russian.
Cold gusts of wind and rain filled the room. The woman in the uniform ran past me, leaning over the man on the floor, crying over him and talking rapidly in Russian. One of the men I hadn’t seen before began speaking in broken English, saying something about the monitors being down and that they had been caught by surprise.
Tatiana came towards me and dragged my chair across the room away from the sight line of the window. She put a gun to my head.
“Say nothing, pretty lady.”
Tatiana shouted for someone to close the door. The uniformed woman dragged the man she had been crying over into the foyer and slammed the door closed.
Ivann waved at the other two guys, giving them hand signals for one to go out front and the other to go out back.
It was hard to tell if those men were more afraid of Ivann or of what was outside. There was silence for several minutes before I heard a moan and the sound of something heavy hitting the concrete outside. I could hear branches crackling and what sounded like people moving about. The tension in the room went up several levels. Tatiana and her gang were under attack and they knew it.
“Somebody help me!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
Tatiana immediately grabbed a roll of grey electrical tape nearby, ripped a piece off angrily, and covered my mouth, pushing the tape hard enough over my lips to cause my head to snap backwards.
The door flew open again, and another man fell t
hrough it, pleading, “Please don’t shoot me. Please don’t shoot me.”
Ivann shouted out some more Russian words and waved his hands, appearing to give orders. The man near the window grabbed the fallen man and dragged him to Ivann’s feet. Ivann kicked him over on his side with his boot so that he was facing up. I gasped and moaned behind the tape over my mouth and I could feel my eyes get wider as I realized that it was Brooks Fitzgerald McKenna.
Brooks was still dressed in the clothes he’d worn at the Joduku Presentation. His wrists had plastic ties around them much like the ones I had on mine. Tatiana ran to his side and knelt. She ordered Ivann to cut his ties. Ivann spoke a flurry of Russian words, rapidly mumbling the whole time he was cutting Brooks loose. I figured he was cursing him in Russian and didn’t really want to cut him loose. Ivann seemed to dislike Brooks as much as he disliked me. Ivann helped to pull Brooks to his feet.
“I told you I would get you the money Tatiana,” Brooks pleaded, rubbing his hands against his wrists. “None of this was kidnapping business of yours was necessary,” Brooks hissed. “You needed to let me handle this my way.”
“We have no more time for your empty promises,” Tatiana said, pointing the gun at him now, rubbing it against his lips.
“You’ve kept us waiting much too long,” she said. “We doubt you can deliver.”
A Marimba ringtone began to play out loud. It was Brooks’s phone. She nodded and Brooks answered it.
“Hello? Yes. It’s that shithead Nicholas Becker,” he growled, handing the phone clumsily to Tatiana. “He wants to speak with you.”
“Mmm, mmm,” I moaned, unable to speak through the tape on my mouth. I started stomping my feet loudly on the floor.
“Shut up bitch,” Brooks said to me. “You’re the reason I’ve got all of these problems.”
Oh my god. Nicky wasn’t going to have to worry about killing Brooks, because I was going to do it myself if I ever got free of these people.
“Mr. Becker,” Tatiana said. “I’ve been expecting you. Although I must say I’ve clearly underestimated your ability to create such a ruckus.”
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