by Sybil Bartel
“Shit.” Luna sighed, exasperated. “Give me twenty and I’ll come with you.”
Not happening. “I’ll see you at your condo.” I hung up.
I checked my security feeds on my mobile app then got out of the truck and scanned the perimeter of my yard before I headed inside. Hunter circled around me then whined at the door and barked once. I opened the door, but he didn’t go out. He just glanced in the garage then looked accusingly at me.
“She’s not here. I’m alone.”
He lay down at the door.
Christ. I went to the bedroom and opened my gun safe. Exchanging the rifle for my retrofitted AR15, I loaded up on extra magazines and ammo. Then I dumped food in Hunter’s bowl. I was back in the truck in five minutes, and a half hour after that, I was taking the bridge onto Key Biscayne.
I didn’t notice the view or the afternoon sun or the boats on the water. I didn’t pay attention to the swarm of gardeners cleaning up lawn debris on multimillion-dollar estates. I didn’t catalog shit.
I broke every speed limit and tried to convince myself going in now without backup was a bad fucking idea. My control hanging by a thread, I turned down Fedorov’s street and pulled right the fuck up to his front gate.
With a rifle on a shoulder harness resting crossways against his chest, an armed guard stepped out of the small guardhouse.
I lowered my window.
“Private property. Turn around.” He made a circle in the air with his finger.
His first mistake was stepping up to the vehicle. His second mistake was not keeping both hands on his weapon.
I grabbed the rifle and jerked it and him against the side of the truck as I shoved my 9mm into his temple. “You made a crucial mistake.” His third mistake was keeping the safety on.
He swore in Russian. “You’re dead.”
“Not before you.” I quickly scanned the two cameras mounted on the guardhouse and additional cameras mounted on the security wall at every third section. None of them were moving. I spotted the sprinkler pump housing ten yards behind the guardhouse.
“You’re on camera,” he spat out. “I record everything.”
“Good. Make sure Fedorov knows I’m coming for him. Tell him the marine is going to kill him.”
The guard yanked against my hold. “You tell him. He will be down here the second he sees you on camera.”
“Thinking you had the upper hand with your security cameras and your weapon, you underestimated me. That was your crucial mistake.” In one quick, precise movement, I released the rifle, and applied the right amount of pressure at a precise spot on the side of his neck.
He dropped to the ground, unconscious.
I glared up at the security camera for two heartbeats then I threw the truck in reverse and drove to Luna’s.
He didn’t burst through the door like the stories of the Militsiya my mother used to tell me about. He didn’t splinter the frame with a well-placed kick that made the door fly open. He didn’t even make a sound. He was just… suddenly there.
Viktor’s arm swung back. Another blow from his paddle about to make contact with my bruised body, he smiled. “Look, petal, we have company.” He eyed Dane then brought the paddle down.
Wood hitting flesh echoed in the eerie silence.
I jerked against the restraints and tears welled.
No.
NO.
Three hours and forty-seven minutes. Four whips, three vibrators, nipple clamps, his acrid sweat dripping onto my body and that goddamn paddle, and I didn’t shed a single tear. I didn’t so much as let him get a grunt out of me. I took every minute of Viktor’s assault, but the second Dane’s eyes found mine, tears showed up.
I didn’t fucking cry in front of Viktor. Not ever.
The ball gag choking me, I didn’t just cry either. A monumental wail of defeat reared up and choked my lungs as I fought not to panic. I no longer cared about Viktor. I hated him. I hated every single perverse thing I’d ever let him do to me. I hated his fucking limp-dick, cologne-smelling disgustingness. I hated everything. Including how he made me come four times. But I never hated him more than in that very second when Dane saw what I really was.
I wasn’t a woman.
I wasn’t strong.
I wasn’t a fighter.
Bought and paid for, I was a weak and pathetic slave, and Dane would never unsee that.
It didn’t matter that I’d tried to save my mother and André by going with Viktor. It didn’t matter that Viktor threatened to kill Dane if I didn’t do as he said. It didn’t matter that Viktor said he would give the cops those computer files tracking Peter’s whereabouts to Dane’s house if I didn’t come. It didn’t matter, period. I was never going to win against Viktor because I was weak. I was weak when he took me on a date five years ago, and I was even weaker now because I let him do this to me knowing what he was.
And that made me pathetic.
Rage and humiliation gurgled up my sobbing throat, and I kicked at my ankle restraints.
The bed posts shook and Viktor chuckled. “Oh look, soldier, you’ve upset her.” He moved to the side of the bed and gripped a handful of my hair, pulling the strands harder than he ever had. “What’s wrong, petal?” He lowered his rancid breath to my ear. “You don’t want to come in front of him?” He turned up the speed on the vibrator lodged deep in my pussy then grabbed the wand vibrator. Cranking it, he shoved it against my clit.
My back arched off the bed and my legs shook like a train coming into station.
A rush of wind, and the vibrator hit my thigh before falling to the floor. My startled breath wheezed past the gag, and I was staring at Viktor as his eyes popped out of his head. Dane’s huge arm across his throat was choking out all of Viktor’s air as Dane pressed his gun into Viktor’s temple.
“I’m not a soldier. I’m a marine.” Dane snapped Viktor’s neck.
Like a rag doll, Viktor crumpled to the ground.
I squeezed my eyes shut and fought to keep from hyperventilating.
So gentle that I would never mistake his touch for Viktor’s, Dane undid one nipple clamp, then the other. My humiliation ramping up to a level I never knew existed, I fought against the restraints.
“Sh, hold still,” his deep voice soothed.
The vibrating anal plug in my ass stopped, and my mortification leapt so far past intolerable, I wanted to die.
The lubed device was pulled out of me.
But that wasn’t even the beginning of my horror.
Huge, gentle hands that had caressed every inch of my body last night held my trembling thighs and turned off the vibrator. As he began to ease the device out of my soaking wet, pulsing pussy, his breath hit my clit.
My traitorous, conditioned body reacted.
Wretched, aching need that I had zero control over reared up and stole the very last ounce of my dignity. Head to toe, cunt to nipples, an unprecedented, life-shattering orgasm ripped from my used-up body.
Dane’s sharp intake of breath was a knife to my chest.
Disgraced beyond words, I yanked against my wrist restraints, hoping to break my bones.
“Hold on.” No force in his tone, it wasn’t a command.
I roared with mortification.
His hands fumbled on the ball gag, and I kicked out as he got the buckle undone. Unlike the giant dildo in my pussy, he left the ball in my mouth and quickly moved to one of my wrists.
I spit the ball out. Streams of saliva dripped down my chin, and I kicked against the ankle restraints in humiliated rage. A keening sob worked my sore jaw as I used my newly freed hand to shoved Dane away from my other wrist restraint.
I felt him move to my ankles as the restraints loosened, and I fought from opening my eyes. I fought with everything I had. But when my second ankle was released, it was as if I had to make my destruction complete.
I opened my eyes and looked at him.
His storm-colored gaze unerringly fixed on me, Dane stared at me with the one thi
ng I feared most.
Irony hit me full force.
In death, Viktor had broken me worse than he ever had while he was breathing.
My life shattered, my horror bleeding into rage, I did the only thing I could.
I kicked Dane in the chest.
He stumbled back, and he looked at me like I never wanted him to look at me.
Gone was the locked-down, war-hardened expression of a warrior. Impotence and pity and distress swirled into a hot mess of everything that he wasn’t and he looked at me not like a marine, but like a man who didn’t know what to do.
I hated it more than I ever hated Viktor.
Venomous words crawled up my ragged throat and spewed past my aching jaw. “Get away from me!”
His eyes widened, his hands went up, and his expression soaked up a thick layer of worry. “Irina.”
“Don’t.” One hand still cuffed, I scrambled back on the bed. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking touch me!”
“Marek,” André Luna quietly interjected.
In my utter desolation, I hadn’t noticed the other ex-marine enter the room.
As if to shield me from André, Dane moved his impossibly huge body closer to me.
I lost it. “Get away from me! Get out, get out, GET OUT.”
“Stand down,” André barked. Grabbing a blanket off the floor, he shoved past Dane and put a knee on the bed. His voice dropped and his eyes cut to mine. “It’s okay, chica. I got you. No one’s gonna hurt you.” He wrapped the blanket around my beaten and bruised body and placed a hand over the one I had clawing at my restrained wrist. “I got this,” he softly cooed. “Let me get you free, baby girl. You’re okay.”
I yanked at my wrist. “Get this off me!”
“Almost there, almost there.” André unclasped the restraint. “You’re free now, chica. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He touched a device in his ear and his voice turned commanding. “Collins, I need an extraction. Garages on the west side. Four minutes.”
“Luna,” Dane bit out.
Scooping me up, blanket and all, André ignored Dane. “Almost out, hang tight, baby girl.”
“Stop,” Dane warned.
André spared him a glance. “Talerco found seven women hostages. Handle it.”
“Where are you taking her?” Dane demanded.
I buried my head in the blanket.
“If she doesn’t need medical attention, the apartments above my office.” André’s voice rumbled from his chest.
“Take her to my penthouse. She can stay there.”
I didn’t hear a response, and I didn’t see either of their faces. All I knew was that André started moving again.
I wanted to disappear forever.
Four tours, two hundred and forty-three kills, gunshot wounds, death, dismemberment, stab wounds, burn wounds from IEDs—I’d never seen anything that’d made me hesitate.
Until tonight.
The rage of seeing her restrained and beaten was enough to make me lose my mind, but when she didn’t want me to even touch the restraints imprisoning her, I hesitated.
I fucking hesitated.
The one goddamn thing she didn’t need at the single most crucial moment in her life was me being a goddamn pussy.
“Ink,” Talon barked through the com. “We got a situation downstairs. Need you, stat.”
I glanced down at Fedorov’s body. I fucking hated myself for not making him suffer.
“Ink!”
“On my way.” I stepped over him then walked past the two dead guards in the hall and went downstairs.
Talon stood in the entryway with seven women in various states of undress. Scared out of their fucking minds, they huddled together.
Talon, with a rare scowl on his face, gave me a slight shake of his head. “I found them in one of the tunnels making a run for it.”
“Let them go.”
Talon looked at me like I was crazy. “They’re fuckin’ naked and none of them have papers, let alone money.”
Goddamn it. “Find some clothes.” We were in a fucking mansion with thirteen bedrooms. “Then cut them loose or call the cops.” The authorities could fucking handle it for all I cared.
“No police!” One of the woman said with a thick Russian accent.
Neil stepped into the entryway. “They are illegal.” He switched to Russian and addressed the woman who’d spoken up.
She nodded once then shook her head. “No,” she said vehemently before saying something in Russian.
Neil glanced at me. “They don’t want to be deported. They want to work. Luna said you have a contact.”
My mind on that fucking bedroom upstairs, I stared at him.
“The triplets,” he quipped.
Fuck. The billionaire real estate triplets, Jagger, Jacek and Jarek Black. They owned an exclusive sex club. I’d done a job for them once.
“Call them,” Neil demanded.
I didn’t give a fuck who dealt with the women as long as it wasn’t me, but even I could see how fucked up it was to send them to the Black brothers without consent. “That’s going from one shit situation to the next. They’ll be better off with Immigration.”
Neil glanced at the woman he’d spoken to and said something in Russian. She immediately nodded.
Neil turned back to me. “They know why they were recruited. They have no objection to working for the triplets as long as they are compensated.”
Who the fuck was I to judge? I pulled out my personal phone and scrolled through the few contacts I kept. I called the brother I’d dealt with the most.
Jagger picked up with music playing in the background. “Not sure if this is a good sign or bad that you’re calling.”
“I need a favor.”
Jagger laughed. “Sure, whoever you want. Come down to the club and pick one the girls.”
“Not that kind of favor.” I rattled off Fedorov’s address. “Get here ASAP.”
He sobered. “Key Biscayne?”
“Yeah.”
“Give me ten minutes.” He hung up.
I nodded at Neil. “Ten minutes. The property cleared?”
“Ja.”
“How many?” Intent on finding Irina when we’d breached the property, I hadn’t bothered with a body count. I’d put the first guard I’d seen in choke hold and demanded to know where she was. Once he’d told me she was upstairs, I broke his neck then I shot the two armed guards outside the door to Fedorov’s bedroom. I didn’t even take any satisfaction that Fedorov had taken my earlier warning seriously and posted men outside his bedroom. I was too fucking enraged at myself for letting him take her in the first place.
“There are three restrained in the kitchen,” Neil answered.
“Luna and I got two with the women,” Talon added. “Another one was gettin’ busy in the study.” He glanced at one of the girls.
Fuck, we needed to contain this. Without Luna here and his ties to law enforcement, I could only think of one solution. I glanced at Neil. “Fire?”
“No.” Neil tipped his chin toward the girls. “Get the women out and we will talk.”
I nodded and glanced at my watch. “Affirmative.” Luna had walked out with her three minutes ago. It felt like a fucking lifetime.
“Go,” Neil commanded. “He has not yet left with her.”
I didn’t hesitate. I ran through the house to the garage and hit the door just as Luna was carrying her out to one of his SUVs. The sight of her bare feet hanging out from the blanket both gutted and enraged me.
I lashed out at Luna. “I said I didn’t want any more of your men on this.”
Luna looked over his shoulder as he opened the back passenger door. “Good thing I wasn’t stupid enough to listen.”
He was right. If he’d listened, we’d all be on Neil’s Cobalt, the seven women included, and I knew Irina enough to know she would’ve hated more of an audience than she’d already had.
I took the cell phone I had from Luna and handed
it to him after he put her in the vehicle and shut the door. “Give this to her.”
Luna clipped out a nod and took the phone as he got in the front passenger seat.
This was fucking killing me. I should’ve been the one getting her out of here. I should’ve been the one holding her, and I sure as hell should’ve been the one taking care of her. Not fucking Luna. The hand not on my AR15 fisted and I leveled Luna with a look. “Take care of her.”
“Copy that.” He shut the door and they took off. As the vehicle rounded the bend, it had to pause for a Maserati coming up the driveway.
Jagger pulled his car up right in front of me, and he and his brother Jacek got out.
Both blond, both the exact same height, both with the same haircut, I could tell them apart only from their shirt colors and dispositions.
Wearing a light-colored shirt, Jagger eyed my weapon and smiled. “You didn’t tell me what kind of party this was.”
His brother Jacek didn’t say shit and he didn’t smile.
“Inside.” I walked back into the garage and closed the door.
Jagger glanced over his shoulder at the closing door. “What’s up with all the secrecy?”
“I’ve got seven Russian illegals inside who don’t want to be deported.”
Jacek crossed his arms and spoke up. “Not our problem.”
“Seven Russian women,” I clarified.
Jagger smiled wide.
Jacek shook his head. “We don’t sponsor work visas and we don’t hire off the books.”
Jagger clapped Jacek on the back. “Yes, we do. Ignore him. They hot?”
I didn’t fucking know, I’d barely looked at them. I nodded once.
Jagger grinned wide. “Let’s meet them. They speak English?”
No clue. “Yeah.”
“Jagger,” Jacek clipped. “We can’t afford the heat on this.”
Jagger laughed. “We can afford anything we want, brother.” He walked into the house.
Jacek looked at me. “This is Viktor Fedorov’s house and there’s a body at the guard shack where there should be a guard.”
“It was his house,” I corrected. “Now he’s dead.”
Jacek cut to the chase. “Is this going to come back on us?”