Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
“Fuck.” Mikhail stood, knocking his chair to the floor.
“What?”
“The coordinates. They’re for the compound in Virginia. The girls, the kids, they are all—”
Damien and Gregor stood staring at Mikhail for a moment.
The room was completely silent for a single heartbeat, the implication clear.
Solovyov had put out a hit on Gregor himself, or worse, a member of his family.
This wasn’t a cunning move from a ruthless boss.
This was an act of war.
All at once, the room erupted in chaos. Gregor grabbed his phone and called his man at the compound, ordering the women and children to be taken to a safe room and the compound to be locked down.
Mikhail was barking orders to someone on his line, demanding a helicopter.
“Sir.” The hotel manager came into the room and headed to me, the only man not on the phone snarling out frenzied orders.
“What did you find?”
“The men who took the girl? They went to a service elevator. Someone shot them, and took the girl, leaving out the back garage meant for deliveries and—”
“Do you know what car, or where they went?” I asked, interrupting him.
“No, not yet. They are looking at the tapes now. I will—”
“We’ve got the helicopter landing on the roof and Mikhail and I are heading to the compound now. You and Damien meet us there, but first, take the Mercedes. Catch up with them. Run them off the goddamn road if you have to.”
“On it,” Damien said as he checked his gun and threw a spare at me.
The gun was fully loaded and I tucked it away then grabbed the extra clip Damien tossed at me.
As the manager ran out of the room and Mikhail and Gregor headed to the roof, Damien and I ran to the waiting car.
Damien’s phone rang as he pulled the driver out of the car and got behind the wheel, not trusting a man that was hired as a chauffeur.
I got into the passenger seat, feeling the cold metal of the gun biting into my back.
Damien hung up the phone. “We are looking for a black Cadillac. The police already have the license plate and are searching for it now. They will let us know when they find it, but let’s hope we get to them first.”
I didn’t give a fuck who got to it first.
It wasn’t going to change a damn thing.
Whoever took Marina from me was going to die, police witnesses or not.
I just prayed she was still alive when we found them.
CHAPTER 31
MARINA
Oleg still had the gun aimed at my head.
He never put it down.
I was trapped in a car with him holding me at gunpoint, eyeing me, silently begging me to do something that would justify using it.
He had all the power, and he knew it. And still he sat there in the back seat of the car, his body angled toward me, the gun a constant threat as he kept speaking about how I would never be as beautiful or as perfect as my sister.
It was clear he wanted me to know that my life was in his hands, and he could end it on a whim.
“If she was so perfect, why did you kill her?” I asked, trying to buy myself some time.
For what? I had no idea. But maybe if I kept him talking, I could figure something out.
Or run the clock for some divine intervention to appear or for Kostya to catch up to us.
If he was coming for me.
“She became too much of a liability,” he said, as if it was the simplest answer in the entire world. “Her silly games were no longer amusing, but I doubt I am going to have that problem with you, am I? No, you are not like your sister, you are a good girl.”
His eyes traveled up and down my body, my skin crawling in the wake of his unnerving gaze.
I let his question hang in the air, not sure how to answer.
If I agreed, it was the same as telling him I welcomed his lecherous advances. Not that he was the type of man who cared about consent.
If I rebuked him, he would just shoot me.
Instead, I looked out of the window as the car moved from the stop-and-go traffic of the city to the smoother speed of the highway. The car sped up as it merged into traffic, to take me even further from the city and Kostya and into New Jersey, with whatever horrid fate awaited me there.
“You will find I am not so bad once you learn to behave,” Oleg said, reaching over and running the tip of the gun barrel from my shoulder down my arm.
My spine stiffened with my attempt to suppress the shudder that ran through me at his next words. “You will learn to love the things I can do to you.”