Love Thy Enemy

by Katie Reus

  The fucking traitor. He’d betrayed them all.

  “You really thought you could betray us and get away with it?” His voice was steady.

  Abram loosened his grip and they both shoved to their feet.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Kir rasped out, his voice uneven. He’d ditched his cell phone but he hadn’t ditched his laptop. Which was how they’d been able to track him.

  One of his eyes was swollen shut, his nose broken in multiple places, and blood covered the front of his shirt as he stared up from the floor of the kitchen—in a condo that Lyosha had easily tracked him to. One of Kir’s ankles was broken too, his foot twisted at an odd angle.

  It wasn’t enough. Viktor wanted to break every bone in his body with his bare hands when he thought of Dominique somewhere terrified for her life, being hurt… He locked the thought down before he broke Kir’s neck. His brother was right. He needed to stay calm and find out where Dominique was.

  He crouched down next to Kir’s head. The man stared at him through his one good eye. “What was it supposed to be like?”

  “I was just…giving him info about you. That’s…it.” He wheezed out the last couple words, his face scrunching in pain.

  “Who?” Viktor just needed a name. The name of the man who’d orchestrated the kidnapping of the woman he loved. The man who’d turned one of his employees against him.

  “You’ll kill…me if…I tell you.”

  “I’m going to kill you anyway.” He leaned closer to Kir, rage infusing him as he looked at the man who’d held Dominique at gunpoint, dragged her away from where she’d felt safe. Where she should have been safe. Viktor had no idea what Kir had done to her either. That not knowing was making him insane. “If you tell me I’ll make your death quick. If you don’t…you know what I used to do to people who crossed me.”

  The truth was, he’d never been into torture. Unlike his father. But he’d stoked the rumors of his nature years ago so people would be afraid to cross him. Clearly his reputation hadn’t been enough to keep Kir from turning on him. Viktor would have to remedy that soon.

  When Kir didn’t respond, he continued. “See my man Lyosha over there? You know how good he is at finding people. He found you in less than an hour. He’s already drained all your bank accounts—even the one you thought you’d hidden from us. Now all his focus is on finding who hired you. He will find who it is, that I have no doubt. The only question is, will he find him first or will you tell me? Because once he finds what I need, my offer of mercy is gone. I’ll keep you alive for weeks. At least.” He leaned even closer so that his mouth almost brushed Kir’s ear. “I will cut you apart piece by piece. And then I will make you eat your own dick.”

  “Found something,” Lyosha said

  Eyes widening, Kir blurted, “Shane Hollis! He’s the one who’s been paying me! I took her…to one of his buildings downtown. The top four…floors are…” His breathing was labored and his words starting to slur. “Abandoned. He’s keeping her there…for now.” He rattled off an address before breaking into a fit of coughing.

  Viktor shoved to his feet, looking to Lyosha for confirmation. His head of security shrugged and Viktor realized Lyosha hadn’t found anything. He’d just been trying to goad Kir into talking.

  It was hard to believe Hollis was behind this. The trust-fund jackass was so weak, ineffective at business—and had a drug problem.

  “Keep him alive for now,” Viktor said to Dima. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with Kir yet.

  Dima nodded, giving Kir a look of pure disgust.

  Viktor turned away, all thoughts of Kir’s betrayal taking a backseat to finding Dominique. Saving her was all that mattered.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. He yanked it out, answered even though he didn’t recognize the number. This could be about Dominique. “Hello?”

  “Click on video capability,” a distorted male voice said.

  The fear inside him raked against his insides like savage, unforgiving talons. He motioned to his brother to keep Kir quiet as he quickly moved out of the kitchen. He stopped in the bare living room and swiped his thumb across the screen.

  Dominique appeared, her face scrunched up. She was squinting. Her face was illuminated by a bright light. His throat seized in terror when he saw that she was cuffed to a chair, her arms and legs restrained.

  Suddenly the light dimmed and a man wearing a hockey mask crouched next to her, his face right by hers as he fisted the long length of her hair and yanked her head back. The blade of a knife gleamed as he held it up in full view of the camera.

  Crying out, she blinked, her eyes filling up with tears as she stared into the camera. He wanted to tell her everything would be okay, but he knew he’d break if he started down that road.

  He had to keep his shit together for her, to get her out of this whole. “What do you want?” His voice was somehow calm.

  “You took something that belonged to me. Now I have something that belongs to you.” The voice was muffled but not mechanical. It was difficult to tell if it was Hollis or not. Leaning closer to the camera, the man loosened his grip on her hair but didn’t let go completely as he moved forward.

  “Tell me what you want and it’s yours.” He couldn’t even negotiate. Not with Dominique’s life in the balance. He’d give this monster whatever he wanted.

  “You’re going to meet with me at a place of my choosing and sign over property to me. If you involve the cops she’s dead.”

  He snorted in derision. “There will be no police.”

  The masked man nodded once, setting the knife down. “You will also bring your brother. If you have any backup, however, she’s dead. If I even think you have backup, she’s fucking dead. And I’ll amuse myself with her before I kill her.” The man reached out and stroked Dominique’s cheek. “She’s got such a pretty mouth.”

  A red haze blurred Viktor’s vision at the sight of this bastard touching her. “Where do you want me to go?” he bit out.

  The man rattled off an address but didn’t drop his hand as he continued stroking her cheek. “Don’t you agree she’s got a pretty mouth? I can think of—”

  He screamed as Dominique bit his hand, her teeth sinking into his flesh and holding tight. He backhanded her with his free hand. Her head snapped back and the man hit her again. Her head lolled forward and her body stilled.

  Raw terror jumped inside Viktor. Cursing, the man shoved his face in front of the screen so that Viktor couldn’t see her anymore.

  Viktor growled low in his throat, his hand clenching around his phone. He was going to kill the man. Slowly.

  “You have twenty minutes to be at that address. Go in through the parking garage. Bring your brother. Or the bitch dies.”

  The screen went black before he could respond.

  “It’s a trap,” Abram said, moving into the living room with Lyosha.

  Viktor nodded once, agreeing. It had to be a trap. Abram and Lyosha had clearly heard everything and Lyosha was still working away on a tablet.

  “I got a location on where he called you from,” he said. “The phone is a burner but it pinged from a property Shane Hollis owns—for now. It’s being foreclosed on. It’s different than the address he gave you. On the other side of downtown. It’d take him more than twenty minutes to get there.”

  He had no time to make a decision. “Can you find out what kind of security the place has? The one he called from?” He was already moving toward the front door. They needed to have left ten minutes ago.

  “I can try, but it’ll take more than twenty minutes to disable it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  That was exactly what he was thinking. Hollis, or whoever was under that mask, wanted him to go to a specific address when he wasn’t even there. It had to be a trap. “What about the place he wants us to go to?”

  He, Abram and Lyosha spilled out into the hallway, talking as they ran to the elevators. His body was moving on autopilot, his onl
y goal to get to his car and find Dominique.

  “It’s…also being foreclosed on. Owned by Hollis too. This fucker is losing everything his family built,” Lyosha muttered.

  Viktor’s gut told him to go to the place the phone pinged from. As the elevator dinged at the bottom floor, the doors whooshing open, he looked at his brother, who’d been quiet. “If it was Lucy, what would you do?”

  “Go with my instinct—which says the place he wants us to meet him is a fucking trap. Probably rigged with explosives or someone waiting to take us out. I think your girl is at the place his phone pinged from.”

  “Me too.” He pulled out his phone again as they hurried into the parking garage of the condo complex Kir had thought was his hideout. He needed to get into that building undetected in twenty minutes and there was only one man he could think of who could make it happen.

  It was time to collect his favor from Harrison Caldwell.

  Chapter 18

  Weapon in hand, Viktor stood outside the stairwell door to one of the top floors of the Hollis-owned building. Lyosha and Abram were silently waiting on the stairs as he confirmed one last time with Harrison that they were good to go.

  “We’ve completely taken over the security feeds. The top eight floors aren’t being monitored but there’s no way to know if he saw you infiltrating from the parking garage. From this point forward if he does have security capability, he’ll only see what we show him.” Harrison’s voice was clipped over the phone line.

  Viktor nodded at Abram and Lyosha and they moved silently up the stairs. Instead of using the elevators they’d chosen the stairs so they wouldn’t be seen. The building hadn’t been finished—Hollis had run out of money—so there was no security in the stairwells either. Not that it would have stopped Viktor from coming here.

  Nothing could do that. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve called in a favor to the PD. They’re going to move on the other building as if there’s a bomb threat.”

  Which there very well could be. Viktor had no idea what Hollis had in store for him and Abram at the meeting place he’d insisted on. “Wait until I’ve got Dominique safe.” Because if the cops moved in and Dominique was in there instead, or if Hollis got wind of the police involvement, he could kill her.

  Harrison snorted. “Contact me in fifteen minutes or I’m sending the cops in.”

  Viktor didn’t bother responding, just ended the call and checked to make sure his phone was on silent. This was it. He, Lyosha and Abram were sweeping every floor, starting with the empty four on top.

  Heart pounding, he eased open the door and peered into a hallway. Sunlight streamed in through the open doorways. A couple soda cans sat in a cluster near the closest entry—with no door. The floors weren’t done; the steel and concrete frame was visible down the majority of the hallway. Insulation was also visible through the nearest open doorway, as if the construction crew had started installing it, then stopped mid-job.

  He took a step into the hallway but froze at the slight echo of his footstep. Inwardly wincing, he slipped his shoes off and tucked them out of sight in the nearest room. Weapon up, he moved silently room to room, sweeping each one with a glance. There was no furniture, nothing to hide anyone.

  When he heard a muffled sound three doors down from the opposite stairwell, he froze, listening. He heard it again.

  It was too much to expect that it was Dominique, but the hope burst inside him, a burning wish to find her alive, unharmed.

  He glanced once over his shoulder before continuing his path. His heart was an erratic tattoo against his chest as he moved like a predator hunting prey. If Hollis was in there, the man was dead. Viktor wouldn’t allow him to surrender.

  At the next doorway he heard the scraping, shuffling again. Moving in low, he swept the room with his weapon, immediately dropping it when he saw Dominique restrained to a chair, a gag in her mouth. Alone.

  The spotlight was off her, at least.

  Her eyes widened when she saw him. A bruise was forming on her cheek and a tiny trail of dried blood streaked down her chin, but she was alive. For the first time in the last hour he felt as if he could breathe again. Pistol still in his hand he hurried across the open room.

  Crouching next to her, he turned so that he had the doorway in his periphery. He wanted to comfort her, but if Hollis was nearby Viktor didn’t want the man to hear him. Holding a finger to his mouth, he then tugged her gag free. He didn’t have a way to get the cuffs off, not without a key or a way to cut them free.

  “He’s crazy,” she whispered. “He’s got guys waiting at that other building. If Abram’s gone there—”

  “He hasn’t. I’m going to get you out of here. I can’t get these off yet. Do you know where he is?” He kept his voice pitched low.

  She shook her head as tears spilled over her cheeks.

  He cupped her cheek with his free hand and swiped them away. He wanted to pull her to him but couldn’t risk the distraction, couldn’t risk losing focus on their surroundings for a moment. “You’re okay now,” he said quietly before pulling his phone out. He needed to call Harrison and get his brother and Lyosha up here. They needed to get Dominique free then hunt down Hollis.

  Even killing that fucker took a backseat to getting her to safety. As the phone started to ring Shane Hollis stepped into the room, hockey mask shoved up on top of his head—and a pistol in his hand.

  Viktor whipped his weapon up lightning fast, moving to stand directly in front of Dominique so that his body blocked hers entirely. “Drop your gun,” Viktor ordered.

  Hollis’s eyes were wild, a little too big and red-rimmed. “You stupid fucker!”

  “Drop your weapon. The police are on their way up. There’s nowhere to go. Just put your gun down and you’ll get out of this alive.” The guy had hired men to come after Viktor and kidnapped Dominique so he was dead, regardless, but Viktor couldn’t risk Dominique getting hurt or worse if the guy started firing.

  “There are no cops!” His gun hand wavered slightly.

  “Why did you do this? Why target me?” Viktor wanted to keep the guy talking. If the call to Harrison had connected, the other man should be hearing all this.

  “You took everything from me!”

  “I bought the businesses you put up for sale.” At a fair price, he thought. Too fair, because he’d wanted to let the guy save some pride.

  “Then you wouldn’t work with me.” His voice was whiny, matching the trust-fund jackass Viktor had pegged him for at their first meeting. “The fucking criminal wouldn’t work with me. Me! I’m a fucking Hollis.” His gun hand wavered. “My family built—”

  Viktor pulled the trigger, hitting Hollis square in the chest. Hollis’s eyes were wide as his body jerked back.

  Boom. Boom.

  Viktor fired again and again until Hollis tumbled backward, his weapon clattering to the concrete floor. He moved to it, kicked it away. Not bothering to check for a pulse, he patted the guy down until he found what he was looking for.

  As he pulled the handcuff key out, he whipped his weapon up at a slight sound—then dropped it when he saw Abram and Lyosha rushing toward him.

  Palming the key he hurried to Dominique, who was silently crying. After he’d freed her, she lunged at him before he could pull her into his arms.

  “I thought he was going to kill you,” she sobbed, her voice cracking. “He was so smug, so sure you’d walk right into his trap. He said…he said he was going to bring you here and make you watch as he—” Her voice broke then, her body racking with silent sobs as he lifted her into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and buried her face against his neck as he carried her fireman-style out of the room. He couldn’t move fast enough. He wanted her away from this death and pain.

  “There’s no one else here. Cops are on the way. So is Harrison,” Abram said as Viktor stepped over Hollis’s dead body.

  “I’m taking her downstairs.” Away from all this.

  He d
idn’t pause to talk to either Lyosha or his brother. The only thing that mattered was getting her to safety, getting her home—his home. Where no one would ever hurt her again.

  He paused halfway down the hallway and turned to his brother. “Call Dima. Tell him to take care of it.” Meaning Kir. No way was that fucker walking away after this. He wouldn’t do jail time. He’d just disappear forever. But Viktor would make sure that word spread in the right circles that he’d died because of his betrayal. A gruesome, horrific death. He had no problem spreading false rumors about himself, not when those rumors would keep Dominique safe. So anyone who thought they might target him or his loved ones in the future would think twice.

  “Already done. We’ll make it look like—”

  Viktor shook his head sharply to cut Abram off. He didn’t want Dominique to hear any of this. She needed to be completely truthful in everything she said to the police. She was a victim and an employee of Red Stone Security so he had no doubt the police would treat her right. But he didn’t want there to be any doubt about what had happened today.

  She’d been kidnapped by Kir, then brought to Shane Hollis. For all the cops would think, Kir had disappeared, going on the run for his life. Viktor didn’t want her to know what would happen to Kir—at least not until after she’d talked to the police.

  Chapter 19

  Abram shifted slightly against the bed, watching Lucy as she slept. Today had been a new level of insanity for him and his brother. And that was saying a lot.

  After dealing with the cops and hours of endless questions and paperwork, Viktor and Dominique were holed up at Viktor’s place and Abram had brought Lucy to his. He needed to know she was safe, protected.

  And he wasn’t going to let her go anytime soon—or ever. She might not realize it yet, but that necklace was only the first piece of jewelry he’d be buying her. Soon he planned to have a ring on her finger. All the muscles in his body were pulled taut, his cock rock hard, as he watched her. He should just get up, let her sleep, but he liked being near her.