I will not cry for these men.
I will not break.
I will win, even if it kills me.
By the time the unnamed man turns off the hose, my clothes are shredded off my body, my bedding is drenched through, and the silver tray my dinner was delivered on is wrapped around the pipe I was cuffed to my first five days here.
When the hose’s nozzle drops to the concrete ground with a clang, I collapse against the chains holding me hostage, incapable of balancing on my tippy toes for a second longer. Although I’m sparkling with the cleanliness I haven’t experienced in weeks, every inch of my body is aching. I feel like I’ve run a marathon, but there will be no reprieve for my tired muscles. That isn’t the way these men work.
Another silent scream pops into my head when the brute fists my hair to yank my head back. His evil eyes glide over my face, down my neck, and across my collarbone before he stops on my breasts. Compliments to good genes I got from my mother, that’s the only part of my body with any meat left on it, and even then, it isn’t much. It would be barely enough to fill a hand.
“You scrub up good,” the goon grunts, half laughing, half moaning. “Let’s hope your line of visitors isn’t too long this evening. I’m not into necrophilia.”
I’m so dead on my feet, I fall into his arms when he releases my wrists from the contraption bolted to the ceiling. I am anticipating for him to carry me back to my bed, so the parade of men he mentioned can commence getting their money’s worth, so you can imagine my shock when he heads for the door Vladimir exited minutes ago.
The air outside of my room isn’t any less stuffy, but I suck it in like it’s full of the nutrients I’ve been lacking the past ten weeks. Once I have my lungs as revitalized as my determination to live, I ram my palm into the brute’s nose, kick out of his arms with a grunt, then hightail it down a corridor lined with padlocked doors.
I should bolt straight for the closest exit, but since that would make the torment of the last ten weeks utterly worthless, I shout one name on repeat before bobbing down to peer through the keyholes on a handful of doors.
With none of the words shouted back at me done in Czech, I make it almost six doors down before Vladimir’s goon catches up to me. He punches me in the stomach, winding me even more than my sprint before he tosses me over his shoulder like I’m a rag doll and stomps down the corridor. Most women would kick, thrash, and wail when they’re being carried so brutally. I’m way past normal. I don’t fight him at all. I merely still my movements and prick my ears so I can listen for an accent similar to mine.
There are so many women, more than I could have possibly imagined. Their accents are from wide and far. It takes him marching us down a third corridor before I hear one close to mine, but when I do, it launches my heart into my throat.
“Ana?”
The fight I failed to give earlier roars out of me in uncontained violence when the faintest voice whispers back, “Kristina?”
“Ana!” I fight and fight and fight to be freed. I dig my nails into his huge shoulders, bite at him, and kick him with all my might.
The harder I fight, the tighter the goon holds me.
“I’ll come back,” I promise in Czech, on the verge of tears, scared I’m so close to my dreams, yet still so far away. “I will find you. I promise.”
A grunt rattles my ribcage when the man tosses me into a room at the end of the corridor Ana is in. Even with my lungs void of air and my backside sporting an aching sting, I spring onto my feet and race to the door, praying I can stop it from shutting before I’m once-again locked away in the nightmare of my thoughts.
My effort comes too late. I’m not just naked in a room too elaborate to belong to a slave, I’ve caught the eye of Satan, and he isn’t a man who’s happy to look from a distance.
“Mika is right, you do scrub up nicely, little girl,” Vladimir mutters, stepping closer. “Now I just need to find a way to discover if your moans are as sweet as you taste.”
Three
Trey
Awar is coming. I can sense it in my veins and feel it trickling through the fine hairs on my arms. It’s the same sensation I got in the butler’s pantry six years ago. Not only are Nikolai’s men thirsty for bloodshed, so are men who don’t belong in this fight. The Popovs own Las Vegas. Nothing happens here without their consent, so why the fuck does Alexei have his crew barricading the hospital Roman was taken to?
Roman is Nikolai’s advisor. He’s at least mid-fifties, if not sixties, yet he has no issues keeping up with the rest of Nikolai’s crew. Nikolai chose well when he demanded for Roman to take Justine back to Hopeton to save her from a wayward bullet. He learned lessons from my failed takeover bid years ago and put steps in place to ensure his outcome was better than mine.
Regretfully, Vladimir had the jump on us. Roman was shot earlier today. If reports are anything to go by, Vladimir’s goons needed more than a bullet to take him down. They also chloroformed him.
It’s all part of Vladimir’s game. He can’t fuck with Nikolai if Nikolai has no clue he has his girl. He kept Roman alive for a reason, which is why I need to get him out of the hospital he’s holed up in and back to the compound so we can unearth his reasoning.
I drag in a long drawl of my recently lit doobie before devoting my focus to Eight. “How many men do we have in total?”
He checks the figures scribbled in his notepad. “Four each on the front, back, and side entrances, three at the crossover, and two spotters on the overpass heading west.”
“Nero?”
“Tying up loose ends.” He fans his hand in front of his face to ward off the smoke plume escaping mine. “We’ll be down to the final four soon.” The direction of his eyes reveals who he’s referencing.
