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Viktor, who had been quietly searching for information while we were all talking, got up and brought his computer to me. “Do you feel up to translating this?” he asked.
“For you? Of course,” I said, winking at him. I scanned over the article. “This one is old. From before Lorenzo got banished. It’s talking about how he took over the docks. ‘Injecting new life into the failing import business,’ it says. He made a deal with an Italian exporter to bring goods into the city.” I looked up from the computer. “I’ll give you guys one guess who the Italian exporter is.”
“Ricardo,” they all said.
“Winner winner chicken dinner,” I said. I finished reading the article to make sure there wasn’t anything I missed. There was a link to a second article that I clicked to see what else I could find. “Here’s one from a few years later. It says that in the span of six months, four boats were found coming into the docks loaded with people.”
“It appears Lorenzo has been in the flesh trade longer than we thought,” Viktor said.
“This article doesn’t mention Ricardo, but I’d be willing to bet if we dug a little, those boats belong to him,” I said. Viktor got up and took his computer back to see what else he could find.
Adrik sighed. “This is much bigger than the bosses trying to take the city from me.”
“Which is why you need to teach them a lesson, so no one will ever think about trying it again. There’s a reason history remembers Vlad the Impaler’s name hundreds of years later. Savagery has its place,” I said. Adrik tightened his hold on me. I grinned at Stephen, asking, “Yoden, what was Vlad like in real life? Was he cranky? I feel like he was cranky.”
“All Romanians come across as cranky, Seph. But Vlad? Surprisingly sarcastic. Liked dad jokes too. Odd combination, but it worked with him,” he said with a straight face like it was the God’s honest truth.
“What about the impaling? I feel like you helped him come up with that idea.”
“No, that was all Vlad. I just supported his dreams. It’s called enabling. I invented that,” he said, still completely straight-faced.
I tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t help but laugh, which caused me to grab my ribs in pain. “I did this to myself,” I whined as I waited for the pain in my ribs to subside.
I got up several times throughout the night to walk down the hallway. Everyone’s sleep schedule was screwed up, so we would all nap for a few hours, get up and make a few trips up and down the hallway, then nap some more. It was much nicer at night because the hallways were basically deserted. I did, however, get plenty of odd looks from the nurses since the guys insisted on escorting me each time.
“How bad do I actually look?” I asked Adrik quietly. I’d gone to the bathroom a few times, but I refused to look at myself in the mirror. I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty and I just didn’t want to put myself through that yet. I could see the bruises on my body, so I was sure my face made a matching set.
“Your face is bruised, but not as bad as your body, solnishko. Maybe it’s the Russian that makes them nervous. They all think we’re talking about them. But I think it’s more that we won’t let you go anywhere without us. They’re not used to seeing a princess in real life,” he said, smiling at me.
“Who knew being royalty was such a burden to bear?” I said, flipping my three-day-old braid over my shoulder. I was sure my hair was resembling a rat’s nest at this point, but I didn’t really care. There wasn’t anything I could do about it with only one functioning arm, so I was resigned to it being completely out of control.
Viktor, who was behind us this time, said, “I can redo that for you. Or you’re going to end up with a dreadlock before you can get out of here.” I picked up the empty sleeve of Adrik’s sweatshirt I was wearing and turned to point it at him. “You, sir, are my favorite.”
“Hey, no fair. Just because the rest of us have never had long hair and don’t know how to braid doesn’t mean Viktor gets to be the favorite,” Misha said. I could tell he was just trying to stir shit up for the fun of it. We were all going a little stir crazy being stuck here.
As we walked back in the room, Viktor closed the door and then said, “I think your ability to see things as they happen, both past and present, trumps my knowledge of how to braid, Misha.”
“Wait, past?” I asked as I walked to the bed. I hated that I felt tired after two trips up and down the hallway, but I needed to sit down. I gingerly sat on the edge of the bed.
Misha sat on the other bed in the room, across from me. “So, when Boss called you the Game Master, I think he nailed it. You definitely unlocked a new level for me when we saw Trino,” he said.
“How so?” I asked, as I tried to gingerly scoot farther onto the bed.
“I’ve never been able to see things that happened in the past before. But the night you and Ivan were taken, we went to the spot where they grabbed you. I could see everything that happened, like it was happening in front of me. I saw them grab you off the bike. I saw you scream to make the guy that grabbed you think you were weak, then I saw you headbutt him as hard as you possibly could to get free. I saw you shoot him. I saw you try to shoot the guys that were on Ivan, but you stopped. I saw them slam you into the car and point a gun to your head. I saw Ivan kill two of the guys that were on him, but he stopped when they pulled a gun on you. I saw them take everything from you and zip-tie your hands in front of you and then throw you into the vehicle. It was plain as day to me when it happened and it was like I was watching it in real time. It’s never happened like that before,” Misha said, running his hand through his black hair.
“That’s pretty incredible, Misha. That’s everything that happened as I remember it,” I said.
Adrik walked to the bed, putting one arm gingerly around my shoulders, the other under my legs, mindful of the IV tubes still attached to me. He lifted me farther onto the bed, so I could lean back against the bed instead of having to keep myself upright. “That’s not all he can do now,” he said as he kissed my forehead once he had placed me on the bed.
“There’s more?”
Adrik nodded his head. “He saw the building where they took you. He narrowed down the part of town you were in considerably, which made it easier to find you through the earpieces. But even after Chen connected to your earpiece, we still weren’t completely sure what building you were in. It only narrowed down the possibilities. It was Keith that randomly told us what building you guys were in.”
“How did you see what building they took us to?” I asked Misha.
“I had to have Boss’s help for that. He thought about you, about finding you, and I was able to see the building. It was what I kind of assume happened when we saw Trino. You were thinking about Trino and it amplified what I could see. Boss was thinking about you and it amplified what I could see,” Misha said. “But it was so dark that I never could see the address on the building. Keith made it easy for us. He gave us the address.”
“Keith took Armando to the building? Does he know Ivan and I were there?” I asked, I could feel myself starting to get angry at the possibility of yet another betrayal.
