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Suddenly, I feel sick as I consider the names of the prominent people he was accused of making disappear. God, they aren’t buried down here, are they?
I feel terrible for even entertaining the thought. And yet it lingers in the back of my mind.
A new, familiar voice joins the group—Viktor. He’s Mishka’s friend. He wouldn’t let anything happen to him, right?
My stomach drops at the unmistakable sound of a fist hitting flesh—it’s the same sound Mishka’s fist made when it connected with that handsy drunk guy at the club.
A pained grunt follows, then my brother’s distinctly mocking tone. “Yeah, not so cocky now, are you?”
Heart racing, I head toward the sound of my father’s voice with renewed purpose. From what I can make out of his deep baritone timbre, he fully intends to inflict pain and death on the person he’s speaking to.
“Did you really think you would get away with it?” he growls as my feet carry me around another corner. “And then what? You thought you could just slink back into the gutter you came from? I will rip you limb from limb. I will remove every one of your fingers. Then your toes. And then I’ll feed them to you,” he continues, his voice low and terrifying.
I’ve never heard him speak like that before, and the panic chokes me as I picture him standing in front of Mishka, threatening such things. Mishka’s a strong man. He can protect himself.
But against my father, brother, and several other men?
I don’t see how he has a fighting chance.
Forgetting about my need to be quiet, I rush forward toward the voices that grow steadily louder. There. I freeze and peer around the corner as one burly figure catches my eye. Ready to intervene, I quickly try to assess the situation, but my mind can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.
Then, as my mind struggles to decipher the scene before me, I gasp.
And my horrified realization strikes ice into my heart.
40
MISHKA
My feet are like lead as they carry me through the catacombs beneath the Sakharov family’s home. What first felt like a maze of convoluted hallways and chambers now feels like the sacred burial ground of all Sergio’s victims. And I think I just might be about to become another one.
I don’t know that I’ll ever get a chance to speak to Alina again. To kiss her luscious lips or tell her that I love her. I’ll never get to hold her in my arms again.
At least I got to say how I feel about her before I die.
At least she knows I wouldn’t leave her by choice.
Because I have no doubt from Sergio’s gruff communication and refusal to speak to me before vanishing downstairs that he knows. He summoned me into the basement to join the other men waiting for him in the torture chamber. And now he intends to kill me.
I reach for the gun holstered beneath my suit jacket and find some comfort in its solid weight. I wonder if I might get the upper hand on him. Not likely when he’s so far ahead of me and he has five of his finest, most loyal men waiting for my arrival.
I can hear them speaking before I reach the torture chamber, and from the sounds of it, Sergio’s guests have all woken up.
“Please, please just let him go,” one man begs, his voice tortured.
I could almost call the sound pathetic—only, he’s not even begging for his own life. My stomach knots as my personal safety becomes a lower priority. I need to get to that room.
“And why would I do that?” Sergio asks calmly, his gruff tone from upstairs gone, replaced by a smooth, playful voice now that suggests he’s a cat who’s just found a mouse to toy with.
Clearly, he’s got bigger fish to fry currently than what I must have been doing in a room with his daughter. He finally has the men responsible for ambushing us in his grasp—and vengeance is long overdue.
Still, I can hardly feel a sense of relief when I know the scene unfolding in the torture room before I’ve even gotten there.
“He’s my brother,” the guy says, his anguish making his voice crack. “Please, just let him go.”
Blyat.
Somehow, the fact that two brothers were involved feels entirely too ironic. It’s my story and Sascha’s unfolding just half a year later. Only these brothers haven’t been separated. The younger brother didn’t have to watch as his older brother was beaten to within an inch of his life and taken prisoner.
